The Top 10 HP Inc. Stories of The Year

Printing Leads The Charge For HP

For HP, 2016 was a year of breakthrough innovation and a blockbuster deal with HP acquiring Samsung's Printer business in a $1.05 billion cash deal.

The Samsung deal was aimed at providing more R&D muscle and intellectual property for HP Inc.'s all out charge to tear apart the copier market with a new A3 printer portfolio that promises 40 percent lower costs for color.

It was also the year that HP made its big move into the 3-D printer market with its eagerly anticipated JetFusion 3-D – a potential $12 trillion market for the company.

If that wasn't enough, HP's PageWide Enterprise Color Series and OfficeJet Pro walked away with CRN Printer product of the year honors.

Not to be undone, the Personal Systems business unleashed the Elite x3 – which shattered smartphone limitations – eliminating the need to switch between smartphones, laptops and desktops.

On the channel front, the Personal Systems business delivered a device-as-a-service offering that has given HP a decided advantage in what partners see as a burgeoning market opportunity.

10. HP PageWide Enterprise Color Series, OfficeJet Pro Win CRN Printer Products Of Year

HP's PageWide Enterprise Color series and HP OfficeJet Pro shared top honors in the CRN Printer Product of the Year category.

The PageWide Enterprise Color series features a printing speed of up to 75 pages per minute, but more importantly offers the holy grail of "affordable color" printing, said Matthew Schotten, vice president of managed print solutions at Oklahoma City, Okla. Based ImageNet Consulting.

HP's OfficeJet Pro 8700, meanwhile, is a high performing all in on printer in a compact form factor with print speeds of up to 24 pages per minute with two sided printing functionality.

The product of the year awards were based on solution provider feedback on technology, revenue, profit and customer demand.

9. HP's Elite x3 Device Shatters Smartphone Limitations

Partners hailed HP Inc.'s new Elite x3 Windows 10 device for once and for all making it possible for business customers to access everything they need on a single handheld product – including Windows legacy applications – and eliminating the need to switch between smartphones, laptops and desktops.

"This is smarter than a smartphone," exclaimed Joe Hemani, founder and sole owner of Westcoast, a $3 billion United Kingdom distributor that's betting big on the Elite x3. "HP has leapfrogged everyone in the mobile market by giving you the ability to have anything and everything you need when you are away from your office. You no longer need to tap into your legacy systems with another device like a laptop or desktop, and - by the way - you can use it to call your grandmother!"

By leveraging Qualcomm Inc.'s most powerful Snapdragon processor and Microsoft's Continuum technology in Windows 10, HP has opened the door for partners to modernize the tens of thousands of Windows apps that have been unavailable on smartphones up until now, said Hemani.

Partners credited the HP Inc. commercial mobility team, led by Vice President and General Manager Michael Park, with pushing the technology barrier beyond all limits to deliver a new standard for commercial mobility.

8. HP Simplifies Partner Compensation

HP Inc. dramatically simplified its Partner First sales compensation model with a new streamlined program that cut by more than half the different payment tiers and qualifiers related to specific products.

The new model, which went into effect Nov. 1, eliminated significant complexity by reducing various compensation qualifiers and "metrics."

The "massive reduction" in core compensation metrics was accompanied by back-end automation changes that ensure that partners spend more time in the field selling rather than managing compensation.

"We had partners coming to us saying, 'The way you are structured we need a Ph.D. in HP in order to manage your programs,'" said Thomas Jensen (pictured), vice president of worldwide channel sales strategy at HP. "This is why we are making a major change. We have heard what the partners said and are responding. This is going to make it easier for our partners to predict their compensation going forward. It is going to drive more sales for partners by increasing the ease and speed of doing business with HP."

7. HP Partners Raise A Red Flag On Off Brand Printer Cartridges

HP Inc. partners say all the hubbub surrounding a firmware update that prevented some cloned cartridges from working with HP printers missed the point: namely that off brand cartridges are breaking HP printers.

"It's simple: crap in, crap out," said Bob Venero, CEO of Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider Future Tech, a top HP inc. partner, No. 167 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500. "This is not a freedom of choice issue. It is a quality issue. We see remanufactured cartridges where toner is leaking out of the device. The risk is not worth the reward. If I was HP I would stand my ground and do what is right for the business and not allow remanufactured cartridges to be used in HP printers."

In addition to breaking printers, off brand clone, counterfeit and remanufactured cartridges end up jeopardizing security, impacting print quality and ultimately costing customers more in the long run, partners said.

6. HP CEO Weisler Doubles Down On Partners

HP CEO Dion Weisler doubled down on partners with a plan to increase the percentage of channel sales at the $55 billion company from 80 percent to 87 percent of total sales.

"We are investing more of our business in increased R&D across core growth and our future," said Weisler. "We are investing in our partners and our go-to-market motions."

The HP channel offensive includes an aggressive move to deliver more services through partners including an expanded device-as-a-service effort and additional focus on managed print services through partners.

The Weisler plan came on top of a move earlier in the year to move 30 percent of direct accounts to partners. Under that initiative, HP moved - about 1,500 accounts to partners.

5. HP Hits Apple Hard With Breakthrough Design And Innovation

HP was so confident in the design wow-factor of its new sleek fashionable laptop products that it took them into the heart of enemy territory – the Apple Store – to see how Apple fanatics would respond.

The results showed why HP's laptops are gaining share from rival Apple, said HP Inc. President Ron Coughlin in a fiery address to solution provider partners just before he presented a video showing Apple customers freaking out over how slick HP's products are compared to Apple.

"Apple is untouchable no more. Apple is leading design trends no more. Apple is leading in innovation no more. Apple is gaining share no more. Apple is growing no more," Coughlin said to channel partners. "It is HP who is gaining that share. It is you who are gaining that share. You took three share points from Apple and we gained three share points [from Apple]."

One Apple customer used an expletive – "No @#*@" to describe how shocked she was at the HP cool factor, while another noted that the HP notebook was "much lighter than my MacBook."

"I am blown away, man," said another Apple customer in the video. "They clearly stepped their game up."

"We are taking the beeping awesome and the dope away from Apple," said Coughlin.

4. HP Pioneers Device As A Service Game Changer

HP Inc. Personal Systems President Ron Coughlin also led the charge on a new device as a service offering that partners say puts the company at the forefront of a blockbuster market opportunity.

HP is seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales pipeline for device as a service and has what partners say is the preeminent program to capitalize on the growing market opportunity.

Coughlin said that more than 40 percent of companies are actively considering moving to device as a service. "We see it as a tremendous opportunity, and in fact, the demand is ahead of what we expected at this stage, and we are building capability to catch up with that," he said. "Device as a service is scaling rapidly."

The device as a service contractual relationship allows customers struggling to manage the wide range of devices being used by employees to move to a single subscription contract with monthly payments for devices based on the number of users in an organization.

3. HP CEO Weisler Doubles Down On Innovation

Even in the midst of difficult market conditions, HP CEO Dion Weisler stepped up the company's innovation offensive with a slew of innovative offerings unleashed during the year.

In its first year as an independent company, HP unleashed the groundbreaking A3 printer portfolio- opening up a $55 billion market opportunity for HP- and the eagerly-anticipated HP JetFusion 3-D printers that in one fell swoop opened the door to what some analysts have estimated as a $12 trillion market opportunity.

Besides the printer breakthroughs, HP delivered the Elite x3, a revolutionary mobile device that defies the old product categories and no longer forces road warriors to switch between smartphones, laptops and desktops; the HP Spectre, the world's thinnest laptop aimed at taking a bite out of the Apple MacBook.

"I couldn't be more product of leading a team that I think has done an exceptional job of transforming our business and reinventing almost every aspect of what we have been doing," he said.

2. HP's JetFusion 3D Printer Signal Start Of New Era

HP Inc.'s formal launch of its eagerly anticipated HP JetFusion 3-D printing solutions heralded what partners are calling a new era of printer sales growth that is focused squarely on redefining the economics of the intensely competitive production manufacturing market.

Partners expect what HP is calling the "world's first production-ready" 3-D printing system to be a catalyst in making 3-D printing a significant part of their business over the next five years. "The long-term market opportunity is unbelievable," said Chris Fay, vice president of sales for Greenville, S.C.-based TPM, whose tagline is 'What will you create today?'

Among the reasons for partner optimism is the no-holds barred focus on quality, reliability and channel commitment that HP is bringing to the market as a printer market leader with a long history of innovation.

The new printers are designed to provide production-quality manufacturing parts well below the price of competitive offerings at five to 10 times the speed of the current products.

1. HP Buys Samsung's Printer Business In Bid To Break Open A3 Market

HP Inc. saved its biggest blockbuster of the year for its Partner Conference in September announcing a deal to buy rival Samsung's Electronics' printer business in a $1.05 billion cash deal.

"When we commit to market disruption and leadership, we deliver," HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler told partners, hours after announcing the deal. "It's the single largest transaction in print in HP's history. It strengthens our core. It accelerates our growth and it advances our future."

The acquisition provides more R&D muscle and intellectual property for HP Inc.'s all out charge to tear apart the copier market with a new A3 printer portfolio that promises 40 percent lower costs for color and a market-shattering lower cost of service.

HP made a conscious decision to announce the Samsung printer business acquisition and its new A3 portfolio at the partner conference surrounded by the extended HP partner family that has supported the company for many years, said Weisler.

"This isn't just our acquisition, it is your acquisition because it is an investment in all of you," said Weisler, drawing thunderous applause from partners at the Boston Convention Center. "Our job is to provide you with the arsenal to be able to go out into the marketplace and win with confidence."