10 Things Wrong with the Current HP Way in the Channel (
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Channel Insider sat down with HP's channel chief to discuss the ways in which the vendor needs to ease partner frustrations.
No matter how great the potential is, there comes a time when hope gives way
to frustration. The general consensus among the solution providers attending
Hewlett-Packard's annual partner conference in Las Vegas
this week seems to be that no matter how much they love HP, progress on key
issues that cost them time and money seems to be agonizingly slow.
Channel Insider sat down with Adrian Jones, HP's channel chief for North
America, to discuss many of these issues, and what follows is a
description of 10 specific challenges facing HP and the company's planned
response to the issue.
1. Ease of Doing Business: HP and
its partners continue to be victims of the company's profit and loss structure
around different business units that have to negotiate with each other every
time a partner needs help closing a deal. This greatly extends the amount of
time it takes for the solution provider to get a price quote or approval for
specific types of solution configurations. There appears to be no plan to
shrink the number of major HP business units, which are responsible for servers
and storage, personal computers, printers, and software. But Jones did say the
company is working diligently to improve the coordinated response times of the
territory managers associated with different business units.
2. Lack of Competitive Storage
Products: HP has struggled in this category for the past four to five
years. The company says its latest storage introductions will close the gap
with rivals, but Jones concedes it will be another six months before HP sees
any real results from this latest effort. Meanwhile, several solution providers
expressed dismay that HP allowed Dell to acquire EqualLogic and feel that HP
may need to do something dramatic in the storage space to recover momentum.
Click here to read about
HP's channel struggle to win in the U.S.
3. Slowing Server Sales: Beyond
the simple fact that it's more difficult to sell servers when the companion
storage products are not that strong compared with the competitors, solution
providers report that server sales might be slowing because customers are
getting better utilization rates by deploying VMware on top of their existing
servers.
4. Lack of a Virtualization Strategy:
HP has signed some recent alliances with companies such as VMware, but the
company has yet to put together a meaningful virtualization strategy in the
channel that creates more opportunity for its channel partners. Jones says the
company is working on a plan in this area.
5. No Coherent Approach to Managed
Services: The business model of solution providers is transforming rapidly,
but beyond a few programs for managed services in the printer space, HP has
been largely caught flat-footed by the rise of managed services in the channel.
Jones says solution providers should watch HP in this space in the coming
months.
Hewlett-Packard 
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