Ciaran Hynes, HP Enterprise

Courting the Channel: Ciaran Hynes, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

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Ciaran Hynes, HP Enterprise

10 December 2015

He says that although HP has been in the networking business for several years, partners often grapple with the question of whether they can sell networking without having a fully-fledged networking practice or how they can justify building a networking practice without a pipeline of business. “The beauty of the Aruba portfolio is that it allows every partner from SME to enterprise to adopt and go with this technology without having to invest heavily in personnel and skills,” Hynes adds.

Any channel partners HPE has spoken to about Aruba “are really excited by this”, he reveals. “We find that lots of the time we’re pushing an open door. It’s surprising how many partners are ahead of us in terms of their research on the product and getting skills on it without much encouragement from HPE in the first place.”

HP’s split became reality just as its great rival Dell announced plans to widen its portfolio and size by spending $67 billion to acquire EMC. HP has wasted no time in trying to capitalise on the situation. “Quite often, the phrase used when talking about a competitor is FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt], but in the case of the Dell/EMC merger, I genuinely believe you don’t have to look far to find very solid arguments for that FUD,” Hynes suggests.

Rationalisation
HPE believes the interest paid on the combined debt of Dell/EMC could be as high as $2.5billion which will “have to be found from somewhere. Will it come from R&D, headcount reductions or other cut-backs in the service offered to customers and channel partners?”

In addition, the integration required to merge two businesses with combined revenues of $75 billion and nearly 200,000 employees, “can only lead to distraction and uncertainty for the employees and channel partners and customers they engage with”.

There is also uncertainty over the rationalisation of the combined portfolio. “The only certainty is that there must be a rationalisation of the portfolios or this merger will never make sense,” Hynes declares. “As customers typically take a long-term strategic view on their storage solution, this factor will have an enormous influence over their confidence in the long-term plans for Dell/EMC and their commitment to any particular platform.”

As for channel partners, he believes they “will not only have to cope with the rationalisation of the portfolio, they will also have to cope with the rationalisation of the partner programmes. It brings an uncertainty to how the vendor will support them in any medium- to long- term strategy as commitments that are made today may not be feasible tomorrow when those circumstances change”. He continues “prior to the acrimonious break up of Dell/EMC’s previous joint selling model, their preferred route to market was via Dell Direct. One would have to question whether the Dell private equity shareholders will revert to this in an attempt to maximise short-term returns”.

Whatever he feels about Dell/EMC there’s no doubt that Hynes takes a very positive view of HPE’s prospects going forward. “As we look into our new financial year, I feel more positive about our position against our competition, the strength of our portfolio and the capabilities of our channel partners than ever before,” he states.

The company has “a finely tuned portfolio” and is seeing double-digit growth in the market which is largely driven by channel partners that fulfil 75-80% of HPE’s business on a daily basis. “While others may be going through periods of uncertainty, I believe we are primed to capitalise on a recovering economy,” Hynes concludes.

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