HPE Taps TD Synnex, Ingram Micro As Global Distribution Backbone In Post-Juniper-Acquisition Channel Reset

HPE has named TD Synnex and Ingram Micro as its two global distribution partners following the Juniper acquisition, aiming to simplify its channel model and expand full-portfolio sales to improve partner support, training and consistency while preserving local and specialist distributors where needed across geographies and market segments.

HPE Thursday made TD Synnex and Ingram Micro its two global distribution partners in a move the company said will lead to a unified distribution model and help provide channel partners with simplicity and consistency while driving investment in dedicated HPE enablement resources and operational support.

With the move, HPE plans to help both distributors bulk up on improved expertise across its entire product portfolio with a focus on networking, cloud and AI, the company said.

HPE is betting on distribution to drive its growth, said Simon Ewington, senior vice president of HPE’s worldwide channel and partner ecosystem.

“In its simplest form, now we’ve got massive opportunity that’s come to us through HPE’s Juniper acquisition,” Ewington told CRN. “The acquisition has been progressing very, very well. … Part of the integration work has been to create one integrated distribution landscape to enable partners to drive growth and sell across the entire HPE portfolio. And as part of that process, we’ve selected two global distributors in the shape of our good friends at TD Synnex and Ingram Micro.”

This means that HPE will be working with both of those distributors in an increased number of countries and geographies even as the company continues working with local distributors and potentially with specialist distributors, such as specialist networking and security distributors, Ewington said.

“HPE has nine geos [geographies],” he said. “In a country where TD Synnex or Ingram Micro is present, it’s likely that they will be one of our one or two distributors there. Then we’ll augment that with local distributors and specialist distributors until we reach the ideal distribution landscape.”

Ewington said this is less about distribution consolidation and more about making sure HPE has distributors that can sell the full HPE portfolio.

“The great thing about the Juniper acquisition has been that typically when two organizations come together, everyone talks about one plus one equals three, but very rarely does it actually equal three,” he said. “If you’re lucky, it equals two, or maybe 1.8. I think this is one of those unique times in the industry where the Juniper acquisition will see one plus one really equal three and probably more.”

Bob Panos, president of American Digital Corporation, a Schaumburg, Ill.-based solution provider and longtime channel partner of both HPE and Ingram Micro, told CRN he likes the idea of HPE focusing its resources on its two primary distributors.

“We already partner with Ingram Micro, and we focus on HPE primarily,” Panos said. ... “What HPE is doing with this new focus is similar to our business model where we focus on fewer solution sets. It sounds like HPE is doing a similar thing. By focusing on fewer distributors, they can double down with their investments in terms of training and a lot of different things.”

Panos said he expects partners like his company to get access to better resources because HPE won’t have to spread itself too thin.

“Ingram Micro and TD Synnex are the distributors we’ve worked with primarily for the last 30 years,” he said. “To me, it says a lot that we as a company have picked the two that HPE effectively has picked.”

A big reason for HPE’s distribution move is the lack of overlap HPE and Juniper had in their channel landscapes, with very few solution providers selling both Juniper and HPE Aruba products, Ewington said.

“One of the programs we’ve been driving is identifying those partners who were predominantly selling one portfolio over the other and trying to get them certified in order to cross-sell and sell the full portfolio,” he said. “Similarly, we had two different distribution landscapes, which also creates a big opportunity. But if we didn’t change the distribution landscape, we essentially would have a set of distributors who could sell part of the portfolio and another set of distributors who could sell the other part of the portfolio. That’s not good when we talk about ‘one HPE,’ and that’s why this project has been so critical.”

For HPE, this has also been a chance to expand its existing relationships with TD Synnex or Ingram Micro, Ewington said.

“We’ve expanded our relationships to essentially have a preference to work with them wherever they are present across the face of the planet,” he said. “We know the leadership teams very well. We admire the way they do business. … Having one dialogue with one CEO representing tens of countries is a very efficient model for us to drive distribution and to drive results and growth with our distributors.”

By saying HPE wants a “preference” for TD Synnex and Ingram Micro, Ewington said it’s more about making sure HPE is represented well in the channel while not being overdistributed.

“We need to have an ideal landscape,” he said. “Typically, in any distribution landscape, the objective is to have as few distributors as possible, as many as you need. Essentially, we want our distributed distribution partners to have a profitable business with good margins. We don’t want to end up being overdistributed. So there will be some changes in some geos, quite naturally. But we still will work with a selection of global and local distributors and specialists, which has always been our strategy.”

Ewington said there will be some pullback from certain distributors in certain geographic areas, but he declined to talk about specific pullback plans, including in North America. However, he said, North American channel partners have nothing to worry about when it comes to their HPE relationships.

“We have incredibly good data about all the buying patterns of our resellers, and we have a phrase that we’ve been using as we go through this process, which is ‘no reseller left behind,’” he said. “We understand most resellers in the community have at least a dual purchasing strategy from multiple distributors. There are very few resellers who only have a relationship with one distributor. However, if there are cases, we will have identified those resellers and will move relationships to alternative distributors.”

Justin Scopaz, head of HPE’s networking global distribution and former employee at both Juniper Networks and Ingram Micro, told CRN HPE’s focus is on the partner experience and ensuring its distribution community can continue to drive enablement.

“It’s really important for the distributors to drive enablement, especially where we have a lower touch, from an HPE perspective,” Scopaz said. “Ingram Micro and TD Synnex have done a great job on that. I’m excited to be in a distribution role and seeing a company in the channel rely so heavily on distribution. TD Synnex and Ingram Micro have done a great job with that. So we’re excited about expanding the opportunity and leveraging them for growth and not necessarily at the expense of the local distributors or some of the specialty distributors.”

Distributors preferably carry HPE’s complete line card including Juniper, but HPE will value specialization where needed, Scopaz said.

“In the legacy Juniper context, HPE did a great job,” he said. “And Juniper has done a great job with HPE in coming together with this big bet. It’s really going to put us in a position that we will continue to grow.”

The move to emphasize two distributors on a global basis covers the entire HPE portfolio, but the company will continue to work with specialist distributors, which provide access to markets for specialized segments, Ewington said.

Networking security is a perfect example, he said. “It’s a very specialized part of the industry, and there are resellers who only focus on networking security, and they only buy from networking security distributors. And where we deem appropriate, we’ll continue to work with those distributors as well. But as Justin said, this is about essentially having a global backbone and providing a structure for our countries but also giving the flexibility of local choice for those partners who know the market particularly intimately. And it’s about making us simple to do business with,” he said.

It’s also about ensuring partners can get the full HPE portfolio from a single distributor, Ewington said.

“Today, we’ve got distributors who can buy Aruba, and then we may have a different distributor who can buy Juniper,” he said. “That clearly doesn’t make a lot of sense. As we rapidly bring together Juniper with the rest of the HPE portfolio, we need distributors who can serve our entire portfolio and make life simple for our reseller community.”

That said, HPE’s distribution move is not wholly about networking, Ewington said.

“Clearly we want to leverage across the networking portfolio to make sure that where we were strong with Aruba we can complement that with the Juniper portfolio,” he said. “And then more broadly, we’re a big player in the data center, hybrid cloud, storage and servers—there’s a great opportunity to embed data center networking. Prior to the Juniper acquisition, HPE did not have such an offering. Now with Juniper, we do. That opportunity essentially has to come together somewhere, and it does with our distributors who now can sell the whole portfolio.”