HP Seeks To Smarten Its SMB Strategy

"We're not up to snuff on Smart Office," said Bob Parsons, an SMB solution provider in Evansville, Ind. "If it came through, it flew under our radar, and we kind of missed it."

HP's Smart Office is the vendor's SMB-focused program designed to deliver both vertical and horizontal business solutions to SMB customers.

Bruce Geier, president and CEO of Technology Integration Group, a solution provider in San Diego, said the problem is that when an SMB deal reaches a certain size, HP competes directly against solution providers for the business. "When they compete against you, you can't beat them price-wise," he said. "They are very difficult to partner with on some of these [SMB] solutions."

He said that HP makes great products and has been a good partner for years, but the company is hard to trust.

"You'll have one group [within HP] that does everything they can to help you win, and you'll have another group in HP that will take you out in a second," he said. "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing."

Under the new HP plan, unveiled at TechXNY, HP partnered with the vendors to deliver hardware, software, services and support to channel partners shared between HP and the specific vendor partner.

HP and Avaya said they would jointly craft SMB channel programs to offer packaged VoIP solutions. Similarly, HP and Intuit will offer bundled solutions built around Intuit's Quickbooks and running on HP hardware. HP and SAP will provide cross-training, joint lead generation and sales incentives for their channel partners, HP said.

The Microsoft alliance expands upon the existing Partner Reach initiative that transforms Microsoft technology and HP hardware into business solutions for channel partners.

The broad HP SMB initiative, which includes new printers, thin clients and NAS products targeted at small business, is designed to strengthen the vendor's umbrella SMB program Smart Office announced earlier this year.

Kevin Gilroy, HP's senior vice president and general manager for SMB, said in a statement that no company understands and meets the needs of small and midsize business better than HP. "Customers know that when they choose HP, they get a relationship, not just a transaction," he said.

In addition to a broad range of imaging and printing products, HP introduced a Compaq Thin Client t5510 and t5710 for server-based desktop computing applications in SMB applications in the financial, medical, real-estate and legal industries. The company also introduced a StorageWorks NAS 500 Storage Server for centralized file sharing, print services, application storage services and Microsoft Exchange hosting in SMB environments.