HP favours partners' move into ASP market

Hewlett Packard has announced plans to move half of its Open View channel partners' licence sales to an 'apps on tap' rental model by the end of its next fiscal year.

Hewlett Packard (HP) has announced plans to move half of its Open View channel partners' licence sales to an 'apps on tap' rental model by the end of its next fiscal year.

The move is an extension of the company's 'pay-as-you-go' direct scheme that it introduced towards the end of last year. It will require extensive retraining of a number of the company's key partners.

Anton Knolmar, channel sales and marketing manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said channel partners "have to make a decision. The move towards an ASP model is a clear trend in the industry. Enabling our partners to do this will be our key initiative over the next year."

"A reseller cannot survive in the long term through the traditional sales of licenses. Ideally, we will eventually have a 90/10 split in favour of ASPs and we aim to have 50/50 split over the next 18 months," he added.

Alan Greenberg, director service management solutions at HP channel partner Tertio, poured cold water on suggestions that HP could achieve a 90/10 split, saying that even a 50/50 model in the next 18 months was ambitious. "I would be amazed if HP managed even a 10 per cent market share," he said.

"The model is something I would treat with scepticism anyway because everyone knows when you rent or lease something you ultimately end up paying more," he added.

Greenberg expects trouble for HP with other companies adopting a similar strategy over the coming months. "HP could potentially rent directly and cut out the channel altogether in the future, but until it is in a position to do that I think we will see a lot of conflict with the new scheme, which could alienate key partners."

HP also laid out a new integrator channel programme aimed at providing a 'one-stop-shop' solution for reseller. Based on a trial model currently used by solutions and service provider Getronics, the scheme calls on resellers to handle low-level support questions with HP steeping in only for serious technical matters.

First appeared in Computer Reseller News