HP Partners To New Channel Chief: Keep The Momentum Going

HP enterprise partners, who gathered this week for an unprecedented, side-by-side sales and training symposium with HP's direct-sales team, said they hope the former McData sales executive continues to reach out to partners to drive sales growth.

"The channel is doing a ton of business for HP," said Computex President and Co-CEO Sam Haffar, a Houston-based solution provider who expects his HP business to increase 50 percent this year. "Keep the momentum going, and reach out to your partners."

Haffar said he couldn't be more pleased with the sales symposium that brought together some 500 HP partners with the HP direct-sales team. "This is the first time that HP has done that," he said. "It was HP and the partners getting the same training, messaging and content. We have become a unified sales force. The time is ripe for HP to overtake this market."

Haffar said he's doing 30 percent more joint sales engagements with HP this year vs. a year ago. "[HP Chairman and CEO] Mark Hurd obviously set the [channel] strategy, and HP is following through with it," he said. "They are working a lot closer with the channel. There are only a few named accounts in every region. The channel is going after the midmarket. Anything non-Global 1000 is channel-driven."

HP partners credited a strong Technology Solutions Group sales team led by Managing Director and Senior Vice President Jack Novia and Senior Vice President and U.S. Country Manager Dave Booth, along with a robust HP enterprise product set, including blade servers, for helping to drive the channel momentum. They said HP's plan to drive specific solutions engagements around VMware, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft SQL Server and Information Life-cycle Management is working.

What's more, HP partners say the Palo Alto, Calif., IT giant is taking significant share from IBM in the booming blade server market. With $91.7 billion in sales for its last fiscal year, HP last year surpassed IBM as the world's largest IT provider. HP has also surpassed Dell to take hold of the No. 1 PC maker position.

"HP has a seasoned sales team that has done the right thing and got their channel aligned with the field direct-sales team," said Rich Baldwin, president and CEO of Nth Generation Computing, an HP partner in San Diego. "Being HP-exclusive is really working for us. That is the best decision we made. My business is up, profits are up and we're having a great year."

Baldwin added that he expects his HP sales to be up 30 percent this year, and that follows 30 percent sales growth the prior year.

Baldwin said he doesn't know Jones, but his message to him is the following: "You have a good team in place. Hopefully, [you] can provide some leadership and keep things going in the right direction."

Ron Dupler, president and CEO of GreenPages, a solution provider based in Kittery, Maine, said HP has become his company's top brand in terms of solution revenue sales growth. He expects GreenPages' HP sales to be up 25 percent this year.

"Over the last six months, they have become a very important partner in terms of our overall solutions strategy," he said. "We are very pleased with what they are doing, which is embracing delivering a high-value solution to the end-user client in combination with their channel partners. It is a well-conceived program that includes the channel in a big, big way."

NEXT: More partners urge HP to keep channel rolling