HP Beefs Up High-End Service Channel Offerings

Hewlett-Packard VARs will now be able to sell various enterprise HP consulting services, as the vendor announced it is moving the services from a direct sale into the channel.

HP said it will move several of its HP-provided consulting services and educational services that have traditionally been sold by its own direct organization over to its Services Elite partners—those that have the highest sales in the enterprise.

In addition, the company is running a couple of pilot programs around managed services available from its channel partners. And HP will increase internal resources by 20 percent to support its services channel partners in 2008, said JoAnn Redding, vice president of HP Technology Services.

"Most of this is in response to an ongoing dialogue with our partners on what their customers are looking for," Redding said. "For partners who have a big maintenance service offering, they are looking for ways to expand beyond box-type services, in some cases more into consulting and in some cases into managed services. Enterprise partners that have been on the managed services side want to expand on that."

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Redding recently provided Channel Insider with an update on HP's channel programs for services.

She said HP will now offer its portfolio of services to partners to resell to their customers. Services included are virtualization, data center relocation, green initiatives and assessment services.

"We've had these on the direct side for a while, but now many of these services are SKUs and we have rolled them out to the channel," Redding said. The services can either be sold under the HP brand or under the partner brand with HP doing the delivery.

"There are a lot of partners looking for ways to expand their businesses without having to build a practice," she said. HP will offer training on how to sell these services. The company is offering Web-based training on individual pieces of the services portfolio as well as on-site training, from a few hours long to two and a half days covering the eight service families available.

Services Elite partners will receive more free training, additional leads and additional incentive dollars as a reward for their loyalty to HP and their ongoing investment with the vendor, according to Redding.

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