10 Hot Money-Making Plays For HP Partners

Show Me The Money

HP held its Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas this week, with 2,000 partners representing more than $35 billion in sales looking for big new sales opportunities. HP did not disappoint, unleashing an innovation offensive with a slew of new solution offerings, channel exclusives and hot products behind the theme: "HP Means Business." Here then are 10 hot money-making plays for HP partners.

HP BYOD Networking Solution

HP's Networking unit has been winning high praise for bringing HP partners innovative products and big profits, but it outdid itself at the conference with a new BYOD solution set. The offering bridges the wired/wireless world with a single product set managed with a single platform and a software-defined networking solution that secures the wired/wireless networking environment.

"Our competitors don't have it," said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager of HP Networking. She's right. It's a unique solution that partners can wrap their own services around to make big profits.

HP StoreSystem Channel-Only Midrange Solution

Nothing makes solution providers happier than a channel exclusive in a red-hot market. That is what HP is providing partners with the new HP StoreSystem midrange solution it unveiled at the partner conference. The offering combines what may well be HP's hottest product right now -- 3Par StoreServe storage -- with HP StoreOnce backup systems. HP guarantees 50 percent less storage capacity using this offering if a customer is moving from a legacy system. One sign of just how big a money-maker this offering will be for partners is the success that solution provider Nth Generation has had selling 3Par.

"We grew our 3Par business 278 percent last year," said Nth Generation Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Rich Baldwin. "We have been winning practically every deal we are in."

HP BladeSystem c7000 Platinum Enclosure

HP promises that its new BladeSystem c7000 Platinum enclosure will yield a 68 percent savings in data center costs as a result of bringing higher efficiency to virtualized and cloud environments. The c7000 comes with advanced networking in the form of an SX1018 Ethernet switch that HP says is more than four times faster than previous switches.

HP Enterprise Group Executive Vice President Dave Donatelli calls it simply, "the latest and best blade you can buy anywhere in the world." That adds up to big profits for partners looking to deliver no-compromise cloud and virtualization solutions.

HP ProLiant SL4500

If you want proof that "HP Means Business," look no further than the HP ProLiant SL4500. It's the first server built from the ground up to perform in big data application environments. It's not often that servers get a round of applause, but this one did at the HP Global Partner Conference during Donatelli's keynote address. The SL4500 is based on new architecture and design breakthroughs that HP says requires "50 percent less space and 61 percent less power."

Donatelli said the product gives HP partners a play in the "hottest market" out there that can be combined with HP Software's Vertica analytics software.

HP ElitePad 900

HP Printing Personal Systems Executive Vice President Todd Bradley brought a big dose of product innovation when he came to HP eight years ago, leading a charge that put HP at the top of the PC market. And now he's doing it in the tablet market. The new ElitePad 900 tablet was built from the ground up for businesses with business-class security and a rugged design. The tablet is completely serviceable with jackets including a sleeve that provides 20 hours of battery life. The sleeve jackets are ideal for partners delivering specialized vertical tablet applications to real work environments. Partners looking to get the biggest profit bang for the buck should combine the ElitePad 900 with the HP BYOD networking solution, according to HP.

HP OfficeJet Pro X

HP has changed the printing market many times since it introduced inkjet and laser printers for the desktop in 1984. But OfficeJet Pro X may be its most revolutionary step forward yet as the OfficeJet Pro X brings the speed of laser printers to the ink world at half the cost of laser printer technology. Twice the speed at half the cost, is how HP describes it.

HP wowed the audience at the partner conference by not only demonstrating the OfficeJet Pro X's speed, but the ability of a printed page to withstand a soaking from a glass of water. The OfficeJet Pro is priced starting at only $449. That gives partners serving small businesses something to cheer about.

HP Autonomy

Partners looking to break into the explosive big data opportunity are embracing HP's Autonomy software offensive. The software suite gives customers the ability to drive business gain from the unstructured social data coming at businesses at lightning speed from Twitter to Facebook to YouTube. Autonomy and HP's Vertica product are opening the door for partners to sell to chief marketing officers and lines of businesses with big IT budgets who are looking to tame the social media beast, according to HP.

Mont Phelps (pictured), CEO of NWN, a national HP enterprise partner, said he is looking forward to pursuing the big data software opportunity with Autonomy. "Who doesn't get big data?" asked Phelps. "If you don't manage data and extract value from it, it is just data -- not information. You need to retrieve, manage, sort, sift and distill into actionable bits."

HP Technology Services Proactive Insight

Solution providers in the small-business market have been providing remote management and monitoring of networks for many years. Now HP Technology Services is bringing to bear its considerable intellectual property to the enterprise market with a solution called HP Proactive Insight experience. HP said its services offering is aimed at enabling customers "to take proactive actions as well as automate and manage tasks, resulting in problem prevention and productivity gains averaging $32,000 per 100 users." HP said partners can use Proactive Insight to provide services themselves or on behalf of HP. Partners that have teamed with HP Technology Services are driving big sales and profit gains.

HP Cloud Builder

Saar Gillai (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of HP's Converged Cloud business, addressed a standing-room-only crowd of partners at the Global Partner Conference. Gillai told partners they have three choices: "Be in denial. Be disrupted, or be the disrupter by embracing cloud solutions from HP." The message has been resonating with partners who like HP's "3 Cs" cloud story: "Choice, Consistency and Confidence."

The first order of business for the thousands of partners selling HP's Converged Infrastructure is to sign up for HP's Cloud Builder program, which gives them a wide range of tools and incentives including market development funds, he said. "It's a no-brainer," said Gillai.

"By 2015 cloud is going to be a $132 billion market growing at a 20 percent compound annual growth rate," he said.

HP Moonshot

Given the dramatic architectural improvement that HP is shooting for with its Project Moonshot energy-efficient computing system, the project is appropriately titled. HP's drive to reshape computing is tantamount to going to the moon. And now HP is letting partners get in on the ground floor of the Moonshot opportunity. Under a new Pathfinder program, partners can "develop and optimize their applications on the Moonshot architecture."

You could feel the awe in the room when Donatelli held up what looked like a small PC board that is the equivalent of four servers. Moonshot is a computing platform that HP promises will deliver 89 percent less energy in 94 percent less space at 63 percent less cost and 97 percent less complexity.