Though the deal to buy PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting arm has been scuttled, Hewlett-Packard executives say channel partners the consultants HP would have gained would have been able to coexist.
While some of HP's channel partners might have viewed the potential acquisition of 30,000 additional consultants with concern, "that's over with now," says Kevin Gilroy, general manager for North American channel alliances and partners.
If HP and PWC had been able to come to an agreement, "it would have modified our deployment strategy somewhat," Gilroy says. He declined to elaborate.
"[Our] organization is responsible for managing the relationships with our reselling partners--certainly the first and the second tier," says Doug Gibson, director of marketing for North American channel alliances at HP.
"We're also responsible for systems integration for ISV partners as well. It's not just the reselling partners," Gibson says. "At the end of the day--and I don't want to get into hypothetical situations because it didn't happen--we're the people that are going to have to work with integration partners as well [as ISVs], and figure out where we partner and where we don't," he says.
"PWC would've introduced new variables into the situation," Gibson says, again declining to elaborate.
In September, HP reportedly was willing to pay up to $18 billion for PWC's consulting unit. In October, the amount HP would pony up decreased to a maximum of $15 billion.
Earlier this month, the companies broke off discussions, with HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina citing "market conditions" as the central reason the bid was dropped.
HP is consolidating multiple channel programs into one unified program to better serve channel partners' needs, Gilroy says. (See Monday's issue of CRN for details).
"Our overall philosophy moving forward is that we want to be extremely predictable to the channel," Gilroy says.
