Cisco gives HP the flick

Stuart Corner
Monday, 22 February 2010 09:32

IT Industry - Strategy

Cisco has announced that, from 30 April, HP will no longer be a Cisco Certified Channel or Global Service Alliance partner.

The move was announced in a posting in Cisco's channels blog by Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organisation, who said that in recent years the two companies' aims and objectives had diverged and that in future Cisco would compete with HP.

"Over the last few years our relationship with HP has evolved from a partner to companies with different and conflicting visions of how to deliver value to customers. Despite this shift in industry dynamics, HP had remained a Cisco Certified Channel Partner ... Given the evolution of our relationship it simply no longer makes sense to provide these benefits to HP.

"With this in mind we recently notified HP that we will not renew its system integrator contract when it expires on April 30, 2010, resulting in HP no longer being a Cisco Certified Channel or Global Service Alliance partner."

However he sought to reassure customers that there would be no disruption or degradation of their service. "Our responsibility as a leader of in the IT industry is to ensure we focus on our customers as our top priority amidst shifting industry dynamics.

"As such we have already reached out to HP to begin the discussion around a new agreement that ensures business continuity for existing customers and better reflects the current state of our relationship. We will also honour Cisco customer service contracts with HP for their duration."

Commenting on the move in a blog posting on the No Jitter web site, the Yankee Group's Zeus Kerravala said: "This is yet another sign of the increased tension between these two companies that were once great partners. In fact, the relationship was so strong that Carly Fiorina was on Cisco's board while she was HP's CEO. However, that was a long time ago and a lot has happened since then to cause this divorce to occur."

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