New HP VP: Growing Accenture Business A Colossal Opportunity

David Roberts, the 24-year channel veteran taking charge of Hewlett-Packard's worldwide alliance with Accenture, said HP's all-out offensive to grow its sales footprint with the $30 billion systems integration giant represents a massive opportunity.

"It is millions and millions and millions of dollars," said Roberts, the HP Enterprise Group Vice President of the Worldwide Accenture Alliance, in an interview with CRN. "It is a huge opportunity. What we are doing is looking at how to reach the 300,000-plus people inside Accenture with a focus on helping them decrease the sales cycle and, most importantly, increase the deal size."

Roberts' new job overseeing the relationship between HP, the world's largest system/infrastructure provider, and the No. 3 company on the CRN SP500 comes after successful stints growing channel sales for a number of high-profile vendors, including Microsoft, McAfee, CA and Websense.

[ Related: Channel Veteran Roberts Joins HP Enterprise Group As VP ]

That hard-earned channel expertise has culminated in a job overseeing a more than 20-year partnership consisting of a global team of in excess of 31,000 HP skilled professionals at Accenture -- focused on more than 2,000 customers in a broad range of industries with HP enterprise offerings around enterprise resource planning (ERP), cloud, security and big data. The alliance even includes an Accenture Innovation Center to develop joint solutions in Accenture's Tampa, Fla., facility.

Among the top areas Roberts will oversee are the sales effort around the HP-SAP-HANA Solution-as-a-Service and HP cloud offerings. "We are looking at sales motions and how to develop the proper sales cadence," said Roberts. "From a tactical standpoint, we are doing a unified pipeline review biweekly."

Roberts, who created the global enterprise partner group for software giant Microsoft starting in 1990, compared the energy and excitement in the wake of the planned split of HP into two to Microsoft's explosive growth period in the mid 90s.

"I am as excited now as I was back [for Microsoft] in 1995, when we went on to take the world by storm beating Netscape [in the Internet browser market]," said Roberts, a one-time 12-year Microsoft veteran who drove Microsoft's partner investment strategy during one of that company's most successful periods. "That's what HP feels like to me."

Roberts reports to HP Enterprise Group Executive Vice President Mike O'Neill.

"I have known David for over 15 years, having first worked with him when he managed the Alliance portfolio for the Microsoft Enterprise Partner group," wrote O'Neill in an email to CRN. "I have followed his career that has included building and managing high growth channel and partner organizations as well as successfully building out a consulting business delivering industry leading best practices for sales and sales management. We are fortunate to have brought David into the HP Alliances organization. His expertise and experience are the right fit, at the right time to drive the acceleration of the HP Accenture business."

Roberts, for his part, said he is impressed by the breadth and depth of the channel talent within HP, the channel commitment of the company, starting with HP CEO Meg Whitman, and an innovation renaissance that has the company well-positioned for the future. "When you look at the HP technology portfolio and services, and the channel commitment, I just don't think it can get any better for the channel partners," he said.

PUBLISHED JAN. 9, 2015