HP rebates its hook for networking sales

Vendor offers money back on networking equipment exchanged for its gigabit-ready products

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is offering customers and VARs rebates on networking equipment exchanged for its gigabit-ready kit.

The scheme, which will run until the end of December, covers all manufacturers' networking equipment. A typical rebate on a switch costing £1,432 will be £240, rising to £480 for a £2,806 switch.

Once the trade-in has been completed the old equipment will be picked up from the customer's site by HP and taken to its European recycling centre, to be taken apart.

HP claimed that resellers will not face any extra costs for participating in the scheme.

"Buyers traditionally have defaulted to Cisco. We think this will change that," said Jon Weatherall, ProCurve country manager at HP. "This can be used to present a new value proposition to customers and costs resellers nothing."

However, John Donovan, UK and Ireland channel director at Cisco, did not seem worried by the announcement. "It sounds to me like they're just trying to boost sales," he said.

"I imagine from time to time every manufacturer tries something like this in order to serve their corporate goals. We prefer the approach of our Value Assisted programme, which focuses on customer satisfaction rather than price."

HP has extended its gigabit networking range with new low-cost switches, including two 2800 series switches, two 4100 series switches and a gigabit blade. A high-end 5300xl switch has been added as well.

The firm has also launched new management and control software: ProCurve Manager and ProCurve Manager Plus. The base-level product is free with all ProCurve hardware, while the Plus version costs extra.