HPE points distribution towards the growing as a service opportunity

HPE is sitting down with its distribution partners this week to outline how it can keep the momentum going with that tier of the channel. 

The firm is holding its second annual distribution get together, expecting a turnout of more than 300 from its distributors, to highlight a number of opportunities it believes partners should be concentrating on. 

The event will be used to drill down into the consumption-based offerings that HPE is pushing through the channel, with particular reference to the recently announced  HPE GreenLake offerings that are aimed at the mid-market customer base. 

The consumption model appears to be resonating with both resellers and customers with more than 400 partners now selling the Greenlake offerings, which makes it the fastest growing part of the vendor’s business, increasing 275% year-on-year. 

HPE also recently made the decision to make everything it offers available as a service by 2022 and this week is a chance for the vendor to give more details to distribution around that commitment. 

As well as the as a service developments, distribution will also be pointed towards the opportunities that HPE believes are out in the SMB market as well as in the storage ans compute space and at the Edge. 

“The channel business represents HPE’s strongest route-to-market, with an average of 80% of our indirect business going through distribution partners, as well as plenty of markets where 100% of the indirect business is channeled through distributors.” stated George Hope, VP of WW Distribution at HPE, in a blog post. 

"This week, we will also be celebrating the growth that our distributors helped us drive within our HPE Partner Ready Silver, Business and Proximity partner community - a community of over 80,000 partners. This translates into over $500M investment in distribution, pivotal to enable, help grow and take care of the over 2,000 new SBP partners onboarding every quarter globally," he added. 

Hope added that the vendor had continued to put its money where its mouth is with the channel and had shown it would support partners and had made a number of recent enhancements to its channel programmes. Those have included protecting margins for those partners that are hunting for new business through automated process workflows and simplified deal registration, which HPE states has delivered a 15% faster approval turnaround time. 

“HPE has invested $1bn in the HPE Partner Ready Program this year, to improve how we work together, to help boost partner growth, and to train the marketing, sales and technical professionals of the future. It’s always been important to support and develop the opportunities for our partners,” he wrote. 

“This year our partners are seeing a new version of HPE, transforming and moving aggressively with new innovation and channel enablement. We remain driven to deliver the right experience so partners can evolve their businesses at their own pace, and the right programs to help partners sell, invest and expand skills to differentiate themselves," he added.