New York City — After 10 months of operating in the U.S., Hewlett-Packard is bringing its PartnerReach alliance with Microsoft to Canadian VARs.
“”We’ve seen tremendous uptake in the U.S.,”” said Geoff Kereluik, HP Canada’s new vice-president of small and medium business said. “”The [Canadian]
channel is ready for it.”” Under the partnership, the companies will bundle hardware and software packages — such as servers and operating systems — that VARs can sell for less than a solution they can put together separately.
However, there are no products to announce yet to hungry resellers.
“”This is a journey we’re just entering on together,”” Kere-luik said.
While PartnerReach started last January, he said it was only with his appointment a month ago could a decision be made to bring the alliance to Canada.
He made the announcement as part of a package of news HP revealed at this year’s TechxNY trade show targeted at increasing its share of business from small and medium-sized companies.
VARs will be able to add HP-branded break/fix services to the SmartServices packages they’re already able to sell. Products they’ll initially be able to offer work on after being certified by HP are all ProLiant servers and all HP commercial printers.
Resellers will also be able to offer customers an HP SmartFinance leasing program with rates Kereluik said could be advantageous even to partners who already have a third-party leasing supplier.
HP revealed more than 20 new printing and imaging systems, what Kereluik said was a replacement of half of its product line, including LaserJets, Colour LaserJets and print servers.
Finally, though not a product, Kereluik said one of the changes he’s bringing in within a few weeks is an increase in marketing partnerships with Canadian resellers.
“”You’re going to see us marketing more with specific channel partners,”” he said. HP will hunt for VARs to surround a campaign around, in part by finding customer opportunities and deciding which partners can best get that business.
It won’t benefit only national resellers, he promised. In some campaigns HP could decide that a local or regional VAR would have the best opportunity to reach a niche, he said.
TechXNY is no PC Expo
TechxNY, which used to be called PC Expo, has become an amalgamation of several shows — one for consumer electronic products, one for outsourcing — which has blunted its impact.
There were also few companies announcing new products. Among them was Xerox, which outlined new WorkCentre Pro and CopyCentre copiers which offer faster speeds than their predecessors. Prices range from US$11,495 for the CopyCentre C2128 to US$16,995 for the WorkCentre Pro X3545.
While show director Christina Condos insisted the 280 vendors was more than last year, a number of the exhibitors are missing such as Sony, Toshiba, Acer, Sun and Maxtor.””
