HP honoured its top performing partners across Australia, as the tech giant celebrated its first year as a standalone company.
Spanning 12 categories, the hardware vendor honoured the channel across PC, print and distribution, while also recognising individual sales success.
Following an evening of high praise and celebration, Data#3 stole the show by taking home a triple crown of accolades, including the coveted HP Partner of the Year award.
The Brisbane-based IT solutions provider was also recognised as PC Partner of the Year, alongside personal appreciation for Sally Revie as Partner Sales Rep of the Year.
Meanwhile, Enigma, Triforce and Centre Com were recognised as standout Supplies, Value and SMB partners respectively, alongside honours for Computers Now, Landmark and Forum Group across Education, Print and cMPS.
In distribution, Ingram Micro took out the PC Distributor of the Year, while Synnex was crowned Print Distributor of the Year, with Kate Davis of Dicker Data acknowledged as the Distributor Sales Rep of the Year.
“It’s been an incredible year of reinvention and an incredible year to be part of the ICT industry in Australia,” HP managing director, Robert Mesaros, said.
Representing the first time HP has honoured its channel as a standalone vendor - following its split from Hewlett Packard Enterprise on November 1, 2015 - Mesaros said the tech giant has spent the past year “getting back to basics”.
“We’ve spent the past 365 days getting back to what HP does best, and that’s creating and engineering incredible technology and bringing experiences that amaze the world around us,” he said.
“Our winners really have hit the ball out of the park this year and enjoyed spectacular growth with HP.
“During the past year I’m pleased to report on how quickly we have got our collective mojo together again, and secondly, the speculator growth we have enjoyed together. Congratulations to our channel on a great year.”
Revealed following an encouraging round of global financial results for the vendor - including four per cent net revenue growth across PCs and print hardware unit revenue growth of one per cent worldwide - Mesaros emphasised to the Australian channel that both PC and print “are certainly not dead”.
And it's playing out in the numbers at a local level, with HP enjoying a sizeable market share of 29.3 per cent, 32.8 per cent and 25.2 per cent within all PC, commercial and consumer markets respectively across the South Pacific region.
Fending off rivals such as Lenovo, Apple, Dell, Acer and ASUS along the way, Mesaros said HP also continues to lead in print across the region, edging ahead through Inkjet, DesignJet and Large Format printers with 39.6 per cent, 56.4 per cent and 41 per cent market share respectively.
Off the back of such local growth, Mesaros revealed plans to open a HP Experience Centre in Sydney, showcasing the vendor’s suite of HP personal systems and printing solutions.
After opening the vendor’s first centre in Melbourne in October 2015, Mesaros said the December unveiling will allow partners to provide product demos and presentations to customers, deepening the relationship between vendor, reseller and end-user as a result.
Here’s a full rundown of the winners…
Supplies Partner of the Year - Enigma
Value Partner of the Year - Triforce
SMB Partner of the Year - Centre Com
Education Partner of the Year - Computers Now
PC Partner of the Year - Data#3
Print Partner of the Year - Landmark
cMPS Partner of the Year - Forum Group
PC Distributor of the Year - Ingram Micro
Print Distributor of the Year - Synnex
Partner Sales Rep of the Year - Sally Revie (Data#3)
Distributor Sales Rep of the Year - Kate Davis (Dicker Data)
HP Partner of the Year - Data#3
