Delays drag Hewlett Packard Australian distribution tender

Many of Australia's biggest distributors remain anxiously awaiting the outcome of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's huge distribution tender.

The vendor had told bidders to expect a decision last Friday, CRN understands, but this deadline was pushed back.

"We would like to advise that no decision has been reached today and we appreciate your patience and support through the evaluation period," read a note sighted by CRN and understood to have been sent to distributors by Hewlett Packard Enterprise South Pacific.

Some distributors told CRN they are hopeful an outcome will be reached today.

Even with the delay, it would mark a quick turnaround for such a mammoth tender, given the hundreds of pages of proposals lodged in tenders of this magnitude.

A huge volume of business is at stake for all of the HPE and Aruba disties asked to tender. While HPE did not respond immediately to CRN's enquiries, the decision will shed light on where the company's focus lies.

Will HPE lean toward its highest-volume partners? Dicker Data is acknowledged to hold the volume crown in Australia, doing hundreds of millions of business across HPE and HP Inc, though HPE also works with Australia's two biggest disties, Ingram Micro and Synnex.

The Ingram relationship is a global alliance that has been in place for many years. In fact, when global chief executive Meg Whitman rung the bell to debut Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the New York Stock Exchange, she was joined by Ingram Micro CEO Alain Monie.

Added in August 2014, Synnex is HPE's newest distributor – though it was already a distributor for the PC and printer range – and its appointment to the enterprise portfolio was perhaps the biggest channel move under the tenure of now-departed channel manager Kaaren Lewis. While Synnex may be 'last one in' among HPE's distributors, the company is a force to be reckoned with in the Australian channel. The fact Synnex overtook Ingram Micro as Australia's largest distributor suggest capability to help HPE achieve its revenue targets.

Will local prowess carry weight in Hewlett Packard's decision? Sydney's Lynx Technology might not be a global name but it has proved its mettle in the local market with the vendor’s server, storage and networking range for many years, having represented Hewlett Packard storage range for over two decades.

Will HPE make a statement about its converged infrastructure ambitions? In this case, Avnet stands out. The distie has been bolstering its hyper converged portfolio with the likes of Nutanix and also has enterprise infrastructure solutions vendors like IBM, Oracle and EMC, which it plucked from Westcon in August.

How much stock will HPE hold in the networking disties brought across through its Aruba buyout? It is understood that the Aruba acquisition has been the major catalyst for the distribution review.

Distribution Central and Westcon are both in the mix here, along with POS specialist Sektor, and CRN understands that the networking business is a strong performer, while the server and storage market in general are more challenged.

But stepping up from HP's networking business to manage the entire enterprise product range will be no mean feat. Distribution Central has been rapidly moving up the ranks to become the country's sixth-largest distie, but it remains largely an ANZ operation the proudly specialises in disruptive technology, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise would mark the biggest broad-based IT vendor on its books. 

Westcon, on the other hand, already sells HPE's biggest rival, Cisco, as well as enterprise vendors such as NetApp and VMware, not to mention having been a major EMC distributor until it lost the storage vendor to Avnet.

Dropping any distributors from the roster would have a big impact on their revenues and product mix, given Hewlett Packard's market footprint and rich solutions stack across compute, storage, networking and software.

There's always a chance HPE will decide to retain all its distributors; this would be a bittersweet outcome, with no clear losers but neither any reduction in the competition faced by distributors on the current, crowded roster.