HP EMEA chief: We now have the agility of a start-up

Nick Lazaridis, president of HP Inc EMEA uses keynote at Cannes Film Festival to talk up the channel

Six months after HP split into two entities, the EMEA boss of HP Inc has praised the company's agility and labelled channel partners the "lifeblood" of its business.

Nick Lazaridis who has been president of HP EMEA for just over six months, was speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, at which the vendor has been the official technology partner for the past 13 years.

"Since 1 November, HP Inc is a new company. We employ 50,000 people and have more than 250,000 partners across the world," he said.

"We have the strength and experience of a Fortune 100 company but with the agility of a start-up. Innovation is crucial to HP and our goal is to engineer to amaze. [In the film industry] we allow the film makers to focus on the creativity and the artists to focus on what they do best.

"[The split] has allowed us to become a faster organisation and move faster for our partners and customers," he added.

The firm has three pillars, he explained, PCs, printing professional graphics; and earlier this week it unveiled its new range of 3D printers that partners are already hailing as the "new iPhone".

Lazaridis said the firm is number one in EMEA in PCs, inkjets, laserjets and graphics [print], selling one printer every second and two PCs every second around the world.

"We believe technology should make life better for everyone," he said.

And HP could not achieve its goals without the channel, he stressed.

"The channel is more than 80 per cent of our business - that is 80 per cent of a $52bn business. They are our lifeblood."

For the full interview with Lazaridis, stay tuned to ChannelWeb.