At a HP channel partners conference titled ‘Grow with HP’, Alaa Alshimy, director, HP Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN),HP Middle East announced that almost 90% of HP ESSN’s revenue in the Middle East is driven through the company’s partners and distributors.
“The work we do together with our partner ecosystem is alone responsible for the unparalleled success of HP’s systems and solutions across the Middle East market. Our partners have helped us achieve the top rankings across almost every product category, be it storage, servers or networking,” Alshimy said.
Alshimy believes that HP‘s channel initiatives are radically different from those of other vendors. “Not only can our partners leverage excellent support services, flexible branding and delivery options and competitive pricing through discounts and rebates but they can also benefit from our open standards. Unlike other vendors, we don’t expect our partners to promote and distribute just HP products, in fact we believe creating products that allow integration and interoperability with solutions created by other vendors is our USP. Not only does it give our partners the freedom of choice, but gives end customers an additional reason to invest in HP systems and solutions,” he said.
In addition to this, today, Alshimy and his team also announced the beginning of the Rising Star Programme. “As part of this initiative, partners who invest in HP ESSN products can now benefit from additional monetary increments over and above their standard profit margins,” explained Alshimy.
According to him, while the rewards are expected to keep partners competitive in the sales and distribution of HP ESSN product categories, according to Alshimy the ultimate aim of the programme is to create win-win models for the company’s partners.
“The idea is to enable maximum return on investment (ROI) for each and every one of partners. We want to create scenarios where in we can provide equal opportunities for growth for our different partners,” he said.
Alshimy concluded by discussing the company’s cloud channel initiatives.
“Although HP has recently launched a cloud program for developed markets, I believe the Middle East market is still two to three years away from the robust adoption of this technology particularly on the public cloud level. While talks are on with partners to equip and service private cloud environments, we are yet to see a level of readiness to bring cloud channel initiatives to the region,” he said.
