Since its launch in September, Hewlett Packard Co.‘s (NYSE: HPQ) managed enterprise services business unit has been focused on the enterprise market with a largely direct managed print services play. As HP looks to bring the play down into the midmarket though, channel partners will be called on to lead the way.
On a stop in Toronto last week during a worldwide media tour, Bruce Dahlgren, vice-president of the global enterprise business unit in HP’s imaging and printing group, told CDN that HP sees the channel as a huge next phase for the business unit, which was formed last September to help clients find savings by moving to a managed print services model.
“Obviously the channel is very important to us. It’s our belied this will first come out in the big enterprise, but will come down to the midmarket and the SMB,” said Dahlgren. “As we move into the SMB we’ll need to make sure we enable the channel.”
Managed print will require a change in mindset for some partners, said Dahlgren. Often channel partners act as an IT manager for their SMB clients, and he said managed print isn’t as easy as going in and saying we’ll manage your devices.
While HP hasn’t yet brought the business unit down-market, HP partners are already entering the space with their own solutions, and with solutions and support from the vendor. Lloyd Bryant, vice-president and general manager of HP Canada’s imaging and printing unit, said HP’s Canadian partners have already been diving head-first into managed print.
“In the Canadian market we’re already enabling partners to participate in managed print,” said Bryant. “We have a very significant midmarket in Canada, and we have a number of office product solution programs and some contractual SKUs to help our partners build managed print solutions for the midmarket. Their growth rate in this market is basically the same as ours.”
Bryant said strong interest in Canada is coming from the health care market, where HP just signed a major contract with the Vancouver Island Health Authority. It’s a vertical that is facing significant cost pressure, and can realize strong savings through workflow automation.Financial services is another industry with a lot of paper-based processes that is leveraging managed print and document management to streamline processes.
While HP looks to broaden its play in managed print, it will also be facing increasing competition from players such as Xerox Corp. and Dell Inc., which will be leveraging acquisition last year of Perot Systems to enter the managed print market.
While Dahlgren said HP’s respects Dell as a competitor, managed print is a challenging market and vendors can’t build a successful practice overnight.
“It’s difficult to enter a business this complex and all of a sudden say we’re a managed services company,” said Dahlgren. “We’ve been at it for four years, and it takes time to tailor the tools and solutions. We always welcome competition, it makes all of us better, but we don’t think this is an easy business to enter.”
Like Dell plans to do with Perot, HP also leverages its previous acquisition of services company EDS Corp. to build-out its managed services play. But key to HP’s success, said Dahlgren, is that is marries that services expertise with the HP technology R&D.
“The difference is we have the innovation and the control of the intellectual property, as well as one of the largest outsourcing system integrators in the world,” said Dahlgren. “Our strategy is we can pull all those pieces together, while a printer company, copier company or an SI can only come at it from one angle.”
