As HP New Zealand’s nationwide partner tour of the country gathers pace, the tech giant’s overriding message to the channel community remains crystal clear.

“We’re looking to drive more business through our channel partners,” said Cedric Edwards, National Channel Manager – Enterprise Group, HP New Zealand.

HP’s local enterprise group has active channel partners across the country doing business on its behalf, resulting in an increasing level of business value coming via the channel market.

Echoing the official partner noises coming out of Palo Alto, HP New Zealand’s commitment to the channel is stronger than ever, in truth, partners are the centre of everything the company does.

But more importantly for partners, as explained at the 12 partner events across the country, HP is investing in where the market is going, not where it has been before.

“To say we’re about to see a major change in the IT industry would be wrong, the market and industry has already changed,” adds Edwards, speaking at the company’s Auckland event.

As IT departments continue to come under increasing pressure to meet the immediate demands of mobility, applications everywhere and access, Edwards admits such challenges are weighing heavily on the people HP does business with.

The impatient desire by users and the business for instant access to solutions, hardware, software, business applications or specific web services, make it clear that businesses face an on-going struggle with the changing world of IT.

“Shadow IT is accelerating at a huge rate as businesses look to buy services because the IT department can’t deliver them in time and this impacts the entire Partner community. This is a challenge for HP also,” adds Edwards, who told a packed partner audience that the major driver of change is mobility.

Driven by the digital revolution, the IT market is transforming at an astonishing pace, and for HP and Edwards, to keep up with such change, businesses need to act fast.

To do this, businesses need to transform to take advantage of this change and IT needs to keep pace and look to remove the obstacles such as unsustainable data center architectures. So what’s HP doing about it?” asks Edwards.

The answer; The New Style of IT driven by Converged Infrastructure.

The growing need for capacity and performance increases the requirement for power, and subsequently cooling, and the pace of business requires solutions to be delivered and operational as quickly as possible.

“We’re bringing a range of products to market which are completely integrated across compute, storage, software and networking and factory, pre-tuned to deliver the highest performance and shortest implementation times.

"In addition, they deliver the highest TCO due to the work HP has done in minimising power and cooling overhead,” adds Edwards, alluding to HP’s unrivalled work in data center convergence.

New Partner Portal

Set to be rolled out in the coming months, Edwards says HP’s new Partner Portal will bring a modern experience for the company’s partners across New Zealand.

Designed from the ground up by partners, the portal will initially go live for all PartnerOne Platinum, Gold and Silver partners, offering a fresh and improved experience for all partner interactions with HP.

“The feedback from partners currently using the portal has been extremely positive,” says Edwards.

“HP works with distributors, resellers and alliance partners around the world.

"In New Zealand, the HP roadshow helps demonstrate that partners have the opportunity to take advantage of the industry’s broadest, most integrated product line in the market, coupled with over 40 years of experience.”

As the company continues its partner roadshow in 12 locations across the country, HP’s level of commitment to the channel appears stronger than ever.

To sign up for the remaining HP Partner Events click here.

HP Storage

A natural progression from the globally successful MSA Storage family, HP also delved into the finer details of its latest storage products heading to market – in the form of the MSA 1040 and StoreEasy.

“The MSA 1040 is helping further accelerate HP’s growth within the storage industry,” says Paul Reilly, Product Manager – Storage, HP South Pacific.

Whether businesses require best-in-class performance or are looking to get the most capacity for their investment, Reilly says MSA covers all bases, and in the form of 1040 – entry consolidation and virtualisation initiatives are now within budgetary reach.

Key benefits of MSA 1040 include:

• Simple: Flexible architecture. Easy to set-up. Easy to manage

• Affordable: More capacity / performance within budget constraints

• Fast: Delivering increased performance

• Futureproof: Built-in expandability along with an MSA 2040 upgrade optionAlluding also to HP’s fully refreshed StoreEasy Storage, Reilly told partners HP’s revamped product portfolio brings greater optimisation, efficiency and security within the storage space.

“Selling HP Storage is easier than ever,” Reilly adds, claiming there is plenty of SMB opportunity within the market.