2007's Top Innovators

Serving Up Innovation
As for innovation in the Mainstream Business Servers market, Hewlett-Packard was at the top of the pack. The computer giant received the highest overall score in the category for compatibility and ease of integration with an 82 score vs. an average of 71.

Sam Haffar, president and co-CEO of Computex, an HP partner in Houston, said HP's strong performance for innovation in the ARC awards is not surprising, given the vendor's long and cherished legacy as an engineering-oriented company. "HP is truly an engineering company," Haffar said. "They are innovators in every sense of the word. ... They bring that innovation to every aspect of their business from desktops to notebooks to servers. They just put out cool stuff."

Haffar compares HP's products to those from rivals like Dell and EMC in competitive bids, and HP comes out on top at least eight out of 10 times each and every time they do a side-by-side product comparison. "We compare side by side to Dell and EMC on the storage side and IBM on the server side, and it's an easy sale," he said. "Dell is not an innovator. They are a 'me too' product company. They are a clone-maker. They don't do any engineering. HP is way, way ahead of the competition. They also have a great PartnerOne channel program which rewards us. We are very tightly aligned with HP," Haffar said. As part of that tight alignment, Computex has invested more than $1.3 million in an HP Solutions Lab, which showcases the vendor's technology, including blade servers.

Haffar said the heavy investment has paid off. He expects his HP business alone to be up 80 percent this year to as much as $25 million. "It's incredible right now," he said. "We need more engineers and sales reps. I am fully booked until the end of the year."

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