Tech Data gearing up for HP TaaS push

Tech Data is aiming to crank up its HP business focusing on encouraging more resellers to provide technology as a service, particularly those pitching into the SME market.

HP has been pushing its Desktop as a Service option for a while and in the last week Canalys advised the channel to view the delivery model as a way of keeping hardware sales flowing. Getting more of the channel to deliver it will be the job of James Baulch, who has taken a role as business development manager for the vendor at Tech Data.

He was previously working in a similar role in the Adobe team and in that role he has been replaced by Kevin Dziaduch who will be business development manager for the software vendor.

Baulch steps into the role at a time when the distributor has been expanding on its own Technology as a Service (TaaS) message, which is being pushed hard into the SME community.

“We are also seeing high levels of interest in TaaS amongst HP resellers. A lot of businesses want to invest in a trusted brand like HP and wit TaaS, they can do that and spread the cost, which makes it easier for them to commit and easier for resellers to sell," he said.

Another opportunity that has been identified is around the deadline for support on Windows 7. Microsoft made it clear at its Inspire event this summer that it is going to start warning users from now about the deadline in January 2020 and that should also spark more hardware investments.

There are potentially more than 180m corporate devices running the OS, with plenty of those machines clocking up more than five years in age.

“There is an obvious potential here and we’ll be looking to work with HP resellers to seed and develop upgrade business over the next few months. It’s going to be a major opportunity in 2019”, said Baulch.