HP and Cisco schedule partner summits for same date

Vendor duo set for channel showdown in Las Vegas next March

Mutual partners of HP and Cisco may face a quandary after the two vendor giants appear to have scheduled their 2014 partner shindigs for dates that clash.

According to its website, HP's 2014 Global Partner Conference is set to take place on 25-27 March at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. This would mean it would coincide with Cisco's Partner Summit next year, which is scheduled to go ahead on 24-27 March just down The Strip at the Venetian.

As the respective leaders in the PC/server and networking segments, HP and Cisco share a high proportion of partners.

While there is no suggestion it was deliberate, the diary clash will only ratchet up tension between two giant vendors that are increasingly going head to head rather than partnering. Cisco is now a top-five player in HP's core server market, while HP has long since stopped its staff from pushing Cisco kit as it bids to make a bigger impact with its HP Networking portfolio.

This time last year, Cisco chief executive John Chambers fanned the flames by suggesting in a Bloomberg interview that Meg Whitman had been dealt a "hard hand to play" when she took the reins of HP.

In previous years, the duo's respective partner knees-up have occurred as much as three months apart - last year HP's was in February and Cisco's was in June.

Andy Dow, marketing director at Tech Data UK, said mutual partners may face a tough choice.

"Partners will be asking how many people they can take out of the business and whether they can attend both. If they can't, they'll be asking which one they can attend," he said.

However, Sam Routledge, solutions director at HP and Cisco partner Softcat, said most partners would have the bandwidth to attend both.

"HP and VMware clashed a couple of years ago and it was no biggie," he said. With both summits being held in the same city, smaller partners could send one employee to shuttle between both, Routledge suggested.

HP said in a statement: "We will do what is best for our partners and are looking into all options concerning dates and possible conflicts."

In a statement, Cisco's SVP Worldwide Partner Organisation, Bruce Klein, stressed that the venues for what is Cisco's largest partner event of the year are booked years in advance.

"Las Vegas was secured for the 2014 Partner Summit more than three years ago," he said. "Las Vegas is one the most popular convention locations in the US so it's expected there would be other events happening during the same timeframe in Las Vegas. Any competitors hosting similar events during the same timeframe in the same city is purely coincidence."