Winner: Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard continued its dominance in the Volume Servers category in the 2012 Annual Report Card awards, winning the three subcategories as well as 11 out of 18 criteria used to judge vendors.
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| 2012 Annual Report Card Home Page |
HP's most convincing scores came in the product innovation subcategory, where it won all six criteria, including product quality and reliability, richness of product features/functionality, technical innovation, product compatibility and ease of integration, marketability and services opportunity.
Overall, HP emerged on top over second-place finisher Dell, which was followed by IBM and Lenovo in the category.
HP also won the Volume Servers category in 2011; the vendor finished second behind IBM two years ago.
"I feel like HP servers, as far as innovation and pushing the envelope go, are really exceptional right now. Particularly the new generation that's just rolling out. This is awesome hardware," said Ed Correia, president and CEO of Sagacent Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based solution provider.
In particular, HP servers are easy to support because they don't develop problems, he said.
"We're constantly tracking a number of different vendors and their hardware reliability. Consistently, we're finding fewer problems with HP in the last two to three years," Correia said.
That ties into HP's product quality and reliability score of 100.3, the highest score in any area for any company in the category, according to the results.
Eric Rodriguez, co-CEO of Driven Technologies, a Kronenwetter, Wis.-based solution provider, agreed that HP's volume servers have improved during the past year. And they've gotten even better in 2012 with the new ProLiant Gen8 product line, he said.
"The biggest thing is their technology improvement. They've infused the server product line with some rather unique and advanced features that make us look good," Rodriguez said.
