Volume Mainstream Business Servers: HP Notches Decisive Victory

Hewlett-Packard easily won the Volume Mainstream Business Servers category, finishing head and shoulders above its competition. Solution providers gave HP top scores in the ARC subcategories of product innovation, support and partnership. In fact, HP won all 18 criteria covered in the survey. HP performed particularly well in areas important in an economic climate in which end users are questioning every capital expenditure.

For example, the vendor scored decisive victories in the two criteria of presales and postsales support.

"In support, we have 600 systems engineers in the field. We know the products must be reliable; we've won several reliability awards. Our volume servers have become synonymous with reliability in this space," said Frank Rauch, vice president of Technology Solutions Group channel sales, at HP.

HP did an average of 10 points better than its closest competitor in other

criteria, taking center stage in frugal times: partner portal, revenue and profit potential, and ROI.

"We've spent a lot of time on our partner portal. We are really trying to make it easy for VARs to penetrate new accounts," Rauch said. "We have put into place a big marketing campaign, one that is designed to promote this product category and promote upgrades from G4 or G5 technology to G6 technology. We can demonstrate three-month to nine-month ROI. That's a big factor in our winning the space. Our channel feedback has been tremendous, and we're winning against Dell and IBM as a result of it."