Resellers judge HPE distribution shake-up

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's top Australian partners have mixed feelings about the outcome of the vendor's distribution review, with some welcoming the downsized roster, and others concerned about the departure of Synnex and Avnet.

Yesterday, HPE announced an overhauled distribution roster in Australia after a tender process, with Synnex and Avnet losing HPE, Westcon losing Aruba – and Dicker Data, Distribution Central, Ingram Micro and Lynx Technologies all gaining access to the combined HPE and Aruba portfolio.

Craig Somerville, managing director of Sydney-headquartered Somerville Group, was not particularly surprised at the outcome. "I think it's a pretty good mix of disties for HPE, and to some extent I think it's the logical choice for them."

The biggest uplift for any distributor will be Distribution Central, which already had the Aruba account and will be able to sell the full HPE suite of server, storage and networking technology from 1 May 2016. Managing director Nick Verykios expects the win to add at least $200 million to the company's turnover.

Commenting on DC's appointment, Somerville said: "Distribution Central is better known for challenger brands than it is for the mainstream vendors, but as a very successful distie, it's not surprising HPE saw value in that."

Abbas Aly, managing director of Triforce, a Platinum HPE partner, was less enamoured by the shake-out. He said he was concerned about the loss of credit flexibility offered by Synnex and Avnet, as well as what seemed to be a preference for volume distributors over the kind of complex enterprise solutions credentials offered by Avnet.

Julie Barbieri, director national sales & general manager infrastructure for NTT Communications ICT Solutions, was "interested to see what impact it will have on the HPE distribution channel moving forward", but "given that NTT ICT is a tier one partner and can procure directly from HPE, we are not greatly affected by the decision".

David Abouhaidar, director strategic alliances and commercial sales at AC3, formerly Klikon, welcomed the distribution shake-up. "I am fairly confident that HPE have made the right decision for the channel. This was a very, very big step for HPE, to part ways with two disties – Synnex and Avnet have some very strong overseas bonds and ties with HPE."

Overall, Abouhaidar hoped the outcome of the review would bring some consistency to the market and see less instability around distie pricing.

For Nathan Lowe, managing director of gold Aruba partner ASI Solutions, it will be business as usual. "Don’t really see an impact for our business as we have strong relationships across chosen distributors."

Ahmmad Issa, national commercial sales manager at Synnex Australia, congratulated his rival disties in a blog post on LinkedIn. "I would like to congratulate Dicker Data, Distribution Central, Ingram Micro, Lynx and Sector for their success in the recent Hewlett Packard Enterprise (RFI) tender process.

"Synnex Australia will remain committed to Hewlett Packard Enterprise in closing out the relationship in the period up to 29 April 2016 when distribution representation of the brand will cease.

"I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our partners who have contributed to our business during the period of representation, your custom is most appreciated," wrote Issa.