7 New Ways To Make Money Selling HPE GreenLake

During what it is calling GreenLake Day, Hewlett Packard Enterprise unveiled a number of new GreenLake cloud services offerings including standardized virtual machine blocks for 100 VMs with an option for backup as a service.

Transformation Is ‘Not An Option Anymore, It’s An Imperative’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Head of Worldwide Partner Sales George Hope says it is vital that partners accelerate the move to the GreenLake on-premises cloud services model.

“Transformation is not an option anymore, it is an imperative,” said Hope of the massive channel shift to an everything as a service pay per use model. “It is forcing everybody to respond. The pandemic has brought it right to our doorstep. It has forced fundamental changes in the business model. Even in the SMB and midmarket space - which is a big opportunity for the partners- companies have to transform to survive. GreenLake helps partners help customers!”

Hope’s call to action came with HPE highlighting the power of the on-premises cloud services GreenLake model in what it called a GreenLake day webcast.

Overall, GreenLake cloud services sales in the most recent quarter through the channel were up 116 percent year over with the number of active partners up 62 percent, said Hope.

The GreenLake indirect mix – which was in the single digit range several years ago – is now at 29 percent, up 11 points year over year, said Hope.

HPE’s Silver medallion and proximity partners grew their share of the GreenLake business by 29 percent in the most recent quarter compared to the year ago quarter, said Hope.

“As we continue to focus GreenLake on some of the workloads that are attractive to the midmarket partners, there is even more opportunity for our partner community,” said Hope.

To fuel the GreenLake sales charge, HPE has maintained its 17 percent robust up-front rebate for GreenLake channel deals and has added GreenLake business planning workshops aimed at helping partners move to the pay-per-use, consumption-based GreenLake sales model.

The number of partners selling GreenLake is on the rise as HPE makes it “easier and more profitable” for partners to sell the on-premise cloud consumption based service, said Hope.

New GreenLake Virtual Machine Offerings With Backup As A Service

HPE is pushing GreenLake aggressively into the midsize and even small business market with new GreenLake compute and storage instances sized at 100 virtual machines in standardized blocks of 4,8, 16 and 24 compute nodes along with a new backup as a service option for those instances.

The new backup as a service option comes with storage as a service offerings now representing 30 percent of overall GreenLake sales.

The new VM instances – which HPE refers to as T-Shirt size options- “pushes GreenLake down market and makes it more relevant” for small and midsize businesses, said Hope (pictured).

HPE is putting significant investments in driving midmarket/SMB GreenLake growth, said Hope.

“This isn’t just Platinum partners selling to enterprise accounts, this is an opportunity for midmarket customers and midsize partners,” said Hope. “You are starting to see the shift in the mix. The T-shirt sizes bring GreenLake down-market.”

Bare Metal Server GreenLake Options

HPE’s new GreenLake cloud services for bare metal servers expands the partner opportunity to customers demanding a fully dedicated server.

The new services allows bare metal servers to be provisioned and managed directly from HPE GreenLake Central.

The bare metal option allows customers to have a custom server tailored specifically to their configuration, performance and cost requirements, said HPE.

“We are trying to make GreenLake more turnkey and more application as a service versus just infrastructure as a service,” said Hope. “You are seeing GreenLake start to morph and become more relevant to more customers and more partners.”

The new bare metal server option is another GreenLake “door opener” for partners, said Hope. “Ultimately it is an expansion of the GreenLake opportunity,” he said. “This is not a boutique play. It is for all workloads.”

The turnkey HPE GreenLake cloud service offerings come with customers struggling to move mission critical applications to the public cloud.

Ten years into the public cloud breakthrough, 70 percent of workloads remain in the data center because of security, data sovereignty and application entanglement issues, said Hope

“What we are trying to show partners is if you have customers that want the cloud experience, we can bring that experience to them,” said Hope. “We can put that cloud in your data center. We run it and you use it like you would the public cloud and you just pay for what you use. The workloads are in your data center. They are secure and you don’t have latency, security or sovereignty issues. It makes all that go away.

HPE GreenLake For Containers

HPE is stepping up its Kubernetes container based cloud march with GreenLake for the HPE Ezmeral Container platform.

The Ezmeral cloud native stack provides an opportunity for partners to take a leadership technology pole position for customers anxious to get the economic and productivity benefits associated with containers, said Hope.

Hope encouraged partners to take advantage of the container based leadership associated with the HPE acquisitions of artificial intelligence and data analytics innovators BlueData and MapR.

“The acquisition of BlueData and MapR have combined into Ezmeral and built out capabilities around containers, orchestration and a data fabric that makes it easier to move stateful data around,” said Hope. “I would encourage our partners to embrace our offerings there.”

The container GreenLake service is a highly consultative, sticky sale for partners, said Hope.

GreenLake Central Now Available For Partners To Manage For Customers

HPE has added the ability for partners – with the permission of customers – to manage GreenLake environments within GreenLake Central.

“What we have done is make GreenLake Central available to partners with the customer permission so partners can add their services to the mix,” said Hope. “We are encouraging partners to build their services capabilities and IP around the GreenLake offering whether it is doing assessments, migrating workloads or even managing the environment on behalf of the customer.”

The SaaS based GreenLake Central platform provides partners with an as-a-service portal/management console that allows them to do cost, performance, governance and security comparisons for all workloads from the edge to the core to multiple clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

The GreenLake Central platform provides key metrics on cloud efficiencies and workloads, said Hope.“This allows the partners to use that information as the trusted advisor to help the customer make those cloud workload decisions, interpreting the data,” he said. “That is a huge win for both the customers and the partners.”

The GreenLake Central capabilities provides a stronger and “stickier” cloud relationship with customers, said Hope.

“This is huge, it’s the beginning of having the partners way more involved in the management of these environments,” he said. “Ultimately we want our partners to build IP (intellectual property) around infrastructure as a service that pulls GreenLake in and compliments their solution. The more IP the partners have in the mix the more incentive they have to drive GreenLake.”

Aruba’s GreenLake For Aruba Partner Program

Aruba, an HPE company, has increased rebate incentives for the Aruba NaaS (network as a service) solution as part of the GreenLake for Aruba offering.

In addition, the Aruba partner program now provides partners an opportunity to generate monthly recurring revenue over the life of the NaaS contract.

Aruba Vice President of Worldwide Channel Donna Grothjan (pictured) said the “new incentive structure is generating a lot of interest” among partners.

“Our partners can deliver NaaS solutions under their own brand or they can offer HPE GreenLake for Aruba, both offerings available in a monthly subscription for hardware, software and services,” said Grothjan. “The net is that our customers can consume their network needs in any way they want to and partners can deliver those networks any way they need to.”

The Aruba NaaS offering is aimed squarely at customers that are “looking for partners that enable their businesses to be agile, scalable and allow them flexible choices,” said Grothjan. “This plays right into that as it’s an excellent way for partners to enter into a Networking as a Service model with an optional Aruba-run NOC (network operations center), and provides immediate partner-delivered services revenue.”

GreenLake Now Available In Distributor Cloud Marketplaces

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched an all-out distribution sales offensive with the ability to launch the GreenLake cloud service directly from distributor cloud marketplaces.

The new GreenLake distributor cloud marketplace versions come with new agreements with Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex, Arrow and ALSO Deutschland GmbH.

HPE said over 100,000 partners can now access GreenLake through the distributor cloud marketplaces.

“Where do you hang your shingle if you want to sell a cloud solution? The Cloud Marketplaces,” exclaimed Hope. “We’ve lit up our top five distributors (with the GreenLake cloud service in their marketplaces).”

That’s expansion is no small matter given that those top five distributors make up in excess of two thirds of HPE’s business globally, said Hope.

Hope said he recently demoed the new cloud marketplace version of GreenLake with a distributor that allows a partner to access a chat-bot that assists in hammering out a GreenLake quick quote.

“It asks me a few questions, gives me a solution, tells me what it costs a month and the burst rates for additional capacity or compute,” said Hope.

The new cloud marketplace version essentially give GreenLake high visibility in the cloud marketplaces alongside public cloud offerings, said Hope.

Single Bill For Colocation Services With Equinix, CyrusOne

HPE is expanding its partnerships with colocation behemoths Equinix and CyrusOne to enable partners to provide GreenLake services and the colocation services on a single customer bill.

Partners can also add their own services on that single bill, said Hope.

“The GreenLake model and the colocation monthly model are now all in one bill for the partner to pass on to the customers,” said Hope.

The colocation provider model – which was first unveiled two years ago - allows partners to provide next day rollouts of GreenLake with the option of add on services from colocation providers and partners.

“This gives customers a public cloud experience in colocation model,” said Hope. “It provides more flexibility for customers that don’t want to be in the data center business or shop for a colocation provider. The GreenLake and colocation services are both now on one bill for the customer.”