Hurd Asks For Partners' Help In Taking U.S. Lead

"In three years, Mark Hurd has shown us he is willing to do what it takes to get the business," said John Marks, CEO of JDMI, a Rosemont, Ill. HP partner who said his HP business is up significantly. "I think Mark Hurd understands the strength of relationships and knows the channel is an important place for HP to grow its business."

David MacDonald, president and CEO of Softchoice, a VAR 500 solution provider, said he was heartened by Hurd's strong focus on the US market. "That's good for us," he said noting that Softchoice has some 40 branches and three call centers in the US. "It's good to hear he is focused on US growth."

MacDonald said he is also heartened by Hurd's stepped up focus on the storage market. "We need to kick Dell's ass!" he said. "HP has got to get faster with time to market with new (storage) products. They are competing against a lot of strong storage vendors like EMC, Hitachi and IBM."

Sam Haffer, president and co-CEO of Computex, a Houston, Texas HP exclusive partner, said his HP sales are up a whopping 335 percent this year to date after reaching 100 percent sales growth in 2007.

Haffer applauded Hurd and his team for getting into the sales trenches with Computex in the form of emails, phone calls and face to face meeting to help do whatever it takes to close business. "Hurd is responsive to his emails and voice mails," said Haffer. "From the top down they are the most channel friendly company out there."

Haffer said he is sticking with an HP exclusive business model. "We are sticking with our HP only strategy," he said. "It is paying off for us. We live and die with HP."