Whilst they sell more units in the Server Market (Blade and otherwise) the quality of support has gone down the toilet, that is remote and field support as they have outsourced heavily in order to cut costs.

Pathetic.

I fear that a lot of traditional HP server buyers will be moving to other vendors due to the worsening support. HP's laid off 15,000 employees and it shows in the field. Outsourcing this to VARs who have to contend with knowing thousands of products is not the ideal for a customer. From a blades perspective, HP has a solid box - much better than the junk from IBM - but we'll know very shortly if the new Dell blades are the real thing.

When a company is run by spreadhseet, they are willing to toss out the very people who are IN THE PROCESS of making growth possible. HP is canning Blade and x86 Server Sales Specialists who are the very ones responsible for the 91% growth. When was the last time you saw an HP-badged Systems Engineer ??

By focusing on the top-tier accounts and leaving the rest to the channel and outsourced support HP risks losing the critical mid-market where the growth is. They would rather hire inexperienced (cheap) help while jettisoning experienced knowledgeable employees who are costly to maintain.

Ultimately, the customer, if they get ANY love from HP will get it from out-of-college Spanish majors who work for peanuts and know next-to-nothing.

Hopefully, they will give some support to the VARS who are expected to fill the void. Only time will tell.

Isn't the third calendar quarter HP's fiscal year end? I know it is Sun's first quarter, and I think IBM's fiscal year is linked to calendar year.

This explains a lift in HP numbers and a decline in Sun numbers as much as the Q2 numbers would show a lift in Sun's numbers or a Q4 report would likely show strong IBM results an poor HP results.

I work for a VAR in the South. After the umteenth rounds of redundancies the support offered to our customer base via the carepack is to be honest is shite!

I've been in the channel for over 10 years and had really good relationship with Compaq. As Compaq had with the channel. None of the sneeky going (or trying)direct behind your back like HP does.

Current HP board just don't really care about the level of service they give to the channel or end customers. Long gone are the days of the escalation contact number for Channel Partners to speak to an engineer whose 1st language was english.

The presales support we used up in Scotland have all been laid off and outsourced to Bulgaria!!!

I get more sense out of my local curry house than speak to the clowns in Bangalore.

Why o why did Compaq sell out to HP??? What a nightmare come back Cappelas