HP’s New Account Initiative Drives Leads to Storage Partners
HP’s latest partner program incentive is showing the channel lots of love. The incentive is dubbed “100 Percent New Account Initiative,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like, as long as you’re serving up storage. Here’s the scoop on how HP is handing over more leads right into partner’s hands …
VARs who are HP Storage partners are eligible for the 100 Percent New Account Initiative. As HP endeavors to be ever-present in the data center, it now is providing channel partners “incremental revenue … for HP Storage partners by funneling all sales of HP Storage products to new U.S. accounts through channel partners.” Which storage portfolios are part of this initiative? Virtually all of them. HP highlights Converged Storage, LeftHand, StoreOnce and 3PAR, but the entire portfolio falls under this new baton-passing edict.
HP believes this new level of partner collaboration will benefit both HP’s internal direct sales team while enhancing the relationship it has with its channel partners. Naturally, the end goal is to strengthen HP’s storage footprint in the marketplace while making partners profitable as they do so.
This announcement has been designed to be a complimentary track to the HP ServiceONE partner support program, which also has been uniquely tailored for the storage market. All interested parties are invited to check out HP storage technology at HP Discover, slated to be held June 4-7, 2012, in Las Vegas.
With these moves, HP is clearly is looking to drive as much growth as it can, but whether HP’s lead-passing program will actually benefit a large swath of smaller partners remains to be seen. But hey, don’t forget, HP isn’t the only storage party in town. Be sure to check out the strong storage moves by Dell has been making. There’s an exponential relationship between storage technology and the skyrocketing growth of cloud, so don’t miss out on the storage boom.