With decades of channel experience under his belt, Simon Ewington is preparing to take Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s partner ecosystem to the next level through his bullish vision of driving more platform-based offers and as-a-service margin via its new Partner Ready Vantage program.

“We’re essentially going to move from a Capex-only solution to Capex-plus-SaaS through our GreenLake Cloud Services platform,” said Ewington, HPE’s new vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem, in an interview with CRN. “Our focus is on repeatability of platform-based offers.”

HPE’s new global leader will be responsible for leading the company’s massive partner ecosystem team that includes both worldwide channels and ecosystem as well as the HPE GreenLake partner ecosystem.

[Related: HPE Discover 2023: 10 New HPE GreenLake Services]

Ewington told CRN it was a “dream come true” to become the global leader of HPE’s channel and partner ecosystem as the roughly $28 billion tech giant begins to merge those two ecosystems together under one organization.

“Having it in one place, under the ownership of one leader, really makes sure that we are engaging with the partner community in a simple way irrespective of how they’re developing their business or at the stage of development they’re at,” said Ewington.

Simon Ewington’s HP And HPE Career

Before jumping into CRN’s exclusive interview with HPE’s new global leader, it is key to know that Ewington has been with HPE and HP for 27 years.

He has held several international management positions, including distribution and channel sales leader EMEA. Ewington also led the graphics solutions business at HP, managing a significant volume of channel-led business. Most recently he served as vice president of worldwide distribution at HPE where he empowered distributors to further monetize and embrace as-a-service selling strategies.

In an interview with CRN, Ewington explains his vision and strategy to grow HPE partner sales, better enable the channel to leverage HPE innovation, what he thinks of Dell Technologies’ revamped partner-first strategy for storage, and much more.