HP CEO Mark Hurd: Never Enough
By Damon Poeter, ChannelWeb
April 23, 2010
Page 3 of 5
Moving On Up
Of course, SMB engagements traditionally have been the channel's bread and butter. But Hurd says there could be just as many opportunities for partners in segments that have been tougher for VARs to crack. Hurd concedes that the giant Fortune 500-level IT service accounts that HP acquired with EDS--"the biggest customers on the planet"--will likely always be direct engagements for HP. But that doesn't mean HP partners won't be able to gain from that HP Services business, he said. For example, HP partners might want to sell excess data center capacity that HP generates through its large enterprise accounts to their own, smaller customers.

"The fact is that our channel partner could say to a small company, 'Hey, in addition to this one data center that you have, would you like the opportunity to back it up? Well, I know how to get access to capacity, and it's HP's capacity. And I will sell that to you and I will help solution that to you.'

"That's an opportunity for the customer, and for our channel partner, and for HP. So don't run with the fact that if HP gets big in services that means that it's to the exclusion of the channel partner. We think about partnering at every turn. And we know we don't have a lock on all the great ideas. And we certainly know that we don't have the opportunity to get to all the buying points in the market."

If Hurd's pitch for data center backup sounds a lot like the framework for a cloud computing offering, that's because it is one, he said. But cloud computing is a term that the HP CEO says he uses "cautiously." It lacks specificity, Hurd said.

"I think it's important that we break [cloud computing] down into specific services," he elaborated. "Where instead of saying, 'Hey, how would you like to participate in the cloud?' you say, 'How would you like me to help you back up your data center? How would you like me to help back up your server farm? How would you like to have some peak minutes available so when you have spikes in your workload, you know where to send those spikes without having to buy all that capacity? How would you like to have a private cloud built for you, etc. etc.?' "

Hurd and HP are also taking the channel to war with them in a campaign to win new business with some of the fastest-growing midmarket companies in the U.S. Since January, select partners have been participating in an account planning and mapping strategy that teams them with HP sales reps and its top executive team to go after 9,000 fast-growing midmarket accounts.

The stakes are high. HP's goal with the program is to grow its midmarket business at least two times the market growth rate.

The Emerging Growth Accounts program, spearheaded by Kevin Hooper, an HP vice president for enterprise business sales, leverages the full array of data center products in HP's Enterprise Server, Storage and Networking (ESSN) business unit. As with the SMB Exchange, there's no mistaking the companies being targeted by EGA.

"HP's EGA program under Kevin Hooper is squarely channel-focused, whereas other vendors are taking away business from their partners," said AdvizeX Technologies' Sarazin. And make no mistake, he added, the program is squarely aimed at HP's main competitors.

"We know who we're going after. There's a Dell attack program, a Sun attack program, an IBM attack program," Sarazin said.

What about a Cisco attack program? "Yes, that too," Sarazin answered.

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