Gilroy Named HP's Americas Channel Chief

The renamed channel group, which will be launched May 1, combines HP's enterprise and commercial channels into a single organization, giving Gilroy responsibility for all of the vendor's Americas solution providers. That responsibility had been split with Dan Vertrees, HP's vice president and general manager, enterprise partners, Americas. HP, Palo Alto, Calif., declined to comment on Vertrees' new role at HP.

As part of the new channel organization, HP also named the Personal Systems Group's senior vice president of marketing, Jim McDonnell, to the new post of vice president, general manager, Solution Partners Organization (SPO) worldwide, reporting to Duane Zitzner, Personal Systems Group executive vice president. Gilroy will report directly to Mike Larsen, senior vice president and general manager, Personal Systems Group, Americas.

"Kevin is a great choice," said Geoffrey Lilien, president of Lilien Systems, an HP solution provider in Mill Valley, Calif. "Over the past two years he's really gotten up to speed on the commercial channel and, prior to the merger, he ran HP's enterprise channel."

Gary Melillo, vice president of business development at Melillo Consulting, a solution provider in Somerset, N.J., added, "I have a lot of confidence in Kevin. He listens well and he has a lot of experience in the value as well as the volume side of the business. But HP needs to focus on the value side of the business. IBM has been having a good time growing its value channel at HP's expense."

He said that IBM's advantage is not in products but in that it has had a consistent channel program and stable channel management. "HP has to settle down now and ratchet hard on the value side of the business," Melillo said.

But Gilroy said IBM has had its own channel inconsistencies. "We've never laid off and then rehired our [field channel sales force]," he said, referring to IBM's about-face on its channel field staff a year ago.

Some solution providers said Gilroy faces obstacles. "His biggest challenge will be keeping a pulse on how his direct channel interacts with his indirect one," said Bruce Geier, president and CEO of Technology Integration Group, a San Diego-based solution provider. "Right now HP direct is very aggressive."

And some solution providers said the two-channel structure had its advantages. "Today, there are clearly two organizations. The enterprise organization is doing things one way, the commodity organization another way," said Don Richie, president of Sequel Data Systems, an Austin, Texas, HP solution provider. "For me, because there are two distinct organizations, it is easier. [In Vertrees] we had a guy who understood the enterprise. I hope Kevin does as well."

Gilroy noted that in addition to being responsible for all HP Americas solution providers selling the entire breadth of HP's product line, HP Channel Services, previously a part of Ann Livermore's HP Services organization, will now come under SPO. "We now have all the knobs and levers," he said. "We have one channel organization. This is one on-ramp for solution providers to all HP products and services."

Zitzner said that the move toward a single channel organization was a "natural evolution" ever since HP and Compaq began combining their channel organizations two years ago. "Every day we are betting our future on the channel," he said, noting that two-thirds of HP's annual revenue, or upward of $50 billion, goes through the channel.

Gilroy noted that despite melding the commercial channel and the enterprise channel into a single organization, it would not be a "one size fits all" approach to all solution providers. He said HP recognizes the different business models across the channel, and the combination of the two channels won't dilute expertise the company's channel support people have in Unix, Superdome and other high-end products.

JOSEPH F. KOVAR contributed to this story.