Hewlett-Packard’s Global Partner Conference
LAS VEGAS — One year after newly minted CEO Meg Whitman charmed partners in Sin City, HP’s global partner conference was back in Las Vegas. This time, partners were looking for answers after a year of poor earnings, painful restructuring, and the fallout of accounting discrepancies surrounding the Autonomy acquisition.
Would Whitman and HP be able to keep partners onside?
By Jeff Jedras
(Photo courtesy HP)
HP touts platform advantage
HP’s enterprise networking business was front and centre at GPC with Stephen DeWitt, senior vice-president of enterprise marketing for HP, touting the breadth of HP’s converged infrastructure platform as a competitive advantage its competitors are trying (and failing) to emulate.
“We’re a portfolio company. We invest in intellectual property across the technology continuum. That’s what we do,” he said.
Click to read: HP touts platform advantage with converged infrastructure releases
Solutions to enable BYOD
Looking to address the ever-popular BYOD trend, HP launched new unified wired and wireless solutions designed to deliver a unified network to support corporate BYOD policies.
While most networking competitors and legacy networks have separate wired and wireless networks, which means an integration challenge when it comes to enabling BYOD, HP differentiates by offering a unified network said Bethany Mayer, senior vice-president and general manager for networking at HP.
Click to read: BYOD solution a fit for small businesses, says HP
HP revamps PartnerOne channel program
In what the vendor is calling the biggest overhaul of its channel go to market in years, HP announced a comprehensive overhaul of its PartnerOne program and a host of changes to incentives, marketing and other programs. Perhaps the biggest change is to no longer have each business unit lead the channel go to market. Instead, it will be one unified channel program with consistent benefits and requirements.
HP also has new global channel leadership. Jesse Chavez (left) is channel lead for the enterprise group, and Dan Tindall has the helm for printing and personal systems.
Click to read: HP unifies channel go to market, drops revenue gates and caps
HP Canada’s new faces to the channel
It’s been a busy year for Hewlett Packard Co.‘s Canadian subsidiary, with layoffs, departures and a corporate reorganization that saw the vendor make significant changes to its senior leadership team and its channel route to market in Canada.
Emerging on top of the HP Canada channel heap under president Peter Galanis were two men — Andrew Eppich as vice-president, partners and channels for the enterprise group (left), and Gary Drysdale with the same title for the printing and personal systems group
Click to read: HP promises stable go to market in Canada
Whitman’s recovery plan
Times have been challenging for HP since Meg Whitman took over from controversial former CEO Léo Apotheker with a mandate to turn the struggling tech giant around. It may not be happening as quickly as some would like, but Whitman told partners she has a plan that foresees recovery by fiscal 2014 and a return to accelerated growth the following year.
She also told attendees that, while she has no plans to step aside in the near future, she would like to see HP’s next CEO come from within the company.
Possible future HP CEO No. 1: Bill Veghte
One candidate that would have to be on any shortlist of successors to Whitman as HP’s next CEO is Bill Veghte.
Before joining HP, Veghte spent nearly 20 years at Microsoft where he led marketing and business development and helped spearhead the launch of Windows 7. He joined HP in 2009 with a mandate to grow the software business, and he later added the title of chief strategy officer before being tasked last year by Whitman to bring some synergy to HP’s disparate business units as COO.
Possible future HP CEO No. 2: Todd Bradley
Also in the mix when HP’s CEO job is next up for grabs will likely be one of the longer-serving HP veterans to survive Whitman’s executive shake-up and reorganization: Todd Bradley. Bradley, who was running HP’s personal systems group — almost sold off by the last CEO — emerged to lead the consolidated printing and person systems group, adding printing and imaging to his stable.
Lately, he has overseen HP’s move into the tablet arena, plus the launch of a Chromebook and a new generation of printing technology.
Click to read: Interview: HP’s personal systems chief
Possible future HP CEO No. 3: David Donatelli
Finally, David Donatelli also must be on any shortlist for picking HP’s next CEO. Another relative newcomer to HP like Veghte, Donatelli spent 22 years with EMC and was leading its storage business when he was poached by HP — and long story short, EMC wasn’t pleased to see him go. Since joining HP, he has positioned the vendor as an up and coming contender in the networking space, challenging incumbents such as Cisco for growth and market share.
Click to read: Rich, uncapped public cloud annuities for life: HP
Our full coverage of HP GPC 2013
CDN
- Partners still don’t know all HP does: DiFranco
- Tweeting day two of HP’s Global Partner Conference
- Rich, uncapped public cloud annuities for life: HP
- Tweeting day one of HP’s Global Partner Conference
- HP touts platform advantage with converged infrastructure releases
- HP unifies channel go to market, drops revenue gates and caps
