VARBusiness 500 CEOs Weigh In On Fiorina's Departure

We asked some of our most knowledgeable solution providers from the VARBusiness 500 for their reactions to the news of HP CEO Carly Fiorina's departure and what they thinks it means for the channel.

Sick of the Flip-Flop
Bob Venero, chief executive of Future Tech Enterprise (VAR500 No. 355): "We're excited to see who her replacement will be and how they will feel about the channel. Yesterday, it was flip-flop, depending on what was good for HP's business. It has not been great for us. There have been a lot of fears [about HP's channel strategy] that are now gone -- replaced by the fear of the unknown.

"As a stockholder, I'm happy. Now, I'm also interested in seeing what they will do from an account-management perspective. They have not done a good job in terms of coverage. I've had four account changes on one of my national accounts. That's not just a New York account. I hope they will bring additional resources to us and the channel."

HP Needed a Fall Gal
Sean Burke, chief executive of GovPlace (VAR500 No. 442): "My first reaction when I heard the news about Carly is that someone had to take the blame. She's a target and not necessarily the problem. Now, they can fix whatever the problems were internally and blame it on her. They want to make the stockholders think it was her fault.

"The problem was that they never properly allocated sales-team and channel [resources] ... and it was just a matter of time before it caught up with them. There was no channel organization. They were constantly making changes. Some of them would work, some wouldn't. It's taking a lot longer than they want shareholders to believe. We know that for a fact, from being a partner. For example, we recently had a storage opportunity. For one deal to get a product fulfilled, they had to go through 15 different people."

HP Would Have To Move Mountains To Get Helio Back
Dave Condensa, chief executive of Helio Solutions (VAR500 No. 325): "Her strategy, HP's strategy, was a complete turn-off to us -- that lack of focus on the channel and all the margin pressure. The value of being an HP partner has all but disappeared, and so has our relationship with HP. But what that has done is given us the focus to [pursue] this big refresh that is going on with other vendor partners. It's going great. At this point, we don't really have much to do with them. It would take [moving] mountains for a new CEO to get back our business."