HP encourages Converged Infrastructure sales

HP (HPQ) has unveiled plans to provide channel partners in EMEA with increased demand generation and sales support to deliver the vendor’s Converged Infrastructure portfolio to SMBs.
HP Converged Infrastructure integrates existing silos of server, storage, network and facility resources with unified management to deliver a virtualised and automated technology environment.
HP says partners will receive an increased number of leads and that it will deliver end-to-end deal support on these opportunities. It also guarantees exclusivity on deals that it has passed to the channel partner.
Doubling sales force
Today’s move by HP also involves doubling the firm’s channel targeted Territory Sales force in EMEA.
“HP is doubling its sales force that works with the channel to respond faster to partner requests, identify new business opportunities and generate leads in the area of converged infrastructure,” says Ahmed Mouldaia, director channel sales Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking EMEA.
HP says it will identify business opportunities in the SMB space, then share them with HP Preferred Partners with an Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Specialisation for a joint pursuit.
“I think the SMB European Market is clearly becoming a very hot focus for all vendors with HP, Cisco and IBM all now accelerating their investment in channel sales and marketing support,” Chris Gabriel, director of marketing at HP Gold partner Logicalis, told Channel Pro.
Attractive proposition
“In the UK, and specifically in Wales for example, there are tens of thousands of SMB businesses, and offerings such as HP Converged Infrastructure make a huge amount of sense because a ‘flat pack’ solution, even for larger SMB businesses, is an attractive proposition – reduces risk, simplifies some of the more advanced technologies, and should lower long term cost of operation.
He adds: “The key to SMBs however is ensuring you can give them advantage through their technology investments, they don’t buy technology for the sake of it, so focusing on helping their business is crucial to any engagement – it’s not about selling them more technology.”