HP injects more cash to keep Sun at bay

Hewlett Packard has added a further $500m to the $1bn already committed to its ebusiness incubator fund, as it races to compete with Sun Microsystems for the custom of internet businesses.

Hewlett Packard has added a further $500m to the $1bn already committed to its ebusiness incubator fund, as it races to compete with Sun Microsystems for the custom of internet businesses.

Gordon Lovell Read, head of new ventures at HP, said the company's ebusiness incubator, called Garage, is in a different league to Sun's iForce programme. "HP offers its partners access to the Garage, Sun has a shed. Garage is not a sales leads club that resellers must satisfy certain criteria to join. It is a resource that any of our partners can use in whatever way their customer needs."

Lovell Read also claimed that iForce lacks resources. "It doesn't have anything close to the might of HP Consulting, neither does it have its own bank to offer debt financing and release working capital."

Resellers could also access Garage for their own use, he added. Daryl Ridell, marketing manager at Synstar, said: "If we wanted to start an application service provider business, we'd look very hard at the risks and costs. Having access to an incubator programme would be very useful."

Ridell said the tactic of feeding product sales by making it easier for customers to turn an idea into a successful business should succeed. "HP is one of the vendors in a position to provide the right services," he said.

HP aims to make startups and corporate re-births bear fruit sooner, lower risks and increase the value of the businesses by providing creative marketing, financing, legal advice and technology, said Lovell Read.

"It's not like selling hardware. You can't say 'these partners have a certain set of skills and therefore pretty much any customer will have the same experience with any of them'. It's not about putting our resellers into categories and then allocating customers to them," he said.

The only requirements HP will make on partners applying for funding is a business plan with a reasonable chance of success, added Lovell Read.