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Hewlett-Packard is extending special financial deals that it put in place in January in hopes of lessening the blows of the global recession on small and midsize businesses.
The financing offers-which include zero percent financing-initially were slated to expire at the end of April. However, an HP spokesperson said April 15 that the technology vendor is extending the promotions to the end of July.
The two promotions, offered through HP Financial Services, give SMB customers the option to lease or buy technology from HP under zero percent financing.
With one deal, customers can get zero percent financing for 12 months, after which they have the option of buying the equipment for $1. At the end of the 36-month deal, customers can by the equipment at what HP officials said in January is “fair market value.”
With both plans, customers can finance between $1,500 and $150,000 of HP products.
Like other vendors, HP has been looking at a number of ways to enable customers to continue buying technology during the global recession, not only through financing but also with low-cost product offerings and new technologies designed to drive down costs while improving performance.
In March, HP rolled out a host of new products and services aimed at helping businesses prioritize their IT spending and to optimize and automate their data center resources. The offerings touched on everything from virtualization to tiered levels of service.
On March 30, HP also announced a refresh of its ProLiant servers and BladeSystem products that take advantage of Intel’s new Nehalem EP processors as well as offer cost-saving capabilities of their own.