HP: Making Good On Small Business Promise?

Dave Courbanou

September 9, 2010

2 Min Read
HP: Making Good On Small Business Promise?

During the HP Americas Partner Conference earlier this year, Hewlett-Packard promised to intensify its small business focus. This week, HP made good on that promise by launching their new “Just Right IT” line of products. Calling it the “easy” solution for “micro and small businesses” to get what they need at the right price, HP is looking to upend Dell in the small business market. Does HP have a winning strategy? And where do partners fit in? Here are some perspectives.

‘Exactly what you need, at the price you need’ is a pretty attractive offer for anyone, so how does HP plan on doing it? With new server, printer, and PC products that potentially hit a customer’s sweet spot. Here’s a quick list of the hardware they’re offering:

  • HP ProLiant MicroServer: Dubbed as an energy efficient, affordable, data protection and centralization file server for companies with up to 10 employees.

  • HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-All-in-One series and HP Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-All-in-One: Printers which include HP’s ePrint and printing applications, along with HP’s claim that it’s the first “wide-format all-in-one” printer with web connectivity. These printers also allow for mobile device printing and web-printing without a PC. They’re also designed to reduce ink usage.

  • HP 500B and 505B Series Business Desktop PCs: Designed to be energy efficient “minitowers,” they come complete with energy power-saving components and easily access ports and drive bays.

  • Single Console HP Insight with Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010: Geared towards the more mid-sized businesses that need virtualized severs and storage, the System Center is designed to help with the “overprovision of IT resources”.

HP has also introduced storage and networking solutions that fit similarity into these “Just Right” categories of cost savings. In conjunction with this release, HP is also debuting their new HP Blog “367 Addison Avenue,” which includes tips and tricks from HP executives and industry experts.

For the Channel, all the aforementioned components are, as you’d imagine, available to HP channel partners and HP hopes that this will help trusted partners meet the needs of their customers better. Check out HP’s “Just Right Site” for more granular details.

HP’s Just Right IT strategy shows just how far-flung Hewlett-Packard’s business has become in recent years. In the enterprise, HP is locked in a a very public war against Oracle, IBM, Cisco Systems and Dell. And in the SMB market, former HP CEO Mark Hurd in APril 2010 said it was time to take market share away from Dell.

We’ll be watching to see if HP Just Right IT addresses that goal.

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