HP Channel Chief: Dell Doesn't Keep Me Awake

CRN: What are you doing organizationally or programmatically to combat Dell's renewed channel push?

Jones: Dell has to do what it needs to do to win in their market place. We are going to continue to do what we need to do with our channel business. For us, we see Dell in the channel a little bit. But we have a very robust channel model and program. It is something that wasn't built in five minutes. It has taken us many years to build the right program and vehicles that we use. My view is that Dell will continue to do what they need to do for their business and we are going to do what's best for ours. Do they keep me awake at night? No, not yet. But I am not complacent. I know that Dell is a large company and they have been very successful at what they do in the past. We are watching Dell and what they do with their channel programs and their people. But I feel we have a very loyal and trustworthy base of partners that help us grow our business everyday and I think they will continue to be HP partners. I don't see a wave of people going to Dell tomorrow. The channel is a great place to grow your business and we are going to expand on what we are good at in the channel. Just because Dell is coming into the channel, we are not going to reinvent the wheel or change our strategy.

CRN: I've heard reports of Dell in cooperation with one of its channel partners going after HP direct accounts. Have you seen any of that activity?

Jones: I haven't seen that yet. We see Dell in different pockets. We watch them like a hawk in our PSG business and we continue to take share from them everyday.

CRN: What was your thinking behind your Fast Start program designed to quickly get ProLiant server solution providers to sell EVA enterprise storage?

Jones: The Fast Start program is simple. When we look at our business and how we can grow incremental storage outside of our existing partner base, we looked at the top 100 ProLiant server guys that were selling everything from EMC storage to NetApp storage, to HDS storage, to IBM storage, and we said how about selling HP storage? How can we get you interested in selling HP storage and drive incremental revenue?

We went to top ProLiant partners who were selling blades, selling servers and doing well in that and we wanted to marry the two together and sell storage and servers. The whole premise of this is we want to grow incremental storage revenue. We have a big push in storage. And we believe this was an opportunity where we would not get channel conflict by going after server resellers and that's what we've done. We are adding a healthy pipeline with absolutely zero conflict with our existing channel partners. We've talked to a lot of channel partners who have concerns around this and we've set the record straight.

CRN: But why should your enterprise storage partners invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in technical training and certifications when someone new to the program can just watch a video and get certified in six months?

Jones: If you look at how EMC or NetApp go out and recruit partners everyday, they say, 'If you are HP certified, you can go out and sell our product tomorrow.' And the reason we went down this path -- we particularly chose the low end of our EVA storage product, the 4000, 4100 range of products. We wanted to create more emphasis on the low end. We decided that was a good space to go after and we believed it wouldn't be detrimental to our existing partners. The question about certifications is that we are only giving these guys a six-month program. After that six-month process, if they feel they have a need from their customer base to sell HP storage, they have to go through the same process that every other partner does. We are really hooking partners with this today, but they will have to go through the exact same certification process after the six-month pilot process we are putting out there. We have just given a grace period of six months.
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