HP is holding “multiple daily conversations” with its channel partners to keep them appraised of the current supply chain crisis, its UK boss has stressed.
On an earnings call in February, HP’s Interim CEO Bruce Broussard said he expected rising DRAM and NAND prices to fuel volatility “throughout fiscal 2026 and likely into fiscal 2027”.
Memory shortages have already prompted the likes of HPE and Cisco to narrow their price protection windows and begin reserving the right to raise prices post-PO.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, HP’s UK&I MD Ruth Patterson confirmed that HP is continuing to offer 30-day price protection on project quotes.
“The ultimate priority is communication and we are in multiple daily conversations with the channel partners, our distributors and our end customers,” said Patterson, who was appointed to her role last February.
“Datacentre growth has driven significant growth in demand for some key chipsets and components, and we’ve been working with our global organisations, strategic silicon providers and alliance teams for a significant time.
“We’re are helping [channel partners] make choices. Sometimes it’s about how to optimise what they have with, for example, a certain CPU, while others are looking at how they broaden some of their silicon choices.
“This is an ongoing situation, certainly for the remainder of the year.”
Focus on Future of Work
Patterson picked out HP’s Future of Work initiative as her key priority for the rest of 2026, alongside security.
“Future of Work is the one where we have the broadest breadth and depth of portfolio in the industry,” she said.
“If you look at our print, PCs, services, software, solutions, performance and compute, how do we continue to optimise that total portfolio with our partners? There are some that could be a higher percentage PC, but there’s an opportunity for print, and vice versa.”
“How do we make sure we elevate the importance of security and what HP offers there? We have the global security headquarters based in Cambridge and Bristol for HP, and we’ve been doing a lot of work with our channel partners sharing how HP offers leading-edge security solutions.”
Broussard in February revealed that AI PCs accounted for over 35% of HP’s PC shipments in its fiscal Q1, up from 30% and 25% in the two previous quarters.
“Almost every PC that’s coming out now is ultimately an AI-enabled PC – the trajectory is significant,” Patterson said.
“We’re doing a significant amount of training and education in the channel partners and customers to make sure they’re feeling more comfortable using AI and the different tools out there.
“Channel partners are using AI to really simplify some of their processes now, [for example] in how they’re able to respond to more quotes than ever before. It’s not just the IT professionals now. We’re hearing it across different areas of use cases.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
