New ProCurve boss talks up enterprise
Tim Lohman (ARN) 08 December, 2004 11:15
Bluechip Infotech
Wholesale IT
HP's networking division, ProCurve, has appointed a new channels manager for the Asia-Pacific and Japan.
Gwen Quynh Le, formerly the product marketing manager for HP-UX Business Continuity Solutions, will be based in Singapore and responsible for leading the vendor's channel move into the enterprise space.
While the Chinese and Australian markets offered the most potential for the company, ProCurve would aim to create growth across the whole region through expanding its elite partner numbers, Le said.
"As we have expanded our product and solutions portfolio over the last few years, we want to increase our penetration of the enterprise market," she said. "To do that we need to attract more elite partners in Australia and other regions."
To enrich the fold of high-end partners, ProCurve had recently launched its Elite Service Advantage Program, Le said.
"Currently, HP partners sell their own services, but with the Service Advantage program, they can deliver HP branded services as well," she said. "This will increase recurring business for our partners. We can also supply support like a higher priority in our help hotline and marketing collateral designs and configuration."
While elite partners were at the heart of ProCurve's regional plans, the company was also working on improving initiatives for its second-tier partners, Australian country manager for ProCurve, Gurkirat Singh, said.
"We are working on a program called the Focus Partner Program where we select 20-30 partners who will receive investment and support from ProCurve on the basis that they will make a similar level of commitment to sell ProCurve in the market," he said.
Singh said while many second tier partners wanted to move to the services side of the business, opportunities were limited.
"The service advantage program requires thorough expertise on the network side like pre-sales network analysis, network design, postsale installation, confirmation and tuning of the network performance," he said. "Smaller, second-tier partners are not in a position to this, so we are reliant on a corporate kind of reseller to not only provide those services, but also for total coverage."
ProCurve had experienced Q2 year-on-year growth in Australia of 300 per cent, Singh said. The vendor was hoping for a more modest 35 per cent for the second half of the year.