HP SW honors top Asia/Pac channel partners 

In a move to accelerate its channel strategy and strengthen its commitment to
channel partners, HP today honored the winners of its second Asia Pacific
Software Olympics held at the picturous Cheju Island in South Korea.

Presented annually to HP's top channel partners in the Asia Pacific region,
the Software Olympics awards recognize channel partners for their excellent
sales, marketing and technical performance.

"In this challenging business climate where it is imperative to offer
value-added solutions at competitive price points, our channel partners with
their domain expertise are crucial to our software strategy," said Steve
Au-Yeung, GM (Software Global Business Unit, Enterprise Systems Group), HP (Asia
Pacific). "In addition to increasing our investments in partner training
and marketing, we will adopt a solutions-centric approach with the long-term aim
of bringing profitability to our partners and value to our customers."

The channel partners who got the award included Wipro Infotech from India,
EMS from Australia, Digital China from China, JOS Distribution from Hong Kong,
Space ITS from South Korea, HPD Systems from Malaysia, and Tech D&I Co from
South East Asia (excluding Malaysia and Singapore).

Added Au-Yeung, "In Asia Pacific, we see strong growth opportunities in
service management, telecom solutions and Windows management. We will leverage
the expertise of our system integrators to strengthen the technical knowledge of
our channel partners to help them deepen inroads in these growth sectors."

With $ 5 billion revenue from software, HP today is the fifth largest
software vendor in the world. Out of this revenue, around 10 percent come from
Asia Pacific and another 10 percent from Japan. Nearly half of the revenue comes
from channel partners.

According to Peter van der Fluit, VP (Worldwide Software Global Business
Unit), HP, India is amongst the top five countries in Asia Pacific as far as
HP's software business is concerned. Its partners in India include Wipro
Infotech, TCS, Network Solutions and Bangalore Labs.

Asim Raina

(CNS)