HP gets claws out for catty rivals
Vendor turns tables on those that tormented it during the dark days of 2011 and 2012
HP today claimed its rivals' strategies are in "turmoil" as it sought to underline its commitment to the channel at its UK Gold Partner Forum.
The vendor absorbed its fair share of abuse from competitors seeking to whip up uncertainty over its commitment to the PC space following the short-lived but disastrous tenure of previous CEO Léo Apotheker.
But with that issue long since resolved, and with question marks emerging over arch rival IBM and Dell's orientation, HP is lobbing a few verbal grenades back at its tormentors.
HP's share price has more than doubled since December and Kevin Matthews, director of indirect sales at HP's Enterprise Group, said HP is now "very clear on strategy" under current CEO Meg Whitman.
"A lot of competitors do not have a clear strategy and are in a bit of turmoil," he said during a briefing before the event, which was attended by 400 UK partners.
"Who do you want to partner with: someone with a clear strategy or someone who is contemplating what they're doing?" he said - presumably referring to arch rival Dell, whose eponymous CEO is currently battling to take the company off the stock market.
Back in August 2011, the roles were reversed as Michael Dell unleashed a series of barbed tweets looking to exploit uncertainty over HP's strategy.
Matthews (pictured) then turned his fire on a rival we can only presume is IBM, which was reportedly close to selling off its x86 server business earlier this year.
"We have best-in-class technology that we are looking to sell," he said. "Other vendors are looking to sell parts of their portfolio. Do you want to be with them or with us?"
HP is rolling out an updated global partner framework at the start of its next fiscal year beginning 1 November that is designed to bring more simplicity, profitability and predictability to VAR partners.
Matthews said he expected about 10 UK enterprise partners to qualify for the new higher Platinum tier, which offers higher rewards in return for a commitment to sell HP's full range of enterprise kit spanning servers, storage, networking, professional services and business critical.
"Frankly, we are trying to avoid partners getting accredited in one technology stack and then adding competitive components to it," he said.
"We want partners selling the whole portfolio and we want to reward them for doing it. We also want to differentiate them for doing it, so the other key change is we will [do more] to advertise our partners' accreditations to customers and, quite frankly, internally. If you are a Platinum partner selling the whole portfolio, it is easier to drive to those partners."