HP VAR Joins CDW Pilot

SolutionEdge, rolled out last fall as a pilot program, calls for Vernon Hills, Ill.-based CDW to take over a solution provider's hardware business with the partner then acting as a local service provider for CDW.

"It made no sense for us to stay in the hardware and software business because of the dismal returns," said Tom Thibault, president of Thibault Associates, Pleasant Hill, Calif.

Thibault said he had been contemplating dropping out of the product business in 2005 and concentrating instead on services and his Great Plains practice. "When CDW approached us in December, I thought, 'Wow, this is a way to have our cake and eat it, too,' " he said. "Historically, they have been one of our biggest competitors. This was a chance to join them."

As a result, Thibault is now shifting about 95 percent of the company's hardware and software business that primarily went through Tech Data and Ingram Micro to CDW. "I have a high regard for Ingram and Tech Data, but the market is forcing us to change," he said.

Norm Lillis, CDW's vice president of sales for new markets and small business, declined to say how many solution providers have signed up for SolutionEdge or how much volume they are generating. He said the agent program will stay in a pilot mode through the early part of this year.

"If you look beyond the eight to 10 [VARs] in the pilot, I don't view it as [a program] with 5,000 people or 1,000 people in it," Lillis said. "It's more like a hundred or hundreds and closer to the lower three digits."

Ray Munson, chairman of ISG, a solution provider in Holland, Mich., that has also joined SolutionEdge, said he has shifted more than 90 percent of his hardware and software business to CDW, allowing him to concentrate on high-end Cisco Systems solutions. "This gets the hardware float off my back," he said.

Thibault added that the opportunity to service existing CDW accounts is an added bonus. "I would not have gone with CDW without the upside on service," he said.