Top HP Enterprise Partners See Sales Surge

"The [partners] that are investing wider and deeper with us are growing much greater rate than those that aren't," Booth said Monday at HP's Americas Partner Conference in Las Vegas. Booth said that the close to 60 HP enterprise partners selected to work closely with the TSG sales force in a plan announced last year are growing at a double-digit clip or about twice as fast as the projected 5 percent growth in the North American IT market, he said. And he added that those partners aligned with TSG are growing much faster than other HP partners.

"The players that have really doubled down with us are growing twice the rate of other [HP] partners on average," he said. "If I don't get double-digit growth out of business partners, I can't hit my [sales] plan."

Rich Baldwin, president and CEO of Nth Generation Computing, San Diego, an HP enterprise partner part of the TSG sales engagement plan, said he's been brought into several large accounts as a result of the tighter HP partnership. "We are seeing significant growth [as a result of the sales engagement plan]; my business is up 30 percent to 40 percent so far this year," he said.

Booth said he was pleased with the progress HP, Palo Alto, Calif., has made in integrating key enterprise business partners into the TSG sales strategy. Earlier this year, some business partners selected to team more closely with HP's enterprise sales force said they were disappointed at the lack of progress in seeing increased business as a result of the partnership.

"Like any engagement of this type, it does take time to make it work," Booth said. "Just because you decree something is so, it doesn't happen instantly in the marketplace."

Baldwin said that HP 'can always do more" but that he too is seeing steady progress in the new HP enterprise sales strategy. He said that "one by one" HP's enterprise sales reps are understanding the value of solution providers and bringing them into accounts that were once HP direct.