Another UK Channel Veteran Is Leaving HPE

The departure of HPE Channel Manager Colin Smith comes just three months after HPE U.K. Sales Director Lewis Simmonds left the company.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Channel Program Manager Colin Smith, a 19-year HPE channel veteran, is leaving the company.

“After 19-and-a-half years, today is my final day at HPE. First of all, I would like to say a massive amount of thanks to all my colleagues (past and present) and to all the partners and customers I have worked with over these many years,” said Smith in a LinkedIn post Wednesday.

In an email confirming Smith’s departure, an HPE spokesperson said Smith was responsible for leading the deal registration process for partners in the U.K., and his duties are being picked up by Middle East & Africa Partner Programs Lead Nasr El-Lebeady.

Smith’s departure comes just three months after HPE U.K. Sales Director Lewis Simmonds, another 19-year veteran, left the company.

Among the other recent U.K. departures are HPE Channel Sales Manager Heather Johnson, a 15-year HPE veteran, who left last November, and HPE GreenLake Sales Manager Wayne Griffin, a 19-year HPE veteran, who left last October.

Smith’s LinkedIn page says he was responsible for “directing and driving” HPE’s channel partner programs strategy in the UK, where he oversaw all partners with access to HPE’s channel programs, including Platinum, Gold and Silver partners as well as HPE Partner Ready Vantage members.

“I have had some really fantastic, very personal and dear experiences whilst working here too–from some big worldwide knock-out wins to some first wins for HPE selling some of our new and exciting products to dragging across the line at the 11th hour the (at the time) single largest Enterprise License Agreement in Europe,” said Smith in the LinkedIn post.

In seven hours on LinkedIn, Smith’s post had 206 comments including some from UK channel executives.

“One of the absolute all-time best … was always brilliant working with you, the gold standard of vendor partnering … a very lucky organization will soon grab you,” wrote Nick Bailey, a global account director at Softcat, a U.K. solution provider, on LinkedIn.

“All the best Colin - thank you for all your support and training, and for constantly being a pleasure to work with!” wrote Joe Dennis, director at First Information Technology, a U.K. solution provider.

Smith’s departure comes just three weeks after HPE Vice President of Worldwide Channel & Partner Ecosystem Simon Ewington pledged in a blog post “continued growth, expanded opportunities, and additional investments” for partners.

“In 2024, we will increase our focus on expanding opportunities for all of our partners to co-sell and to innovate with us,” wrote Ewington on LinkedIn. “Building on that strategic priority, we have doubled down on HPE Partner Ready Vantage to help partners develop and sell their own branded services, unlocking margin-rich opportunities. Partners looking to adapt and grow business from the Edge to the Cloud can now enroll in the program. We’re thrilled with how the partner community has embraced HPE Partner Ready Vantage—today we have over 3,000 partners enrolled!”

Under the new HPE Partner Ready Vantage model, HPE is moving away from the 17 percent up-front rebate on GreenLake Flex custom on-premises deals that has been in place for the last five years.

In the U.S., HPE is also shifting the GreenLake compensation model from monthly to quarterly.

Under the new custom Flex model in enterprise accounts and below, partners will receive a 9 percent base incentive and a 5 percent new logo incentive that will be paid quarterly.

In addition, partners will receive an annual full fiscal year volume incentive of 3 percent for hitting five deals or more that will be paid at the end of the fiscal year.

The new payment model is in sharp contrast to the GreenLake Partner Ready model, which paid partners a straight-up 17 percent rebate on GreenLake deals generally within a 30-day period.

The new model is a shift away from the often-time-consuming and complex on-premises Flex capacity deals in which HPE estimates compute/storage/network capacity at about 70 percent to 80 percent and then builds in a buffer for customers. Those proposals require a complex calculation on each and every solution and can take from six months to a year or more to go from first conversation to proposal to implementation.

“Profitable growth for partners will also continue to be a strategic priority for HPE in 2024. In 2023, we paved the way with a new partner compensation model, and introducing new tools and services that help partners scale efficiently and achieve faster time to market,” wrote Ewington on LinkedIn. “The new compensation model available via HPE Partner Ready Vantage is simple, predictable, and rewarding for partners to sell across the entire HPE GreenLake portfolio—HPE GreenLake Flex Solutions as well as private and hybrid cloud services.”