Dell weighs in on upcoming HP split

Senior Dell exec labels HP split a 'distraction'

Dell has spoken out about HP's upcoming split, with execs branding the move a "distraction" and suggesting its rival's resellers might defect to Dell.

Speaking to CRN, Dave Hansen, global vice president for software sales and marketing at Dell, said his firm could cash in on HP's split, which will see it become a PC and printing business and a separate enterprise and services company at the start of November.

"I think with some of our hardware competitors there is a little bit of confusion in the channel right now," he said. "Some people are a little intrigued about what HP is doing, and so they are coming to us to ask what we are doing and so there is a discussion right now, which is great."

When asked if this confusion could lead to partners moving from HP to Dell, Hansen said he was sure that some will defect.

"I am convinced that [partner movement] will happen," he said. "I don't know in what order of magnitude, but I do know some partners are very interested in having deeper dialogues with us about that.

"If you look at how Dell started as an end-point desktop [and] laptop company, got into servers, network, storage and then we got into SonicWall security and data backup and backup appliances, I think if I am a partner, I want to go wider and wider. And if some companies are going to break down some of that, I think there is less incentive to go with them. So it's an intriguing time."

The comments were made during the second day of the Security Peak Performance conference in Berlin.

Aongus Hegarty, Dell's EMEA president, also commented on the impending HP split, and labelled it a "distraction" for its rival.

"For any company, when they concentrate for an extensive period of time on looking inside, trying to reorganise, trying to split up, trying to let people know which division they are going to be in, that's significant change, and that's not good," he said. "When you take a significant focus away from your customers, that's not, I think, a good thing."

In 2013, Dell was taken off the stock market, and Hegarty also indicated that this puts the firm at an advantage over some of its public competitors.

"We are unique in the fact we have only one entity," he said. "We don't need to concentrate a lot of time on shareholders, public markets, splitting our company in two – that's other companies' strategies, not ours – so I would call [the HP split] a distraction."