Hurd on the grapevine

Hurd on the grapevine

When Carly Fiorina was ousted from Hewlett-Packard (HP), the channel waited with bated breath to see who would replace her. Although most of HP’s channel partners in the UK were clearly unlikely ever to get to meet the vendor’s brave new head, everyone knew the appointment would have a massive impact on their business. After the unsettled air of HP’s channel over the past few years, the worry was that the impact might be a negative one.

Then Mark Hurd was appointed, and eventually came out with the assurance that although costs had to be cut, he was every inch a channel player, despite his previous history of direct selling at NCR.

But on the eve of HP’s Global Partner Conference, which begins tomorrow in Las Vegas, Hurd may finally have emerged as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It comes as no great shock to see HP culling partners: Jos Brenkel, vice-president Service Partner Organisation EMEA, said back in January that the vendor plans to axe 2,000 partners in EMEA. But Hurd has certainly raised the stakes for HP’s resellers.

Last week, at an analyst conference in New York, the HP chief executive gave a stark warning that he would “have an iron fist on doubling down [on partners committed to HP]. For the people who want to play with us, we are going to play with them twice as hard. To the people that don’t, we are going to get them out of here,” he is reported to have said.

More worryingly than such threatening language is the fact that Hurd said the vendor will not pay marketing development funds to VARs that sell a solution containing more than 35 to 40 per cent of non-HP components.

Now that really is arrogance for you. Does HP believe its brand pull is strong enough and its product range wide enough to enable this kind of strategy to work?

Hurd is obviously betting that HP has a winning hand. The problem is, he is using HP’s channel players as his stake.