Bell Micro first distie to take advantage of HP SME bundle
Bell Micro has become the first distributor to add value to HP’s new SME-focused pricing strategy by launching its Insight Operations Appliance. The HP-based box includes HP Network Node Manager i-series and HP SiteScope, as well as integration with VMware VCentre software.
The appliance will be sold at a significant discount over individual list price of each item and is fully-backed by HP (HPQ) in terms of licensing and support. Frank aan de Stegge, Worldwide product marketing director of commercial solutions at HP Software & Solutions believes that Bell will be the first of many disties using HP products as bundled appliances, “We fully support them…we hope more partners follow in this path.”
De Stegge believes that partners are essential in the repackaging and re-pricing of its products for the SME and estimates that channel sales will eventually account for 90 percent of all the volume in this market, up for around 70 percent at the moment.
Scott Murphy, HP & Symantec divisional Leader at Bell Micro adds, “This offering is perfect for businesses seeking to manage virtualised solutions, but which do not have access to automated network monitoring tools. In the UK this could account for as many as 80 percent of small businesses, which demonstrates that there is a very real and considerable opportunity awaiting any reseller that wishes to build new markets.”
According to Bell, its Insight Operations Appliance provides will typically reduce an implementation process of around 15 days down to just two while support for virtualisation can potentially open the door to accounts that had previously not considered a full network and operations management platform.
The move by HP follows a similar approach pioneered by IBM which launched its Tivoli-in-a-box style appliance earlier this year. According to de Stegge, HP is investing in a parallel marketing and lead generation campaign targeting the 35,000 business of between 1000 to 10000 employees which it believes are not well catered for by traditional big enterprise software deployments.
