Opinion
HP vs Cisco: What Does it Mean for VARs?
By Steven Burke
 HP's $2.7 billion bid to acquire 3Com ups the ante in the HP vs Cisco networking battle. And partners are likely to be caught in the cross-fire.
SPs say this is personal for both HP CEO Mark Hurd and Cisco CEO John Chambers. And it’s personal for HP and Cisco's direct sales reps working with partners on account strategy and planning. That means partners that refuse to choose to line up 100 percent behind one or the other are going to face recrimination and payback in the form of favored or unfavored treatment. Not good news, to put it mildly, particularly in a difficult economy.
Partners say they are already feeling the heat to choose one or the other in the wake of Cisco's all-out push to grab HP blade server share with the Cisco Unified Computing System and HP's all out assault to grab networking share with the HP ProCurve networking portfolio. But the 3Com deal takes it to a nuclear war level. In a post on ChannelWeb Connect, one SP complained: "I wish these two could just play nice together," he said. "They each do things well and forcing partners to choose one or the other is not smart. But I can already see this coming."
HP is lining up its sales force, and that includes partners, to take down Cisco. And it is not going to stand for any flip-flopping from HP partners looking to cross over into Cisco territory. To put it simply, HP is turning from a sales lamb into a sales lion. "The HP sales force was kind of passive before. Now they are, like the Cisco sales force, very, very aggressive," said another VAR.
The top SP executive said he sees both HP and Cisco putting the heat on partners to line up on one side or the other. "We should not be lined up by vendors, but by the unique needs of our customers," he said. "That is who we serve. We have to embrace the notion that our bread is provided by our customers. Also, how can we sustain our business if we are not multi-vendor? The efficiency of the channel is based on a multi-vendor model."
Partners' bread may be buttered by customers. But believe me, both HP and Cisco believe they butter the partners' bread—not the customers.
SPs that aren't careful are likely to be stepped on in that bruising battle between the two. |