HP bids to challenge IBM in channel assembly area
Hardware Recruitment drive sees Computacenter and Northamber lose exclusive deal.
Hewlett Packard has taken the fight to IBM with plans to raise theexclusive deal. number of European channel assembly partners by 10 in the next two years.
The move to expand will also prise HP's channel assembly programme (CAP) from the exclusive grip of partners Northamber and Computacenter in the UK.
Speaking to PC Dealer in Geneva last week, Bernd Bischoff, vice president and general manager of HP's commercial channels organisation, revealed that the vendor will appoint five more partners across Europe next year and a further five in 2000.
Details of potential partners remain undisclosed, but it is understood that Unisys, signed up by HP as a channel partner after it passed on its PC manufacturing business to the vendor in April, will be first among the additional assembly partners (PC Dealer, 1 April).
Unisys has just begun to sell HP products as a Vendor Express volume partner worldwide.
But Bischoff said the move would take time, as certain criteria had to be met by the additional partners.
'They must achieve certain volume levels and have specific core competencies in logistics and configuration. We will insist that no part of the assembly operation is outsourced. If partners don't have the capacity, then we are not interested,' he said.
In a move that closely mirrors IBM's strategy, HP will also appoint co-location channel partners to CAP by the second half of 1999. 'We are currently in discussions with potential partners,' Bischoff revealed.
The scheme will, however, give IBM a lead of about 12 months, having signed up Northamber as its first European co-location partner in September, moving the distributor's assembly operation into the Greenock factory in Scotland.
HP also plans to harmonise prices to distributors for all its products across Europe from 1 February next year, a month after the euro has been introduced.
Northamber and Computacenter were not available to comment.