HP Financing Services has rolled out two different zero percent financing deals catering to SMBs for corporations in the United States and Canada. Unveiled late last week, the deals mean SMB customers can pick up selected Hewlett-Packard gear and pay for them over the course of a year with a $1 payout at the end of the lease to own the equipment outright. A longer term of up to 36 months is also available, though a fair market value - as assessed by HP - will need to be paid at the end of this lease tenure to own the equipment.

Up to $150,000 worth of products can be acquired under the above scheme, subject to standard credit approval procedures, of course.

What makes this offer attractive is the broad portfolio of computer equipment that is open to the scheme: servers, tape backup systems, network switches, laptops, and even printers and support contracts.

I think this is a very good deal for small and medium-sized businesses that are looking into acquiring additional computer hardware, yet leery of splurging out large amounts of cash upfront, given the economic climate.

Possible avenues of investment that are important even in bad times are the relevant hardware to support virtualization as well as to perform proper backups. And yes, as I wrote previously, testing backups should not be optional. IT staffers who suddenly find themselves with lower workloads might do well to invest it back to tuning and selectively upgrading existing infrastructure for when the economy rebounds.

Businesses not afflicted by the downturn and looking into performing routine upgrades of existing equipment will also benefit greatly from this scheme. After all, it is always good to have more cash on hand for any unexpected surprises.

You can get more details of the financing deal here.