The once docile Dell has turned ultra-aggressive in its war with HP.

Dell staffers were confronted by Caesar's Palace security forces, as they tried to invade the HP Americas Partner Conference in Las Vegas this past week. The "highly-efficient and professional" Roman troops prevented Dell from bombarding all 1,100 HP partners with marketing material. Still, Dell felt pleased that it fed propaganda to some 800 attendees.

In the past, you'd never expect such behavior from Dell. The hardware maker was happy enough to operate in the background, avoiding a lot of the mud-slinging that splatters across the likes of HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems.

Now, however, Dell wants to give off the impression of a hip, energetic firm and even blogged (http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/03/04/48580.aspx) with pride about its HP harassment. Dell also wants to get its channel play going.

"This is playing to win and we will continue to find innovative ways to go on the offense," wrote Dell's Chief Marketing Officer Mark Jarvis.

The Dell ads centered on the company's own partner play - PartnerDirect.

"Based on the feedback from our partners, we know that features such as Deal Registration, pricing, certification paths, EqualLogic storage and no messy rebates are what has brought us tens of thousands of channel partners to-date," Jarvis wrote. " We expect those same PartnerDirect features may appeal to HP partners who got the message in Las Vegas last week."

We've placed a call into HP corporate to see just what Hurd's House thinks about this state of affairs. ®

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