News

HP’s yearly channel confab returns in person, but hybrid is king

At the HP Amplify Executive Forum, executives from across HP’s businesses illuminate the company’s big bets for the future.

By Sarah Murry — September 1, 2022

Last week, HP welcomed back key channel partners and media for its first in-person roadshow in three years. The HP Amplify Executive Forum kicked off a three-city-tour in Palo Alto near HP’s headquarters before jetting off to Dubai and Amsterdam. It’s where HP leaders share their vision for the company’s big bets: Hybrid work, gaming, and the rise of digital services; bolstered by a slew of new consumer and business products and its acquisition of Poly, a provider of video conferencing solutions, cameras, headsets, voice and software.

Energy was high and attendees buzzed at every keynote, fireside chat, and breakout session led by featured speakers from across the HP leadership bench, including president and CEO Enrique Lores, and the top brass from the Personal Systems, Printing, Commercial, Supply Chain and Sustainability business groups.

HP Amplify Executive Forum attendees walking into a session

The HP Amplify Executive Forum kicked off a three-city tour last week with stops in Palo Alto, Dubai, and Amsterdam.

Lores’ keynote showcased HP’s commitment to helping its business partners and their customers navigate the hybrid work world.

“Hybrid isn’t going anywhere. People are going to continue to work from home, and from the office,” Lores said to the crowd. “I don’t know of any company that has convinced their employees that they need to be back in the office five days per week. And this is a tremendous opportunity for us, for our devices, and for new services.”

RELATED: Why the desktop PC is making a comeback

HP’s workforce solutions, peripherals, and new devices were among the top newsmakers at the event with the newest addition to the award-winning Elite Dragonfly lineup nabbing headlines. The Dragonfly Folio G3, which HP’s president of Personal Systems Alex Cho called a “portable office,” features a unique hinge that enables its screen to pull forward to be angled like a tent over the keyboard for video chats, folded into a tablet for media viewing, or used like a regular laptop.

Early reviewers have called it “the most innovative PC of 2022,” and that it “sets the bar for ‘collaborative thinkers.’” Others touted its exceptional battery life, generously-sized trackpad, and face-centering, high-resolution webcam.

While the PC is still central to hybrid work, Cho emphasized, but now consumers and employees expect great experiences, regardless of where they do their jobs. “This changing way of working means we have to focus on much more than the PC,” he said. “Our north star is delivering the best experiences for a modern hybrid world.”

HP's CEO giving a speech at the HP Amplify Executive Forum

Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores addresses media and channel partners, sharing HP's strategic vision for growth.

For HP, that means offering them peripheral devices, software, and digital services to improve workforce productivity; and provide enterprise customers with better visibility, insights, security, and manageability across their hybrid IT environments.

“Peripherals are a tremendous growth opportunity,” said Cho. “In a more digital world, peripherals make computing experiences more immersive, real, and tangible.”

For partners, it’s an opportunity to capitalize on the increased demand for everything from subscription services that take the pain out of printing for consumers and small businesses to home-office setups to conference-room equipment for office meeting spaces. Currently, there are more than 90 million of these rooms, of which less than 10% have video capability, according to Frost & Sullivan’s State of the Global Video Conferencing Devices Market report. As a result, the office meeting room solutions segment is expected to triple by 2024, the report showed.

While workforce solutions and peripherals may enhance hybrid work, HP’s OMEN lineup of gaming PCs and accessories is on the rise, according to Kobi Elbaz, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s Global Channel Organization.

“The demographics of gamers has changed a lot over the past few years,” he said, adding that gaming is truly mainstream entertainment. “When you are a gamer, your number one objective is to win — you want the best gear,” he explained. “Gaming is no longer just about the PC itself, it’s the entire ecosystem.”

HP executives sitting on stage together at the HP Amplify Executive Forum

From left to right: George Brasher, SVP and GM, Printing Category; Alex Cho, President of Personal Systems, Ernest Nicolas, Chief Supply Chain Officer; Luciana Broggi, acting Chief Commercial Officer; Enrique Lores, Chief Executive Officer; and Kobi Elbaz, SVP & GM, Global Channel Organization

HP showed off its first foray into gaming monitors with the HyperX Armada lineup, which are bundled with an adjustable arm rather than a traditional stand. This enables gamers to customize their rigs with multiple monitors in different configurations to suit their style of play, such as this reviewer who prefers them stacked vertically instead of side-by-side. The Armada follows on the heels of two new HyperX peripherals that have garnered praise, the Cloud Alpha Wireless gaming headset and the DuoCast microphone.

HP leadership also hammered home the importance of the company’s sustainability initiatives, positioning its ambitious climate goals as critical to its strategy. Achieving them has to be a cooperative effort, said chief sustainability officer James McCall. HP hasn’t shied away from tackling issues such as minimizing deforestation, plastic pollution in waterways, and greenhouse gas emissions, McCall said.

“We’re working on Earth-sized problems,” he said. “I’d like to get to the point where we are mining our waste streams as much as we are mining the planet.”

He noted that HP has prioritized circularity, bolstering its takeback and recycling programs even during the pandemic, tallying more than a million PCs and nearly a billion ink cartridges collected to date. He said that more partners than ever have joined HP’s Amplify Impact program, which reaches some 10,000 partners across 43 countries since the initiative launched last year.

“Winning at sustainability is a team sport,” McCall said. “We need all of our channel partners, suppliers, and customers to be engaged.”

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HP’s yearly channel confab returns in person, but hybrid is king

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