HPE Australia starts Windows 10 consulting service

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has started a Windows 10 consulting service in Australia.

The service is a part of the ‘Cloud, Productivity and Mobility’ program, jointly launched with Microsoft in the Australian market this month.

HPE and Microsoft announced that the consulting service would integrate Microsoft products such as Enterprise Mobility Suite, Dynamics CRM, Office 365, Skype for Business and Windows 10 Enterprise. Specific services will include “digital process design, application development and prototyping” for clients.

“Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft share a common vision for how cloud, mobility, and industry solutions can be applied to deliver breakthroughs for our clients,” said HPE South Pacific enterprise services general manager Nick Wilson.

“Our combined set of technology assets, expertise and global scalability are unmatched in the industry and give us significant advantage over the competition.”

The CPM program had been launched in the USA in November. The expansion into Australia has been seen as a minor intrusion into the SME market by local resellers contacted by CRN.

One Microsoft and HP partner executive told CRN anonymously that HP services traditionally served the “very top end of town, as their cost models are uneconomic under 1000 seats” - but the company now seems to have identified the 250-1000 seat mid-market as a growth sector.

While no reseller likes a vendor competing with the channel, he said, “HP has done this for years in all sectors”.

“The only area that they are successful on is large volume in a tender situation… Services don’t work this way,” the executive said. “They cannot service any account directly without five people involved - and this means that either their margin is 300 percent on an hourly rate or is a massive account, but both options don’t work in Australia in the mid-market."

“HP will assist with market growth [but] they are too expensive, too inflexible.”

David Markus, managing director at Microsoft and HP partner Combo, agreed that HPE has its work cut out in the SME market.

“I can see that the larger service providers might struggle with the new HPE service offerings, but it is truly a vast marketplace and HPE is just one player,” he said. “There is no lack of work to be done out there.”

Markus said bigger providers like HPE’s services arm are creeping into the SME segment as technology becomes more commoditised, but this can present opportunities for service providers: “The interesting thing is that this makes it easier for us to take on larger clients to offer the more flexible solutions a small provider can offer.”