HP finds few choices for managed print

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HP finds few choices for managed print

Datacom has emerged as the last national integrator standing for HP's enterprise managed services program after other partners drifted towards competitors or were acquired.

"We've become the only show in town as far as a serious national player," said David Piljek, Datacom's business development manager for managed print services. The integrator picked up an award at HP's premium partner awards for the highest revenue from November 2009 to April 2010 in imaging and printing.

HP's Office Printing Solutions (OPS) Partner Program is a "contractual go-to-market strategy" for selling LaserJet and multi-function printing (MFP) devices through managed print services.

When asked how many resellers were capable of servicing enterprise customers with sites, the vendor said it had "less than 20 partners nationally" in the OPS program.

However, Piljek claimed that only four national players have been able to fulfill nation-wide rollouts for enterprise customers; CSG, Imagetec, Upstream and Datacom.

That list of four companies has grown shorter in the past month. Upstream was acquired by Fuji-Xerox just two weeks ago for an undisclosed amount. 

Four months earlier, CSG signed a multi-year contract with Canon to take over management of 10,500 A3 MFPs in four states and the ACT. The move could be worth $1 billion over the life of the contract, according to Canon, which planned to move over services staff to help the integrator maintain the devices. 

The Canon deal seriously undermined CSG's relationship with HP, claimed Piljek.

"The phone [at CSG] will never ring with HP on the other end because there is no way HP will work with a partner like that because there is a fear that they will get cross-sold" to Canon, said Piljek.

Imagetec also has a well-established relationship with another vendor. Imagetec sells its own branded devices which are made by Konica Minolta. Imagetec sells HP printers and copiers to customers that request HP but otherwise would "lead with their own", said Piljek.

While the list of national integrators has shrunk, HP has a significant amount of work up for grabs, according to Piljek.  

HP follows a strategy of selling direct to a list of 1000 largest global companies (internally called the G1K) through its global Enterprise Business unit.

Few of the G1K are in Australia, and enterprises are encouraged to buy through an HP channel partner even when they normally deal with HP directly, said Piljek.

"HP doesn't have many choices anymore where HP will be the only solution sold and not be cross-sold to another brand. That puts Datacom in a very good position so that when the deals are handed out they come our way," said Piljek.

"I'm the print solutions partner for HP and that's all I work on. The only reason HP come to me is that there's a loyalty there and they won't be cross-sold to another brand."

Datacom has another close tie to HP - Piljek himself, who worked at the vendor for 10 years and was a "founding manager" of HP's managed print business in the Asia Pacific region. Datacom is a registered OPS partner in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, and is working towards adding Adelaide and Melbourne.

HP said it expects to launch "phase two" of its OPS program later this year. It has recently appointed Damien O'Mara as the OPS program manager and Chris Cobb as partner pre-sales consultant.

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