Resellers lured to take direct deal with EMC

The reseller community is being drawn into a battle between Hewlett Packard and EMC as both companies try to take control of the high-end enterprise storage market.

EMC has been contacting HP's enterprise storage resellers in an attempt to set up its own relationships. Meanwhile, some resellers believe HP will pull out of existing deals with them if they set up a direct relationship with EMC.

Neil Parker, general manager of open systems for Computacenter confirmed that EMC had called the reseller wanting to set up a direct relationship.

'HP and EMC are going through a messy divorce at the moment and we are waiting to see how things pan out with HP first,' he said.

But Parker would not be drawn on whether HP business could be lost as a result of dealing with EMC.

However, another reseller did see taking the EMC route as a valid threat: 'Like everyone else, we have been approached by EMC to set up a direct relationship, but we are all in the same boat. We can't risk potentially losing all our HP business, because it will not have resellers offering both HP and EMC storage.'

EMC's partnership with HP hit the rocks when the vendor launched its own high-end enterprise storage to compete with EMC's Symmetrix package (PC Dealer 12 May). Until that point, HP had resold the product as part of its own range.

Realising the scale of the threat from HP, EMC then acted swiftly to try to ensure that routes to market opened by the earlier agreement would not end.

Nick Dagg, HP's enterprise storage marketing manager said: 'Of course we will allow resellers to set up direct relationships with EMC, it would be illegal for us to do otherwise. But we would not encourage it.' EMC declined to comment.