HP sells a very significant portion of our products and solutions through a global network of channel partners – tens of thousands of partners with hundreds of thousands of employees – in virtually every country in the world.

Reaching the individuals employed by our channel partners with timely and quality content, in local language, has been one of my greatest challenges. The problem is, it’s just not feasible for HP to personally reach every partner we want to train. We can’t ask people to travel thousands of miles and cross country borders for training, and we can’t take all the training centers on the road. Nevertheless, we must deliver a consistent, high quality learning experience for all partners, regardless of their locations, when, where and how they want it.

As we explored solving this problem, we realized that the “vehicle” for the training is less important than the actual content and skill development of the training experience. In other words, high quality HP training doesn’t have to be delivered by HP. This is the premise of the new Global HP Learning Channel.

For the past two years, we have been laying the foundation for a consistent, high quality partner education experience – no matter where in the world a partner resides. We have fostered partnerships with companies that already deliver IT training, and HP provides these companies (which we call Authorized Training Centers, or ATCs) official HP curriculum. Each ATC must meet and maintain high educational quality standards before HP allows them to provide training services on our behalf.

By offering classroom training in more locations, HP is able to reach more partners with the technical information they need to properly recommend, sell and service HP solutions. The students attending the training don’t need to travel as much or as far, saving time and money. Because many of the ATCs also deliver training for companies like Cisco and Microsoft, students taking HP training can find more of what they need in one place and have a consistent experience in their overall IT training. For HP, we are able to improve our time to market with the courses we want our partners to take. And we know that all our partners are learning from the same curriculum and materials, so we are developing a consistent set of skills worldwide.

The HP Learning Channel is allowing us to deliver the right training, in the right place, at the right time, for the right price.