HP's Hurd Holds Unprecedented Channel Summit

In an unprecedented move, Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd and his top lieutenants met this week in La Jolla, Calif., with about 40 solution providers to discuss how HP and the channel could mutually grow their businesses.

"HP finally understands that it is as cost effective if not more cost effective to move product through the channel than to go direct," said one channel executive who attended the meeting but asked not to be identified. "They asked us how do we engage you more? How do we grow faster?"

Rick Chernick, CEO of Camera Corner Connecting Point, a Green Bay, Wis., solution provider who attended the summit added, "Mark Hurd made it very clear that HP is going to be No. 1 in all of the product categories that they are involved with and they are going to do it with the solution provider," he said. "That's the key message that came across."

The two-day "Executive Think—Leadership Through Partnership Summit" session at Torrey Pines comes as both Dell CEO Michael Dell and IBM CEO Sam Palmisano are making new overtures to the channel in an effort to capture more of the SMB market they see increasingly dominated by HP.

But solution providers who attended the HP meeting said rival vendors have a long way to go to match HP's efforts in assimilating solution providers into their sales strategy. "I was involved once before in an IBM listening session, but not nearly as extensive as this one," said another solution provider executive.

And earlier this year, several channel executives were invited to a session with Michael Dell in Washington, D.C., that was attended primarily by Dell end user customers. One executive who attended said there was little acknowledgement of the channel in the meeting and no strategy exchange between Dell and the solution providers in attendance.

An HP spokesman said that in addition to Hurd and Adrian Jones, general manager of HP's Solution Partners Organization, Americas, the heads of all of HP's business units attended the summit, including Ann Livermore, Technology Solutions Group, Todd Bradley, Personal Systems Group, and Vyomesh Joshi, Imaging and Printing Group. The HP spokesman said that this was the first joint strategy summit between top HP management and solution providers, but based on feedback from the session, HP will likely schedule more such summits in the future.

Solution providers said they had unprecedented and frank one-on-one sessions with HP's top executives during the session. "It was a meeting where they came to listen and ask for advice," said another solution provider who requested anonymity. "They wanted to know what could they do differently and if there were any things that were impeding growth. We told them what worked and what didn't. There were no punches pulled."

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