HP CEO Mark Hurd: 17 Takeaways for Partners

At the HP Americas Partner Conference in Las Vegas, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd kept his message simple. No big, sweeping cloud or SaaS strategy. Instead, he delivered a simple nuts-and-bolts message to partners: Let’s go after profitable market share together as x86 server market trends repeat in storage and networking. Here are 17 highlights from Hurd’s keynote.

During his keynote, Hurd drove home the following points:

1. First, A Thank You: “If there’s any message I’d love you to remember, for those of you have been with us during my five-year run, I want to say thank you. It’s huge for us to have the support of the channel.” Revenue was $79 billion back in 2004 or so; pundits say HP will drive $123 billion this year — though Hurd says he isn’t endorsing that Wall Street prediction.

2. Consistent and Predictable: Those are HP’s two key objectives in the channel, Hurd said.

3. Big Crowd: 1200 channel partners registered for the conference, according to channel chief Stephen DiFranco.

4.Hitting the Road: HP will host 50 Channel Partner Roundtables in 2010, DiFranco said.

5. Channel Dollars: Got a Number? Hurd says the channel is delivering higher percentage of revenue than ever before within HP. But The VAR Guy didn’t hear him disclose the actual percentage.

6. Doubling Down on the U.S.: HP has less market share in the U.S. vs. Europe and Asia. The unspoken message: North American markets will be critical to HP’s growth strategy.

7. Market Changes Coming: The industry standard server pricing and sales trends will come to the storage and networking markets, Hurd predicted. The three silos (server, storage and networking) will converge. Hurd says servers, storage and networking cloud infrastructure will blend together.

8. Why PCs are Strategic: More than cash flow and profits, the PC business allows HP to gain economies of scale for enclosures and other equipment across desktops, servers, networking and storage, Hurd asserted.

9. Big Software Business?: Hurd says HP’s software business is now the sixth largest in the world. The VAR Guy’s reaction: Imagine if HP had properly refined and promoted OpenView for solutions providers and MSPs.

10. The Cloud: “I’m not negative on the cloud, I’m negative on the generic description,” said Hurd. The cloud doesn’t solve every problem, but Hurd sees opportunities for HP to play with its data centers.

11. Highs and Lows: HP’s win rate is too high, because the company’s proposal rate is too low. HP wins 80 percent of its bids, but needs the channel to help drive new bids — and therefore, even more wins, Hurd asserted.

12. Best Technology on the Planet?: That’s what Hurd said about 3Com. Sounds lofty — too lofty? — but this guy has a habit of making good on lofty statements…

13. Joke of the Day: “We’re getting out of the printer business,” quipped Hurd when an audience member asked about HP’s printer strategy.

“We’ve had an incredible run with managed print services,” said Hurd. Through managed print services, HP can take 25% of the cost out of a company’s ongoing printer costs over a five-year contract, Hurd asserted.

14. Printing Money: Bank of America printed 1.1 billion pages in 2009 in the U.S., Hurd said.”If you had less printers and printed more pages, that would be okay with us. I think managed print will move from Corporate America to SMB.”

15. HP in Networking: “This is not a hobby or interesting thought,” said Hurd. “The bigger issue is strategically, you have to have that IP because you’ll see more servers offering direct-connect capabilities to the network. It’s a mandate if you believe our strategy.”

16. A Shot at Cisco: “When someone tells you the world revolves around the network, check their P&L and I bet it’s because they’re in the networking business,” quipped Hurd.

17. More Than Market Share: “Gaining market share isn’t the objective, it’s the result,” said Hurd. “Growing profitably is the objective.”

Bonus: Hurd said HP’s product “portfolio is better than our performance.” The implication: Hurd believes HP can drive revenues and profits even higher, if the company executes better and becomes easier with which to do business.

The VAR Guy continues his coverage of HP Americas Partner Conference today, before heading to Cisco Partner Summit tonight.

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