HP PartnerOne Rebates Target White-Box Systems

The rebate numbers were shown Wednesday to HP enterprise solution providers attending Arrow SBM's PowerTrain conference in San Antonio. As part of the new channel program, HP will pay solution providers a 3 percent back-end rebate on the vendor's net price when an HP desktop replaces a white-box system, said Damien Carrera, HP's North American demand tools manager, in a presentation to solution providers. In addition, HP will pay a 15 percent rebate when an HP-UX system displaces Sun Microsystems or IBM in an account, and 6 percent for an enterprise storage displacement.

HP will also pay rebates for accounts new to HP. In the new account space, HP will pay 8 percent for HP-UX systems, 8 percent for enterprise storage and 4 percent for industry-standard servers.

Carrera noted that rebates are stackable, in that the solution provider, for example, could get a rebate for bringing a new account to HP and a second rebate on the same deal if the new business requires removal of competitive hardware.

"But you need to register the accounts to make sure no one beats you," he said. Solution providers need to register the account 30 days prior to product shipment. Once the account is registered, the registration and rebates are good on HP product purchases for six months.

The new account and competitive displacement rebates are available to all HP solution providers regardless of whether they have attained Platinum, Gold or Business Partner status under PartnerOne.

But some solution providers were still unclear how HP intends to manage the account registration process. "How will they manage the logistics of account registration?" asked Jeff Reed, executive vice president of product marketing at U.S. Logical, Bloomington Hills, Mich. He speculated that account registration will likely hinge on the solution provider's relationship with the HP field-sales force.

Charles McPherson, vice president of sales and marketing at Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, SBM Division, said the distributor will likely play a role in account registration but is unclear how Arrow SBM will work with HP to register solution providers with specific accounts.

Meanwhile, solution providers said they like the PartnerOne program more as details become clearer. "I was skeptical at first, but now I can see my company can benefit from PartnerOne," said Don Richie, president of Sequel Data Systems, a Gold HP solution provider in Austin, Texas.