LAS VEGAS – Having decided to step out of his channel chief role a little more than a year and a half ago, Dave Frederickson, vice-president of enterprise storage and services alliances and marketing at HP Canada (NYSE: HPQ), said his primary focus now is to drive the company’s networking line of the business this year.
In a previous interview with CDN, Frederickson said he wanted to take on a new role within what was once the ESS (enterprise storage and services) group, and has now expanded to also include networking (ESSN), because he wanted to tackle new opportunities.
“I was looking for an opportunity to get involved in the profit and loss and deep-strategy side in product technology, while still working closely with partners and developing relationships with end-customers as well,” said Frederickson.
With the acquisition of 3Com back in April, HP executives say they now have a “complete and comprehensive” product portfolio which extends from the edge to the core of the network.
This year, Frederickson says he will focus on driving networking growth across Canada by supporting the company’s partners through additional resources and initiatives.
CDN had the opportunity to speak with Frederickson at HP’s annual Tech Forum event, where he discussed his role within the company, his priorities and a special message to channel partners.
Below is an edited transcript of the interview.
CDN: Dave, you’ve been in this role now for a little over a year, coming from the Canadian channel chief position. What are you responsible for now?
Dave Frederickson: I’m responsible for the enterprise server storage and networking business, which entails everything from go-to-market (strategy) from a pre-sales, sales perspective and managing the P&L (profit and loss) and all of our supply chain efforts around our products in the enterprise.
CDN: What are your growth plans for this part of your business in Canada this year?
D.F.: In terms of our growth for this year, it’s all about the converged infrastructure. Customers are looking for this and are trying to shift their spend from a maintenance perspective to innovation and our converged infrastructure plays into that very well. We’re able to simplify their compute and storage technology and (our networking technologies are) built on what we call FlexFabric, so wire your data centre once and you can scale up or down as your business requirements change. We’re looking to dramatically grow our networking presence in Canada. Our expectations are to more than double the business that we currently have. We have a strong partner network in Canada and we’ll make sure our partners are certified to support HP’s line of networking products. Competition is a healthy thing and we’re using to competing and earning rights to do business with our customers and partners everyday. We’ll be careful in terms of how we qualify our partner network and we must ramp up our (partner) resources. First off, we’ll focus on technical and work on building a foundation around that and sales.
CDN: Do you have a message for partners at this year’s Tech Forum event?
D.F.: Our theme this year at Tech Forum is transform. We’re transforming our own go-to-market in terms of what we’re doing and the value we’re bringing to customers. So we’re looking for partners to really step up to embrace our converged infrastructure story and understand that value and really be able to deliver the true value to customers. Customers are looking to simplify their environments and want to shift their dollars from maintenance to innovation. It’s all about trying to merge together all of your resources around compute, storage and networking and being able to make sure you understand and can articulate what the value is from HP (to) how that matches the business needs (of) customers. The majority of our business goes through the channel and partners have always stood behind us and (they’re) part of our DNA. The more you embrace our overall portfolio, frankly, the better off from a financial and engagement perspective (you’ll be). There’s no better time than now to embrace, especially with our new networking offering.
Follow Maxine Cheung on Twitter: @MaxineCheungCDN.
