Mississauga, Ont. – As HP (NYSE: HPQ) puts the finishing touches on its first ever touch screen tablet device, company channel chief Stephen Di Franco told CDN that he expects about half the sales for tablets to be in the commercial space giving solution providers an excellent opportunity to increase their product breathe.
“Upon reflection it will be half commercial and half consumer. We are selling the consumerization of IT and the tablet is something that stands between those two worlds. They solve the problem of the phone being too small and the PC being too big,” Di Franco said.
He added that HP will have a more commercial type tablet products with increased security and better warranties. Di Franco said that there is no question that more buying is happening in the consumer arena, but these end users are bringing their tablets to work. He envisions more of blend at the office with smart phones, notebooks and tablets. He believes this will lead to more of an acceptance on the part of IT departments for commercial tablets.
“It’s an exciting time for us and the channel. The pads will change the way business works. It will change the way training is done and how we interact with each other.
It’s hard to bring a notebook over and show something to someone, but it’s easier with a tab,” he said.The K-12 education market is prime example of how tablets can be used in a commercial way, Di Franco said. “Tablets will enable technology to teach and bring the AV dealers together with the IT people. AV people are learning networking very quickly and they are already deeply integrated into schools. Our VAR community has to be part of the total footprint and develop a practice that is integrated into the school’s curriculum,” Di Franco said.
Mark Snider, president of Ingram Micro Canada, (NYSE: IM)met with Di Franco on his Canadian visit and said that HP will be a big part of Ingram Micro’s mobility strategy along with RIM’s Playbook and Motorola’s Zoom. Snider said that Ingram created its mobility division 18 months to be ready for this wave of tablet technology. He agreed with Di Franco’s view point that selling tablets is different than notebooks and has trained the dedicated field sales team to educate the VAR community on this trend. “When the HP brand hits the market the reseller community will want to know how to put a solution together for WebOS that’s corporate. For our customers they come to us for recommendations and we carry many brands for the right solution. This is the year for the tablet to be corporate and there is no reason it shouldn’t map well as laptops,” Snider said.
Di Franco also reiterated the message he deliver at the Americas Partner Conference in Las Vegas in February that solution provider should deliver practices around mobility and the cloud.
Di Franco channel team which now comprises former IDC analyst Janet Waxman is currently developing a cloud go-to-market plan for the solution provider community to be release later on this year. “We are already starting to see it evolve and partners are building cloud practices for their clients,” he said.
HP’s plan will enable solution providers to rely on HP resources and access to HP’s cloud. “This will allow VARs to become a service provider and that’s what they really do and our plan will take them to the next step.”