What was the HP2-B109 exam?
HP2-B109 was a web-based sales exam in HP’s ExpertONE certification program. HP’s documentation for this specific code was not preserved, so its exact title cannot be verified. However, every archived exam in the HP2-B series is an HP Sales Certified exam covering printing and personal systems: HP2-B115 was Selling HP Printing and Personal Systems Hardware, HP2-B120 was Selling HP EMEA cMPS, and HP2-B121 was Selling HP Designjet Production Printing. That places HP2-B109 in HP’s printing and personal systems sales track, the part of the business that became HP Inc. rather than Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
What the Code Family Tells You
HP’s exam coding was systematic enough that the prefix carries real information, and in this case the second character narrows it considerably.
The HP2 prefix denoted web-based exams, in contrast to the proctored HP0-series technical exams. HP’s surviving datacards confirm this consistently: every HP2 exam datacard describes the exam type as “Web-Based online exam used in certifications.”
Within HP2, the letter identifies the subject area. Three HP2-B datacards survive in web archives, and all three are printing and personal systems sales exams:
- HP2-B115, Selling HP Printing and Personal Systems Hardware, leading to HP Sales Certified - Printing and Personal Systems Hardware [2015]. 1 hour 10 minutes, 50 questions, 70 percent passing score, English only.
- HP2-B120, Selling HP EMEA cMPS, covering managed print services in the EMEA region.
- HP2-B121, Selling HP Designjet Production Printing, covering large-format production printing.
For contrast, the HP2-E series covers enterprise sales. HP2-E59 was Introduction to Selling Servers, Storage, Networking and Services, and HP2-E60 was Selling HP Cloud, Converged Systems and Services, leading to HP Advanced Sales Certified - Cloud, Converged Systems and Services [2014].
That split between B and E is not incidental. It maps directly onto the two businesses HP would later separate into.
Why the Business Split Matters Here
Hewlett-Packard divided into two companies on 1 November 2015. HP Inc. took printing and personal systems. Hewlett Packard Enterprise took servers, storage, networking, and services.
The HP2-B exams sat on the printing and personal systems side. That has a practical consequence if you are trying to trace this credential: most guidance about retired HP certifications, including guidance about the ASE and Master ASE technical tiers, concerns the enterprise side that went to HPE. It does not apply to the printing and personal systems sales track.
If you are looking for what became of a printing sales credential, HPE’s certification catalogue is the wrong place to look. HP Inc. runs its own partner and sales enablement programs, structured separately from anything in this article’s HPE references.
What Cannot Be Verified, and Why That Matters
HP published a datacard for every ExpertONE exam, giving the official title, duration, question count, passing score, delivery languages, target audience, and related certification. Those pages went offline when HP restructured, and HPE maintains no public archive of them.
Around sixty exam datacards survive in the Internet Archive. HP2-B109 is not among them, and no parent certification datacard naming it has been located. So this page does not state its title, its question count, or its blueprint, because no authoritative source for those exists.
Third-party sites will supply all of that detail confidently. They sell question banks, and their listings are frequently wrong. A concrete example from this same research: several such sites categorise HP2-Z30 as a storage exam, when HP’s own surviving datacard shows it was a networking exam covering HP FlexNetwork. A source that is wrong about a documented exam should not be trusted on an undocumented one.
What can be said with reasonable confidence, from the pattern across three sibling datacards, is that HP2-B109 was a web-based sales exam in the printing and personal systems area, most likely running around an hour with 40 to 50 questions and a passing score in the 60 to 70 percent range. That is an inference from the family, clearly labelled as one, not a claim about this specific exam.
What a Printing and Personal Systems Sales Credential Is Worth Today
As a current certification, nothing. ExpertONE-era credentials are retired and cannot be verified as active.
As evidence of channel experience, it means something specific. HP required partner staff to hold current certifications to maintain partner status and access to partner programs and pricing. Holding an HP2-B credential indicates you worked inside HP’s printing and personal systems channel during that period, and that your employer was an accredited partner.
What transferred: the commercial capability. Understanding how print hardware, supplies, and managed print services are positioned and sold, how a managed service contract differs commercially from a hardware transaction, and how to work a vendor channel program are all durable skills. Managed print services in particular remains a live business model.
What did not: the product specifics. The Designjet, LaserJet, and personal systems lines all moved on through many generations, and the partner program structure changed after the company split.
How to present it. Name the certification rather than the code, if your records show which one it was, and give it a year. “HP2-B109” alone tells a reader nothing. If your records are incomplete, describing the work is better than guessing at a credential title: the accounts you handled, the product areas, and the results.
Do not describe it as a technical certification. The HP2-B family was explicitly sales-oriented, and anyone familiar with the program would know that.
What To Do If You Hold This Credential
Check your own records. An HP Learner ID from that period may still retrieve your certification history, and your original certificate or confirmation email will name the credential the exam counted toward. Both are more authoritative about your own history than anything published.
Look to HP Inc., not HPE, for anything current in this area. The printing and personal systems business is HP Inc., and its partner and sales certification programs are separate from HPE’s technical tracks.
Do not recertify for its own sake. A retired sales exam from over a decade ago is not worth pursuing as a credential. If you are still in the channel, current partner program requirements are set by the vendor now and are what actually matter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still take HP2-B109? No. HP’s ExpertONE exams are retired and no longer available.
What was the exam called? HP’s documentation for this specific code was not preserved, so its official title cannot be verified. Its siblings HP2-B115, HP2-B120, and HP2-B121 were all printing and personal systems sales exams, which places HP2-B109 in that family.
What does the HP2-B prefix indicate? Based on HP’s own surviving datacards, HP2 denoted web-based exams and the B series covered printing and personal systems sales. The HP2-E series, by contrast, covered enterprise servers, storage, networking, and cloud sales.
Did this credential go to HP Inc. or HPE after the split? Printing and personal systems went to HP Inc. on 1 November 2015, so this exam’s subject area sits with HP Inc. rather than with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
When did it retire? No retirement date is published. HPE does not maintain a public retired-exams list, and HP’s original exam pages are no longer online.
Was this a technical certification? No. Every archived HP2-B exam is a sales certification aimed at HP’s partner channel.
References
HP. ExpertONE Exam Datacard: HP2-B115, Selling HP Printing and Personal Systems Hardware. Archived 2015. (Primary source establishing the HP2-B series as printing and personal systems sales exams, with format details: web-based, 1 hour 10 minutes, 50 questions, 70 percent passing score, and the related HP Sales Certified credential)
HP. ExpertONE Exam Datacard: HP2-B121, Selling HP Designjet Production Printing. Archived 2015. (Second HP2-B example, confirming the printing focus of the series)
HP. ExpertONE Exam Datacard: HP2-B120, Selling HP EMEA cMPS. Archived 2015. (Third HP2-B example, covering managed print services)
HP. ExpertONE Exam Datacard: HP2-E59, Introduction to Selling Servers, Storage, Networking and Services. Archived January 2015. (Primary source for the contrasting HP2-E enterprise sales series, used to establish that the letter after HP2 identifies the subject area)
HP. ExpertONE Exam Datacard: HP2-Z30, HP FlexNetwork Fundamentals. Archived October 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20151017200737/http://h10120.www1.hp.com/expertone/datacard/Exam/HP2-Z30 (Basis for the caution about third-party listings misclassifying documented exams)