Using terms like 'strategic', 'holistic approach' and 'modeled solutions', HP has announced a set of 10 'standardized' integrated service solutions that should speed up engagements, lower risks and provide more value to customers and partners. HP Integration Services initially consists of 10 solutions to the most common industry or technology-based integration challenges, said Ian Jagger, manager of critical facilities services, HP. Customer size should not be a determining factor he added.

The intent behind the initiative is to differentiate HP from the other vendors and provide new value to customers. Essentially, all of the vendors were offering similar services, but the focus for the industry has been from the perspective of a technology sale. "A customer acquires new technology and there is an immediate need to integrate that new technology."

Jagger said they looked at the bigger issue, how customers can best utilize their limited IT staff, and how HP can help them. "The upshot of that was to understand what the challenges were for our customers in technology integration, more devices, the spread of the ecosystem and the complexity of that, and the limitation of IT staff& and that's how we came to the conclusion of integration services more strategically than has been the nature."

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The answer was to identify the most pressing integration needs and "industrialize how the integration would work on a customer-by-customer basis". HP has come up with 10 solutions, but Jagger said they're not limiting themselves to just these. The solutions are split between new technology and technology refreshes. "Not everything is about new situations."

The intent was to move the focus from selling integrated services tied to new product sales and address customer pain points, said Jagger. Instead of worrying about IT migration, consolidation, virtualization and relocation issues, customers can focus instead on their core businesses.

The solutions leverage the best practices and knowledge gained from thousands of customer engagements, and incorporate technology deployment, data migration, relocation, site planning and project management services, he said.

For HP's channel, this provides an opportunity to resell the services, said Jagger. "Nothing changes with our approach to our channel partners. Today much of our sales of classic services& come through the channel because they are attached to sales." That won't go away, he said, but now partners can offer these 10 new services, which would be provided by HP.

"We've actually increased the opportunity for what they can sell& and also simplified the process, so it's easier for our partners to work with us in providing custom quotes."

HP plans to make specific channel service announcements in the next few days, said Jagger. The 10 solutions are: Integrated Telecom; Scale-out Environments; Virtualized Blade Deployment; Global Standardized Deployment; Software Partner Integration; Technology Catalog Management and Delivery; Branch Office Technology Refresh; Data Center Relocation; Data Center Technology Refresh; and Point of Sales Technology Refresh. Pricing varies based on specific requirements.

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