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Hewlett-Packard's strength in Product Innovation made it a favorite among solution providers that sell and deploy networked storage for SMB customers, but D-Link's strong showing in the Support and Partnership categories made it a close contest.
With HP's clean sweep of the Product Innovation category and D-Link's clean sweep of the Support category, the final Annual Report Card winner was determined by the Partnership category, where D-Link won three criteria vs. two for HP. However, because of the way the scores are weighted, HP eked out the highest overall score.
HP's Product Innovation sweep and D-Link's Support sweep probably stem from the nature of the two vendors' SMB partners, said Stephen Allen, president of Integrated Technology Systems, a New York-based solution provider and longtime HP partner.
Small dealers with sales of less than $50,000 per year have no specific contacts within HP and must deal with HP through its consumer support system, Allen said.
"If you call them, you get told to call your HP rep," he said. "And if you don't have an HP rep, your best source of information is from your distributor like Tech Data or Ingram Micro."
