HP looks to increase footprint in service provider channel

Vendor looks to get more big services houses selling kit and encourages VARs to cultivate service provider relationships

Having signed nine UK partners to its recently launched CloudAgile programme, HP is looking to deepen its ties with service providers and encourage them to sell more tin.

The vendor piloted the CloudAgile Programme for Service Providers with 10 partners earlier this year. The scheme was formally launched in November, and the first four partners in EMEA were announced as Centric, Eshgro, UKFast and Attenda, the latter two of which hail from this country.

Another seven UK partners have now been signed up: Outsourcery, Navvis, Star, SCC, Lanware, Navisite and Carrenza.

Andrew Duce, service provider programme manager at HP, claimed the vendor has been working for a couple of years to increase its footprint in the service provider channel. The lines between traditional VARs and service providers are blurring, added Duce.

"We see that the markets are evolving and customers want to buy things in a certain way," he said. "Companies like SCC now provide services, and we see service providers who want to start reselling kit."

Duce claimed that HP wants to get more service providers selling HP products, and will seek to work with and reward partners selling the breadth of its Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking portfolio.

"If we have a partner that runs Dell servers, HP storage and Cisco Networking, versus one that runs HP for all three, we would want to work with the partner that adopts as much of an HP platform as possible," he said. "We are fortunate that HP is market leader in a lot of technology areas."

HP has set up high-touch sales for the service provider programme, with a team in Scotland passing on leads to the appropriate partner. MDF cash is also available, and four UK service providers have agreed joint marketing plans.

Duce (pictured) told ChannelWeb that resellers need not fear being cut out of the loop, as many service providers operate their own channel programmes.

"Some resellers, on first look at these service providers, might think, 'Oh, dear, they are going to eat my lunch', whereas a service provider can actually give them a greater reach to the market," he said. "This is a great opportunity for resellers."