Mark Quiroz, director of sales strategy and channels, global enterprise business, for Hewlett-Packard's Imaging and Printing Group, discusses the opportunities and challenges solution providers face as they transition from transaction-based business models to managed print services (MPS).

Q: My impression is that there's still a segment of the channel population that remains comfortable just selling hardware or that doesn't understand how to make the transition to managed print services.

A: I would echo that. We're at an interesting inflection point in the industry with the convergence of the copier and the printer worlds, which creates a lot of pain as well as an opportunity to look at the space differently. At the same time, we see the migration of customers now looking to buy [printing resources] on a contractual arrangement based on usage versus owning the asset. You see that rippling through the channel. It's coming not only from large corporations but also from the midmarket. The challenge is that there is so much complexity in printing environments because now there are two sets of stakeholders making decisions - the facilities and the IT departments.

Q: What about business managers? Do they understand managed print services?

A: The business units are saying, "We need to be productive, find ways to speed up our business, solve workflow issues. Don't forget about us." All of this creates an opportunity that customers can see for getting their printing costs under control. Most customers don't understand how much they spend on printing and copying. I use the term, "the plankton of the IT food chain." The printer environment is the last area to consolidate and get under control.

Q: What resources do you offer solution providers to help them make that transition to MPS?

A: We've developed a new program called the Office Printing Channel Program. Within that we've developed two specializations. One is called Office Printing. The other is Office Printing Solutions. We want to help migrate partners toward the message we developed within the enterprise, which is "optimize the infrastructure, manage the environment and improve workflow." In the office printing space, that's where traditional VARs would move from just that transactional sale to some standard solutions for the product to start driving more value for customers.

One of the differentiators that we've been working on is how can we give these partners the capability to start dabbling in the contractual space, while knowing that they may not currently have all the servicing capabilities that are required. So we have a program called Smart Printing Services, which enables VARs to sell those contractual relationships to their customers and then HP provides the service on their behalf. The reality is that we'd like to move them up so they can provide the service. As these boxes become more and more commoditized, the ability to wrap them with additional value in the services area is going to be critical.

This is an interim step to allow them to see the benefit of the contractual relationship. They can then start seeding the investment to develop their own services so they can graduate to the next specialization, which is the Office Printing Solutions approach. In that space, we're looking at partners that can come in with their own differentiated service value that they wrap around our products.

Q: What types of companies are you now targeting for the Office Printing Solutions program?

A: The independent copier dealers have been operating for a long time in this space, and they have a well-developed services capability and business model around managing the copiers. We want to migrate them into distributed printing and have them start looking at managing the print fleet as an incremental opportunity.

Q: One of the perceptions about managed print services among some end users is that it's a way for vendors to lock them into a particular brand. How prevalent is that thinking?

A: I can't say that I've heard a huge amount of that. Some customers are less willing to go down the MPS route than others, for various reasons, not just the fear of getting locked into one vendor. But if that's a concern, the reality is that the cost savings alone outweigh the potential risk. The challenge for end users is how to really understand their environment. For end users, [managed print services] are actually empowering because employing them can help users understand what they are spending and what it will take to control this environment. The position we've been taking with managed print services is: If you want to take control of your environment, we want to be there to support you, whether you want to manage it or whether you want us to manage that. And when I say "us," I include partners.