HP Targets ISVs To Grow SMB Partner Business

The focus in growing its SMB business moving forward will be signing up qualified ISVs using a vertical industry go-to-market strategy, as well as targeting "micro-verticals" equipped to augment HP solutions in key areas such as mobility and security, said Kevin Gilroy, the newly promoted senior vice president and general manager of HP's worldwide SMB segment.

In his first major briefing since taking on his new role, the former senior vice president of HP's Americas Channels, outlined plans to grow the company's Smart Office initiative at the TechXNY show Tuesday, Oct. 5, in New York. "There's lots of opportunities in the market. We need to make sure we get channel partners mapped into the right ISVs," Gilroy said in an interview that followed the formal briefing.

The plan to target verticals resonated well with Doug Hafford, a founder and director of consulting services at Los Angeles-based Afinety, an HP partner that counts 80 percent of its business coming from customers in the professional services segment (such as law and accounting firms). "If you look at the SMB market, the key is verticals," Hafford said.

Gilroy acknowledged that HP's initial efforts to draw ISVs into Smart Office were not well-executed. "We said, 'Lets identify the ISVs—build it, and the partners will come,' " Gilroy said. "That's not the right recipe." The right recipe, he said, is identifying partners that have the will and propensity to change, the willingness to build vertical, and to jointly build the appropriate lead generation, seed funds, and back-end support programs. "We have to figure out the front-end economics, engineering and support," Gilroy said.

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A case in point is NextGen, a provider of electronic medical records (EMR) software that HP partners could bundle on its PDAs, tablet PCs, workstations and servers, Gilroy noted. HP partner Inacom Information Systems highlighted the ISV's app at its TechXNY briefing. In that showcase, Inacom demonstrated an EMR solution using NextGen's app rolled out at the Prairie Clinic in Sauk City, Wis. There are 300,000 clinics that fall under the SMB category, Gilroy said. "We have the right solutions for the mounting problem of medical-records management," Gilroy said.

Gilroy acknowledged that the effort is formative and that there was no particular time table for signing up vertical-industry ISVs. Overall, Gilroy plans to accelerate the pace of rolling out new programs to SMB partners. "You won't see us having launches like this and then going dark for the next six to nine months, Gilroy said.

In all, HP released 20 new printing and imaging products, digital projectors, networking and storage products. Among the products introduced were the HP Jetdirect 625n Gigabit Ethernet print server; the HP LaserJet 4350 (the company's fastest workgroup printer); the Compaq Thin Client t5510 and t5710 thin clients; the StorageWorks NAS 500S Storage Server, designed for file sharing, print services, application-storage services and Microsoft Exchange hosting; and the iSCSI Feature Pack, allowing SMB customers to use existing Ethernet networks to migrate to networked storage.

Among other enhancements to Smart Office, HP also said it is expanding its "Partner Reach" program with Microsoft to more than 2,000 shared solution-provider partners, and the company announced plans to jointly develop channel programs to SMB customers with voice over IP solutions. HP also released its new bundled offering of QuickBooks and QuickBooks: Enterprise Solutions. The company also said HP is now offering purchase and postsales support expertise to HP partners who want to sell SAP applications to SMB customers.