Whitman to partners: don’t miss out

This article appeared in the May issue of CRN as part of the main feature "Meg Whitman's masterplan for partners"

Here is the HP CEO’s list of the areas where partners should be:

PRINTING & PERSONAL SYSTEMS

Ink In The Office/HP Officejet Pro: “Half the cost [of laser printers], twice the speed, the same quality,” says Whitman. “A really robust value proposition, particularly for SMBs.”

Managed Print Services: “Listen, some of these big enterprises spend $40 million, $50 million or $60 million on printing. It’s a big line item.”

HP Chromebooks: “Chromebooks are doing really well. They are flying off the shelves.”

Commercial PCs/Notebooks: “Don’t give up on PCs. There is a delayed refresh cycle going on. Windows XP is an opportunity. People are realising that it will be a multi-device world.”

PCs as a Service: “There is an opportunity around business model innovation, which is PC as a service. So instead of the customer having to shell out the capital expenditure for the devices, we can offer it on an as-a-service basis because we have HP Financial Services.”

ENTERPRISE GROUP

HP Shark Converged Infrastructure: The enterprise team is “packaging up servers, storage and networking to actually go after a solution, which the partner can then deliver and then wrap services around that”.

HP Networking: “Networking is an untapped opportunity, particularly in campus, branch and edge. There is a hypothesis that the campus LAN we all put into our companies five or 10 years ago is now getting pretty long in the tooth. There is a thought afoot that there will be a massive wireless refresh – and it won’t be wired/wireless anymore, it will just be wireless.”

HP 3Par: “Every partner ought to be selling 3Par. And if they only pick one part of 3Par, it is mid-tier. The mid-tier 3Par is a huge innovation. This is all about a simpler architecture and the ability to manage storage.”

HP Converged System 300 for Vertica: “It is a really good opportunity for the channel because it is bite-sized.”

HP OneView: Bringing converged infrastructure management into the consumerisation of the IT era, Whitman says the product is “software that is actually making the hardware work better together”.

SOFTWARE & TECH SERVICES

“One of the things I am excited about is the channel is beginning to embrace software. As the channel is starting to figure out how they plot their next growth avenue, they are increasingly selling ArcSight, TippingPoint, Fortify, Vertica, Autonomy, our IT operations and management software.”

As for technology services, Whitman says both consulting services and product maintenance and break/fix are big opportunities for partners. “There is an opportunity for partners to resell TS [technology services], resell the consulting services, to learn from what we do, and then go and do it themselves.”