HP developing partners' skill-sets

HP developing partners' skill-sets

Nivedan Prakash
New Delhi, October 1

HP's StorageWorks division is going through an exciting phase this year with increased business activities and sales happening in the Indian market. The major push factor is that the company's customers are revamping their storage architecture and are already planning and designing the future road map for IT investments.

This division of HP has been able to achieve this feat largely because of its strong channel community and the kind of programs it has for its partners. In the storage segment, we reach out to customers in tier-2 and 3 cities. The company works with its channel partners to deliver a complete solution stack rather than a product as a stand alone. And in order to enable this, it has brought the first-of-its-kind triangulation model that brought together channel partners, ISVs and HP together at one platform.

“As RoI and business benefits are driving the storage investments today, customers want the realistic feel of any product before making any purchase decision. We are investing a lot in demo equipments, internal pre-sales skill, and partner skill-sets in order to carry out some studies and make some assessment, and
give the customers more realistic feel of the benefits that they would get by adopting such technologies,” pointed out Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country Manager—StorageWorks Division, HP India.

HP engages its partners in programs pertaining to skill development, wherein it picks some of their pre-sales staff and train them so that they can study and explain the customers about the relevance of the products that suit their environment. The company also invites its partners to use the demo equipments and not just restrict the use of these products for the end-customers. This gives an opportunity to the partners to effectively carry the message forward to the customers.
Krishnamoorthy added, “We also help them in acquiring skills in installing and commissioning our products. We are the first ones to work with a broad set of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) partners to maximize the potential of the virtual resource pool. We are investing and working with key partners to become storage virtualization specialists. A recent Springboard Research report rated HP as the overall industry leader for channel satisfaction.”

Out of more than 200 partners, who sell HP Storage products every quarter, 60 to 70 of them are intensely focused on leveraging the storage product portfolio. These selective partners are extensively targeted and trained to sale and support the whole gamut of storage products. This set of partners also include some of our country's large system integrators, including HCL, Wipro, TCS, L&T, and Infosys.

“Sometimes, when a new technology gets launched, we want our partners to put some efforts behind understanding that technology, and this is where the incentive schemes help orient the partners' attention towards any particular technology. We have a very attractive, innovative, and truly remunerative HP wide promotional framework, wherein we reward partners against selling storage product. There is also a total revenue growth-based incentive scheme for partner organizations,” highlighted Krishnamoorthy.

“As the market grows and once we realize that we are not able to cater to the total market, then only we would expand our channel base. HP's current approach is basically to make its existing partners extremely strong and successful in terms of understanding the technology, so that they are able to make a meaningful contribution to the customers,” concluded Krishnamoorthy.