Finding HP Server Margin

Tired of your HP Server quotes pricing out at nearly 2x your Dell pricing?  If you're new to HP server procurement, or you just hate doing procurement in general and are struggling to figure out how to resell hardware competitively... your first step is figuring out where the hidden margin is.  I know what you're thinking... it would be great if, as a small or mid-sized reseller, you had an HP rep like your Dell rep - who can just figure it all out for you (but would they be looking out for your best interests?).  If you're reading this, you probably don't have such a rep, and you probably already know that it can be challenging to resell HP hardware.  So assuming for a moment that it makes sense for you to resell it, one of the best ways I've found to uncover the margin on HP hardware is this...

Start with a base config that already is known-good.  Meaning, you have the chassis, RAM, drives, the RAID controller, etc... all of the right part numbers.  This might sound obvious, but search on the root part-number to start with...

For example, if you're looking for an HP 146GB 15k part number... say, "652605-B21", search on the root part-number "652605" first, so you get all of the matches (obvious, right?).  Then, if you want to narrow it down to SmartBuys... I've found that searching for the "S21" part is a better tactic than searching for the term "Smartbuy".  For instance, "652605-S21" will find any SmartBuys that may exist.  That way, when you go to place you're order you'll sure you're getting the best price with that distributor.  This is true for TechData, CDW, and the like... but it's not always the case when searching other resellers like say, Amazon.

(Since we're on the topic of HP SAS hard drives, you might want to check out Amazon.com... the affiliate inventory information is obviously not as good as what you'll see on TechData, but they frequently have better drive pricing on drives than you can get with other distributors).