Channel Beat: HP CEO Whitman Fires Shots At Dell, VCE

/**/ /**/

In this week’s top stories, HP CEO Meg Whitman is calling out Dell’s failure to turn over the 200,000 channel partners it promised last year.

Whitman sat down with CRN, and called the broken pledge the ’kiss of death.’ Whitman was quick to draw a comparison between HP and Dell. Seventy-five percent of HP’s current sales go through the channel, while channel sales only account for about one-third of Dell’s global revenue.

Cheryl Cook, vice president of Dell global channels and alliances, described Whitman’s attitude as ’grasping at straws.’ Cook pointed to double-digit percentage growth in the second quarter.

Whitman also said HP has the advantage over EMC and Cisco, whose VCE joint venture saw major changes this week.

VCE will officially become an EMC business, after weeks of speculation about the splintering relationship between Cisco and EMC. Cisco’s stake will drop from 35 percent in the company to about 10 percent. EMC’s ownership stake will rise to about 90 percent.

VCE says it will continue offering Vblock systems despite the changes.

Apple once again beat Wall Street expectations for its fourth-quarter earnings, posting a 12.4 percent jump in revenue.

Apple sold more than 39 million iPhones in the quarter, thanks to its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Those sales offset falling iPad sales, which were down 13 percent from the fourth quarter of last year. iPad sales have dropped for three straight quarters.

CEO Tim Cook said he expects IBM and Apple’s enterprise-focused apps will be ready to launch at the beginning of November.

PUBLISHED OCT. 24, 2014