Building On The HPE ‘Head Start’ In As-A-Service Solutions

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Vice President of Worldwide Channels and Partner Ecosystem Simon Ewington said the shift to pay partners more for GreenLake IaaS and SaaS offers in the new Partner Ready Vantage program builds on the “head start” that HPE has over competitors like Dell Technologies in the as-a-service market.

“We are fortunate that we have had a CEO [Antonio Neri] with great insight into where the market is going,” said Ewington when asked to detail the differences between Dell and HPE when it comes to IaaS and SaaS offers and channel commitment. “We have had a head start. That head start has allowed us to move from very customized solutions that many of our competitors are entering the market with today to much more standardized platform-based offers, which is where we want the market to go.”

Ewington said the shift to IaaS and SaaS offers versus custom Flex capacity on-premises GreenLake deals that are more complex and time-consuming is going to allow partners to close deals faster, earn higher margins and ultimately build a sustainable, long-term business.

“It is more efficient for us but, more importantly, it is more efficient for our partners,” said Ewington. “They can drive so many more sales cycles much quicker, drive to conclusion much quicker and move time to revenue much quicker. I think just because of the maturity and the length of time we have been in the market we have an advantage over some of our competitors who still have much more custom-type solutions.”

As to the difference between HPE and Dell with regard to channel commitment, Ewington cited HPE’s decades of being a channel-centric company.

“We have built our company on and with our channel partners, and we continue to build our strategy based on our partners in the future,” he said. “I think predictability in this industry is one of the most important attributes a vendor can drive with their partner community, and what we’re doing here with Partner Ready Vantage is we are reinforcing that predictability globally with a single program across all of our as-a-service business with a structure that will remain in place for years to come.”

The new Partner Ready Vantage channel commitment includes a no-holds-barred drive to share HPE as-a-service “crown jewels” so partners can build margin-rich services businesses, said Ewington.

“When we refer to crown jewels, it is the access we give for our partners to HPE’s IP, HPE’s tools, HPE’s processes to enable them to be successful in driving that services business,” said Ewington. “These are not just words. We are following up with assets that we have invested millions [of dollars] in and we are making those available to our partner community because, as Antonio says, we genuinely view the partner community as an extension of our own sales force and we look at the partner community and give them access to the tools, the processes, the IP that our own sales force has access to.”

Ultimately, the new HPE Partner Ready Vantage model, which goes into effect Nov. 1, is the next step in HPE’s pioneering five-year GreenLake as-a-service cloud journey, said Ewington.

“We are enhancing the opportunity for partners to make accelerated margins by adding their own services around our as-a-service portfolio,” said Ewington. “I believe that with our partner community we are being pioneers in taking the as-a-service business on to the next level of maturity.”