HP to ease 3PAR lead-time woes by adding local fab

Lead times on HP 3PAR storage kit that dogged distributors and resellers since the acquisition may not ease until the autumn, when local production in Europe comes online.

Channel partners are waiting up to eight weeks for deliveries, double the norm for HP EVAs, hindering efforts to hit quarterly rebate targets.

The 3PAR products are currently shipped from California and Texas – the pre-acquisition manufacturing sites.

But Craig Nunes, veep of storage marketing, said in a statement sent to The Reg it was building additional capacity for "the fall".

"The new 3PAR manufacturing capability will be integrated into HP’s regional value centre in the Czech Republic where other HP Enterprise Server, Storage and Networking (ESSN) products are configured for EMEA," he said.

Nunes said the goal was to run with lead times in the region of three to four weeks.

Mark Walker, director of servers and storage at Azlan, argued that demand was outstripping supply.

"It's probably more an issue for the channel to hit their quarter-end targets, rather than end users who have had projects planned for months in advance," he said.

There is a "big backlog" of orders on 3PAR to fulfill, said Jon Bunyard, director of HP ESSN at Ingram Micro.

"I hope that going forward HP will be able to improve processes and have better lead times," he said.

In unrelated news, the former HP EMEA veep of the StorageWorks division, who left this month, has become MD for EMEA at memory array vendor Violin Memory. ®