HPE Discover 2026: Partner Ready Vantage Profit-Drivers

The new offerings come with HPE delivering double-digit partner sales growth for the last several years including 67 percent growth in partner revenue in the most recent quarter.

HPE is increasing its HPE Partner Ready Vantage channel program investments with a slew of new incentives including new HPE VM Essentials sales incentives, an additional storage competitive take-out incentive and expanded channel-only routes- to-market offerings.

The new HPE Partner Ready Vantage offerings were unveiled this week at HPE’s Partner Growth Summit in Las Vegas where the company is hosting about 1,700 partners with an additional 500 partners attending HPE Discover. Those partners are themselves hosting 2,500 customers.

The new offerings come with HPE delivering double-digit partner sales growth for the last several years including 67 percent growth in partner revenue in the most recent quarter.

HPE Vice President of North America Channel and Partner Ecosystem Jeremiah Jenson said the hybrid cloud, networking and AI powerhouse’s “industry-leading” Partner Ready Vantage compensation, products and channel partners are making HPE an “unstoppable” force in the market.

“The pace at which we are operating, the pace at which we are executing, is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Jenson in an interview with CRN. “So the opportunity for partners is you can’t get left behind. The doors are wide open. The opportunity is there, and the pace at which we’re executing provides partners with an opportunity to accelerate their business with us. It’s not just a wait-and-see. The opportunity is right now because the pace at which we’re executing is going so fast. We’re moving in a big way so get on board with us.”

HPE is feeling the impact of its Partner Ready Vantage program with the success of its Triple Platinum Plus designation rewarding partners for achieving Platinum status in networking, compute and storage, said Jenson.

“The number of Triple Platinum Plus partners has exceeded our expectations,” said Jenson. “I think that as much as the program is fantastic, it’s about how we’ve aligned the program components to the industry trends. There’s nothing as hot as AI. There’s not a customer out there who isn’t undergoing the great VM reset. There isn’t a customer out there who doesn’t need some level of a networking solution and is looking for another option. All the components of the program enable partners to make a tremendous amount of money while also solving their customers’ biggest problems.”

Jenson said the unified Partner Ready Vantage program is driving home the power of the full HPE portfolio to partners. “[With one Partner Ready Vantage program], we have simplified deal registration and a more efficient way for partners to grow their business. I think that’s the big thing,” he said. “The big headline is with this simplification, bringing everything under the same umbrella, partners have an opportunity to expand their business to the rest of the [HPE] portfolio. So a hybrid IT partner whose legacy is server, storage and data center now has so much more to sell with networking with the right program underneath it, whether that’s new business opportunity or whether that’s some of the growth rebates.”

HPE Partner Ready Vantage “not only rewards partners for who they are and their competency and capability but also incents them to grow their business in a way that makes sense to them,” said Jenson. “It’s about where can they go to their customers and solve larger problems, bigger problems, and help their customers get to accomplish the goals they have for their businesses.”

Here is a look at the biggest profit-drivers of HPE’s Partner Ready Vantage program.

HPE VM Essentials Migration Assistance, VM Essentials For Partner IT

HPE has invested in a new migration assistance program that allows new HPE VM Essentials customers to receive up to one year of complimentary licensing with the purchase of a three-year license to avoid double-paying for another hypervisor.

In addition, HPE is providing one year of HPE Zerto Advanced Resilience Edition for $1, enabling customers to migrate and protect up to 25 VMs at a time with near-online migration and disaster recovery capabilities, helping ensure a nondisruptive transition to HPE Virtual Machines.

HPE said the new program reduces “financial risk” and avoids customers “double-paying” during VM Essentials migrations.

“This is a phenomenal opportunity for partners to take to their customers to avoid overpaying during migration,” said Jenson. “Customers are feeling quite a bit of pain in the change that some of the virtualization companies have put there, specifically Broadcom. They want to get off of that and leverage either new technology or technology that helps them accomplish their business goals—VM Essentials being that product. We have now a faster, more efficient and really a great program to help customers get there. We do that through partners.”

HPE is also announcing a new VM Essentials for Partner IT program that opens the door for partners to use VM Essentials themselves to power their own hybrid cloud infrastructure.

The new program provides VM Essentials software licenses free of charge to 600 partners that gain HPE Private Cloud with virtualization competency by year end.

Jenson said the free VM Essentials licensing is enabling HPE partners to “leverage the power” of the HPE portfolio to invest in their own IT transformation.

Partners, in fact, are “feeling the same pain [as customers],” said Jenson. “There is opportunity for them in our investment in their IT to run their IT in a more efficient way by harnessing the power of the portfolio.”

Jenson said many HPE partners use the company’s technology product to power their own infrastructure. “This is just another step and another proof point in that,” he said. “As they do that, it’s so much easier for them to talk to their customers about not only the power of the portfolio, but specifically this product—VM Essentials.”

A New Competitive Storage Take-Out Incentive

HPE has a new competitive storage take-out incentive of 15 percent up-front margin effective July 1 aimed at displacing storage competitors in accounts.

“We’ve recognized an opportunity to really pour some gas on the fire that we have with our existing momentum,” said Jenson. “So we recognize that opportunity. Now is the time to strike when customers see the value of our portfolio. We see acceleration with partners who are leaning in with HPE with incremental margin to go win net-new logos and to drive new business with us.”

Partners have cited the single data platform with file and block storage on the Alletra MP X10000 as a huge advantage for HPE in the storage market.

Expanded Channel-Only Routes To Market For HPE Private Cloud PC3000, HPE SimpliVity PC 1000 and HPE Zerto Software

HPE said it is building on the success of the channel-only route to market for VM Essentials by extending the channel-only model to the HPE Private Cloud PC3000, HPE SimpliVity and HPE Zerto Software.

“It’s a huge move for us,” said Jenson. “What that does first and foremost is recognize the value and the capability of our channel. We as HPE recognize the clear value and capability of the channel, both in terms of their ability to solve customer problems, but to solve them at scale, whether that’s a midmarket or whether that’s an enterprise. So this drives very clear alignment between us and our sales force in those very clear, focused and strategic product lines.”

Jenson said there were “direct sales” in those product lines prior to the channel-only expansion. “We’re doubling down with the channel and making it very clear that new business will go through channel-only routes to market,” he said. “We’re expanding that as an investment in our channel because of the capability and because of the scale and reach that they represent for us.”

A New Unified HPE Partner Ready Vantage Program

HPE is unifying the HPE and Juniper Networks partner offerings under the single HPE Partner Ready Vantage program with a single deal registration and incentive structure effective Nov. 1, 2026.

Jenson said the unified program is focused on HPE Juniper networking “acceleration.” He said the HPE Juniper integration is accelerating ahead of plan.

“[With one Partner Ready Vantage program], we have simplified deal registration and a more efficient way for partners to grow their business,” he said. “I think that’s the big thing. The big headline is with this simplification, bringing everything under the same umbrella, partners have an opportunity to expand their business to the rest of the [HPE] portfolio.”

HPE Vice President of Worldwide Channel Strategy Programs and Operations Jesse Chavez, for his part, said the unified program brings together “previously fragmented portals, programs and processes into one cohesive designed experience overall to reduce the friction and to make it easier for partners to engage with us with the full portfolio.”

HPE will have a single unified AI partner portal effective Nov. 1 with single market development funding, said Chavez, with “seamless access” to all HPE Aruba and Juniper tools and information.

HPE is working on a deal registration business across all HPE business units with “consistent price protection and incentive alignment,” said Chavez.

HPE said it is also integrating HPE Financial Services capabilities into its unified portal with “IT sustainability competencies, tools and dashboards” to enable partners to drive “lower costs in power-hungry AI environments.”

The new portal will make it “easier” to get pricing and credit lines through HPE Financial Services, said Chavez. “There are rewards that partners can get from HPE FS working through our overall program and through our portfolio,” he said.

As for how many Aruba partners are now selling Juniper networking and how many Juniper partners are selling Aruba, Jenson said: “We are significantly ahead of our milestones, both in Aruba to Juniper partners and then Juniper to Aruba partners. But there’s another key here: We are hyper-focused on how we bring the data center networking opportunity to HPE partners who have historically sold in the data center. We have set very big goals for ourselves. We have set very, very large goals. We don’t release those numbers, but these are hundreds of millions of dollars of opportunity that partners have right in front of them and we are very focused on that opportunity.”

HPE CloudOps Software For Cloud Service Providers, New Customer Use Case Hub

HPE is launching CloudOps Software for cloud service providers with the aim to help them build, operate and monetize private cloud services.

The program includes “flexible service tiers” with “preferential pricing and services” tied to committed spend.

HPE is also launching a new customer use case hub to help partners validate solutions, drive customer adoption and scale AI, hybrid cloud, networking and edge use cases across the ecosystem.

“We currently have about 40 use cases,” said Chavez. “We’ll continue to expand that on the customer hub. What we are trying to do here from an overall program perspective is building out the entire ecosystem and recognizing that ecosystem. We’re finding that most opportunities these days require multiple partners to participate. What we’re working on is making sure our partners are collaborating together to drive business outcomes for their overall customer base.”

HPE Partner-Branded Services On Select Platforms

HPE is launching partner-branded services on select platforms, opening the door for qualified partners to deliver services under their own brand.

HPE Vice President of Worldwide Channel Services Brian Falvey said the new program enables partners to “sell and deliver support services on select HPE infrastructure directly under their own brand.”

HPE launched the new offering in April and is in the process of on-boarding partners.

Falvey said the new offering is critical given that 60 percent of partners have services as their primary business model with services making up more than 50 percent of their top-line revenue.

“This is where our partners differentiate themselves to customers and it becomes a fuel for their profitable growth,” he said.

The program allows partners to attach their own support services to select infrastructure, said Falvey, often with monthly recurring revenue.

The program makes partners the “customer’s first call for support” being handled by the partner. So if a customer has an “issue with an HPE server, for example, they will be calling the partner not HPE,” said Falvey.

For matters that can’t be resolved by partners, HPE will provide a new channel-only support offering with on-site break-fix, parts and supply chain logistics with a higher level of engineering support, said Falvey.

“Together the partner and us both achieve and earn top-line margin-rich services revenue,” said Falvey.

“Our partners’ business models are changing,” he said. “We want to participate in them and go along with them and support that growth and gain partner preference by doing so.”