
Embracing HPE’s Everything-As-A-Service Lead
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Worldwide Channel Chief George Hope says partners need to “embrace” HPE’s Everything-as-a-Service vision as the company moves to build on what he calls HPE’s multiyear GreenLake pay-per-use lead against rivals.
“It may not be for every customer today, but for some customers it is going to be a game-changer,” said Hope in an interview with CRN on HPE’s new fiscal year 2021 Partner Ready program. “Partners need to get used to positioning it [GreenLake] because that is where the business is going. It may not be tomorrow or this year, but everybody is going to have to get there. We are a couple of years ahead of everybody else because of our approach to it. Partners can sit on the sideline and watch and potentially lose business to their competitors or they can get in the game.”
As part of the stepped-up GreenLake sales offensive, HPE is tripling its GreenLake channel investment and for the first time adding a GreenLake sales quota for HPE sales reps.
“GreenLake is the biggest opportunity for the partners,” said Hope. “It is margin-rich and it is sticky. If you get GreenLake into an account and you start showing the value to the customer in that account, you are immovable from that point forward. You are their strategic vendor and it is just a matter of time before they move more workloads onto GreenLake.”
Hope’s straightforward GreenLake advice for partners: “Be a first-mover. You can’t get a first-mover advantage without moving.”