HP's Channel Chief Weighs In On '05 Opportunities, Corporate Changes

Carly Fiorina's resignation today tops a number of upheavals, large and small, at HP in the past six months or so. Notably, we speak of the change in top channel executive that occurred last summer when John Thompson replaced Kevin Gilroy as vice president and general manager of HP's enormous solution partners organization. More recently, the company announced a controversial plan to combine its hugely lucrative printer business with its ailing personal systems group in the wake of Duane Zitzner's resignation. The new unit, to be called the Imaging & Personal Systems Group (IPSG), will be headed by Vyomesh Joshi.

In early January at the VARBusiness channel executive roundtable session in Las Vegas, Thompson shared some thoughts on changes at HP, namely the printer/PC group meld, and how they relate to partners. He also talked about opportunities and directions upcoming this year for the channel. The following are several outtakes from that discussion. For more in-depth commentary from Thompson and four of his channel-chief counterparts--Donn Atkins at IBM, Allison Watson at Microsoft, Randy Cochran at Symantec and Steve Dallman at Intel--please pick up the March 21 issue of VARBusiness.

VB: So, John, do you feel that any particular segment of the HP partner community is more vulnerable today than it has been in the past?

Thompson: I would say no. If anything, HP is doubling down with partners. Take the creation of the Imaging & Personal Systems Group that's being run now by V.J. (Joshi). Now you have a printer group combined in concert with the personal systems group. And V.J. has such a long history with partners that I think most of them will be very comfortable with [the change] and see it as a positive.

VB: So do you see channel momentum continuing, in the next say, one, two, three, hopefully five years?

Thompson: I think it's indefinite. It's way beyond that. If you look at HP's business this year and evaluate it on a Fortune 1000 basis, the partners themselves would come out to be a Fortune 21 company. They don't have quite the brand recognition [of an HP], but they are an incredible force.

VB: What are some of your top focus areas for '05?

Thompson: One area that we are going to invest in is what I call new initiatives. The new initiatives certainly include print and imaging, and we are totally committed to the PC space and working with our partners and channel in that area. Mobility is one of the hottest growing aspects of that area. A second is in the enterprise space with storage and servers, and the third is a heavy emphasis on the services itself.