In a move to spur growth of its products in the service provider market, Hewlett-Packard has created a broad range of solutions, alliances and programs. A key part of the initiative calls for HP to cherry-pick partners that can provide end-to-end solutions for enterprise customers.
The new initiative is aimed at ASPs, hosting providers, next-generation carriers and CLECS, mobile services providers, and xSPs. “HP is leveraging its expertise in IP infrastructure, 3G mobility and broadband to offer xSPs new revenue and operational efficiency opportunities,” says Marco Limena, HPs worldwide marketing director for service provider solutions.
To get there, HP has crafted commission incentives for its direct sales force to sell enterprise solutions developed by HP certified service provider partners. Basically, HP is saying: Buy our hardware and software, and well sell your services to our enterprise customers. That could mean big exposure for staff-strapped service providers; HP has about 28,000 direct sales reps calling on enterprises worldwide.
Of course, the company wont slap its brand on just any old offering. “Were seeking partners who are qualified to offer end-to-end services to enterprises,” says Limena. “Were not looking for thousands of partners.” The partners that want in on the enterprise list will have to qualify.
The HP Service Provider Program includes co-selling, incentive and co-marketing programs. “Service providers face complex business pressures—from the need for a highly reliable IT infrastructure to the ability to rapidly deliver new services that instill customer loyalty and drive growth,” says Rich Raimondi, VP and general manager, HP Service Provider and Mobile Solutions Organization.
HPs Integrated Services Management (ISM) solutions include software, hardware and services that support service delivery, service assurance and billing. HP OpenView, HP Internet Usage Manager (IUM), and HP Process Manager combine with products from Cisco and Nortel to provide total management of VPN, VoIP, DSL, Web hosting and mobile computing services.
“The ISM solutions provide our customers greater visibility into the entire services life cycle, improving operational efficiencies and overall customer service,” says Sameer Padhye, VP, Solutions and Technology.
In addition, HPs e-utilica—which enables service providers to offer on-demand, pay-per-use application hosting and compute capacity services—has now been enhanced for business computing service processing.
HP is working with Nortel to provide the HP Broadband Solution framework, which offers a high-performance, integrated infrastructure to broadband service providers based upon Nortels Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node and HP software.
HP also is sponsoring a series of Broadband Media Solutions seminars to help service provider partners learn strategies to expand their product offerings.