In a statement, Cisco said that it will not renew HP’s reseller contract when it ends in April, citing increased competition between the two in the data centre sector.
HP had been a strong partner for Cisco, but with the announcement of Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) data centre offerings in November, and HP’s purchase of 3Com, Cisco decided that it wanted to terminate the relationship.
Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of Cisco’s worldwide partner organisation said in a statement: “Being a Cisco Certified Channel Partner has numerous benefits including access to proprietary information (such as product roadmaps) and partner profitability initiatives. Given the evolution of our relationship it simply no longer makes sense to provide these benefits to HP.”
The two companies have said they will continue to support existing customers.
Ovum analysts Adam Jura and Jens Butler said that the major winners will be Cisco’s other major partners.
“In the cold light of day, it appears that HP needs Cisco more than Cisco needs HP, with the 3Com acquisition expected to still take some time to be completely integrated. In addition, the QLogic partnership expansion will also demand substantial time and effort to fully cascade through and convert into real business opportunity,” said Ovum.
“Conversely, Cisco will need to be able to have better business value conversations with clients, as HP has been clearly superior in this area. With this change in direction, Cisco will still require someone to implement its products going forward. Hence, the major winners out of this will be the remaining partners, in particular Dimension Data (incorporating Datakraft), which is continuing to impress in its performance in the Cisco products and solutions implementation space. In light of Cisco’s strategy of enabling versus competing against partner services offerings, expect, in particular, DiData to be blessed with more attention from Cisco going forward,” the statement concluded.