Hewlett-Packard will not ship orders for six days at the start of August, due to a planned system outage caused by the vendor's split into two separate companies.
A HP spokesperson confirmed to CRN that shipping in Australia will be suspended from 1 to 6 August, and operations would resume on 7 August.
CRN USA quoted HP global CIO Scott Spradley saying the outage period would only affect fulfilment, so partners and customers should still "place orders in the usual manner".
"Customers and partners will receive order acknowledgements and estimated ship dates beginning 7 August," said Spradley. "Beginning 1 August, customers and partners will begin to receive separate invoices from HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Customers will be able to get product from partners during this time, even though we are not shipping direct."
Melbourne and Sydney HP partner Combo does not expect the outage to impact its business.
"For a company that is less strategic and more tactical or reactive I can imagine this might be an annoying disturbance to business. We like to think we are more organised than that," founder and managing director David Markus told CRN.
Markus said that the responsibility lies with the solutions provider to meet "short term needs" and to liaise with distributors to "manage client expectations".
"With a couple of weeks' notice we should be able to get clients to anticipate the outage with their orders and handle the outage," he said.
Managing director of Sydney MSP NetCare IT, Darryl McAllister, said that the distribution layer provided a buffer for HP resellers.
"I'd hope that this won’t impact on resellers, as our friendly disties – Dicker Data, Ingram and Synnex – will cover this off on our behalf by ordering extra stock in," McAllister told CRN.
Chris Mac, data centre interoperability architect at Sydney HP partner Metropolitan Computers & Supplies, said he had spoken to all his clients about the transition period.
“We actually hold [a lot] of stock. It doesn’t really concern us. As long as HP communicates to us - and they do that very well - and we communicate to our customers, it’s business as usual.”
Mac said he’d been looking forward to the split. “I’m interested in what they’ll do with enterprise services. To me that’ll be the interesting one," he said.
Hewlett-Packard has not yet announced an official cutover date for the corporate split into HP Inc – a personal systems and printing vendor – and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, a business software and services provider.
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