HP honors top APAC channel partners

CHEJU ISLAND, South Korea: In a move to accelerate its channel strategy and strengthen its commitment to channel partners, HP today honored the winners of its second Asia Pacific Software Olympics held at Cheju Island in South Korea. Presented annually to HP's top channel partners in the Asia Pacific region, the Software Olympics awards recognize channel partners for their excellent sales, marketing and technical performance.

"In this challenging business climate where it is imperative to offer value-added solutions at competitive price points, our channel partners with their domain expertise are crucial to our software strategy," said Steve Au-Yeung, GM (Software Global Business Unit, Enterprise Systems Group) - Asia Pacific, HP.

"In addition to increasing our investments in partner training and marketing, we will adopt a solutions-centric approach with the long term aim of bringing profitability to our partners and value to our customers", he added.

The channel partners who got the award include Wipro Infotech from India, EMS from Australia, Digital China from China, JOS Distribution from Hong Kong, Space ITS from South Korea, HPD Systems from Malaysia, and Tech D&I Co from South East Asia (excluding Malaysia and Singapore).

Added Au-Yeung, "In Asia Pacific, we see strong growth opportunities in service management, telecom solutions and Windows management. We will leverage the expertise of our system integrators to strengthen the technical knowledge of our channel partners to help them deepen inroads in these growth sectors." With $ 5 billion revenue from software, HP today is the fifth largest software vendor in the world.

Out of this revenue, around 10 percent comes from Asia Pacific and another 10 percent from Japan. Nearly half of the revenue comes from channel partners. According to Peter van der Fluit, VP (Worldwide Software Global Business Unit), HP, India is amongst the top five countries in Asia Pacific as far as HP's software business is concerned. Its partners in India include Wipro Infotech, TCS, Network Solutions and Bangalore Labs.