HP to have new certification initiative for VARs

New York

Sepetember 3rd, 2007

After having committed itself to make a fundamental shift from 'printers to
printing', global IT major Hewlett-Packard is all set to roll out a new
certification initiative directed towards the value added reseller (VAR)
community, globally. As part of this initiative, billed as the HP Certified
Partner Program, the company will provide certification on three levels of
optimizing infrastructure, managing environments and improving workflow for its
VARs.

"We are aiming at expanding the capabilities of our SMB customers. There
is a huge opportunity for us, as well as our partners, in this segment. We will
be rolling out this certification program in about a month's time. We already
have a big global community of VARs, solution providers and system integrators
that we closely work with. So, once we roll this out, we would be looking at
having close to 2000 VARs for this certification, globally," informed Bruce
Dahlgren, Senior VP-Global Enterprise Business, HP.

As the company is mobilizing effort towards addressing the overall printing
business in a different way, certification initiatives like this will become
importantly significant in order to have the whole reseller ecosystem work for
the company, and also manage this change in an efficient manner.

Speaking about this fundamental shift that the company is making, Cathy
Lyons, Senior VP-Strategic Change Management, Imaging and Printing Group, HP
said that there is a fundamental shift happening at the company today.
"This is a fundamental shift for us. We have taken a comprehensive view of
the market dynamics in this business. This is all about addressing this segment
in terms of 'pages' and not in terms of just the 'hardware'. We know that
digital technology disrupts analog technology, markets shift. However, at the
same time it also gives birth to new ideas and new companies get born," she
added.

Talking about the SMB focus for the company, Lyons said that SMB is today one of
the most important segments when it comes to addressing printing and is fuelling
most of the commerce activity. "There is a huge opportunity in front of us.
The overall hardware and software market opportunity is more than $ 300 billion
for this segment and SMB is right in the middle of it," she added.

(The author was hosted in New York by HP)