Recently, in a Partner Conference held in America, Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ) chalked out strategies to help boost its partners’ profitability in the cloud and connectivity space.
At the conference, HP’s new chief executive officer Leo Apothekar recollected the agenda that was discussed in its Strategy Summit, held earlier this month. In the summit, the HP chief had asserted the convergence of cloud computing and mobile connectivity. (Please see: Takeaways from HP’s Strategy Summit)
HP has been assembling its cloud portfolio over the last few months and is now offering its partners a program, which can be used to make money through its broad range of cloud-based products. In its Partner Conference, HP unveiled the CloudSystem Partner Program, which includes tools that partners can use to develop cloud skills and their own cloud-based business models. Management believes that its partners play a vital role in building and delivering cloud solutions to customers.
Channel partners will be able to excel in their cloud practices through Cloud Centers of Excellence demonstration sites, the Cloud Enablement program, training, PartnerONE incentives and cloud professional services, hosted by HP. The tech behemoth believes that the program will allow channel partners to tap the market opportunity, which according to its internal research, will grow to $143.0 billion by 2013.
Another area of focus for HP management is the mobile segment. HP announced that it will be providing new benefits and rewards to partners selling webOS solutions. The company believes that this will enable its partners to drive growth in the $26.4 billion Americas commercial mobility market.
We are interested to see how HP’s cloud strategy works out. We believe that the success of the new partner program will act as a catalyst for HP’s growth, going forward. The mobile segment is bound to be extremely competitive and webOS has its work cut out.
Apart from this, we remain encouraged with HP’s leading position in both PC and Server segments. But intense competition from other big technology companies, such as Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), as well as smaller Asian players keeps us concerned.
Currently, HP has a Zacks #3 Rank, which translates into a short-term Hold recommendation.
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