HP Launches SMB Central for Partners, Non-Partners Alike
The VAR Guy is always interested in hearing about ways vendors are helping their partners tap new market opportunities. The SMB space, in particular, is full of opportunities. HP is well-aware of the $57 billion market, and has launched its SMB Central portal to help partners feast on the bounty. Here are the details …
Essentially, SMB Central is a way for smaller partners to get mindshare with HP and take advantage of the new opportunities that crop up daily in the small-to-medium-business space, said Meaghan Kelly, HP’s VP of channel strategy and SMB Americas. HP was happy with the existing PartnerOne partner program, she said, but there was no real entry point for VARs serving smaller customers to work with HP.
Hence, SMB Central. “New and small partners can come in and have an easy way to find out what the current new offerings are,” Kelly said. “We will be offering all of our products,” from the channel perspective, including HP’s new webOS lineup.
SMB Central is free to join, and, it’s not limited to HP partners, a differentiator The VAR Guy finds rather refreshing. “We’d like any SMB partner, with or without HP, to have a place to come find the low-hanging fruit.”
It’s an interesting move by HP to offer information to non-HP partners. The VAR Guy can only assume HP is looking for converts. After all, SMB Central is designed to showcase HP’s solutions as much as possible.
VARs can use the SMB Central site to push information onto their own website, providing a way to brand themselves, of sorts. Kelly noted HP has a tight linkage with distributors for immediate fulfillment of demand, should VAR find themselves bursting with sales. For the apprehensive or curious visitor, SMB Central features a concierge desk that lets a user — either by text or video — talk to a live person. (We know you know, The VAR Guy loves video.)
Come April, HP hopes to have a rich collaboration tool for partners to talk to each other, do P2P networking, and even have real-time dialogues with industry experts and key HP employees. Webcasts are slated to follow.
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