BoB Attendees: The Split Up, Spin Out Frenzy Is Just Beginning --

Solution providers attending the BoB Conference say the split up, spin out frenzy that is sending ripples through the channel is just beginning.

"This is just getting started," said Jed Ayres, the chief marketing officer for MCPc, the $262 million Cleveland, Ohio, national solution provider ranked No. 89 on the SP500 that is building out a $100 million HP Helion cloud data center in Cleveland. "Wall Street is reacting favorably to these splits. We expect to see many more of these in the future."

How split-up mania will impact the way solution providers structure their own businesses will be front and center at CRN parent The Channel Company's BOB Conference Oct. 13-15 at the Grand Hyatt Cypress in Orlando Fla.

Ayres has been in the solution provider business for 20 years navigating the ever changing technology landscape but has never seen anything like the turmoil among industry heavyweights in the last several months.

"Are you surviving this?" he asked. "Don't you wake up every day wondering what is going to happen next?"

In the last week alone, industry giants Hewlett Packard and Symantec both announced they are splitting up in a bid to be more competitive in a fast moving market. On top of that, EMC is facing pressure from activist hedge fund Elliott Management to split up. Solution providers say they expect more vendors to be pressured to do the same.

Ayres said he sees the HP split, which separates the computer giant into two publically traded Fortune 50 companies – a $57 billion PC and Printing business and a $57 billion enterprise computing business – as a watershed moment for MCPc.

In fact, he said MCPc, without any knowledge of the HP split, had only one month before the HP split separated its PC business from its next generation data center business.

"Just like HP we realized this is going to allow us to be a more agile and nimble organization with a sales force focused exclusively on the next generation data center," he said. "It's a lot of heavy lifting to get the PC and printer guys to cross the chasm. This is going to allow us to make decisions quicker and invest more in the next generation data center business."

Ayres said he sees the split as a big plus for MCPc next generation data center sales reps that will "wake up every day thinking about selling data center solutions" with a compensation plan that drives those solutions. Having HP structured in the same manner is going to be a big plus for MCPc, said Ayres.

Ayres said he expects HP CEO Meg Whitman to make some game changing enterprise acquisitions with a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company that has no debt and is structured to grow through acquisitions.

Whitman told CRN in an interview this week that the split into two businesses paves the way for the new enterprise business to flex its acquisition muscle. "Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will be better able and more quickly able to make acquisitions that further the new style of IT," she said.

Whitman's comments came after HP informed Wall Street analysts Monday that the company is still dealing with material, non-public information that could indicate a potential acquisition is being discussed.

Ayres said he sees the possibility that HP could buy a number of enterprise companies that MCPc already does business with leading to lower cost of deployment of the offerings in the next generation data center.

"I think what is going to happen with this consolidation is that you are going to wind up with less complexity for the customer and less costs for partners," he said. "It is a very exciting time to bring together best of breed technology vendors we are already doing business with."

One solution provider CEO, who is attending the BoB conference, but did not want to be identified, said there are many large companies that should be looking at splitting up. "I am sure there are a lot of companies evaluating whether they should do these kinds of splits and what impact it will have on their investors, customers and partners," the chief executive said.

Bob Venero, the CEO of Future Tech Inc., a Holbrook, New York solution provider, No. 234 on the CRN SP500 who will be presenting a session at the BoB conference on how to gain a competitive edge, said he also sees the split up frenzy just beginning.

"I don't think we are done with these big company splits," he said. "A lot of these companies have ridden the technology boom over many years and have grown and grown through acquisition without a tremendous amount of thinking as to overall strategic direction and how these companies fit into the company's future."

Venero said it is critical for solution providers to look closely at what impact the splits will have on their business models going forward.

"Partners are going to have to look at their full portfolio of offerings and make sense of how these splits affect those portfolios," said Venero. "We are looking right now at what the impact of these splits are on Future Tech."

Michael Goldstein, president and CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based HP and Dell partner who will be attending the conference, said partners are going to have to examine their vendor relationships in the wake of the industry turmoil. "The question is," he said: "how do you maintain strong vendor relationships in such a tumultuous market?"