HPE supports as a service shift with partner programme enhancements

Having made the commitment to deliver all of its portfolio as a service by 2022 HPE is stepping up the support it can provide partners. 

The vendor outlined its ambition to move to have the option to offer the aaS model back in June, setting a 2022 deadline to offer customers a choice of subscription-based pay-as-you-go and as a Service offerings on all of its portfolio. Traditional capex and license models will continue to be provided ensuring that there will be a choice for users. 

Five months after that announcement the vendor is now updating its Partner Ready programme to make sure that the channel is in the right position to support the as a service approach. 

The message around services has already got over to plenty of partners with the vendor reporting a 300% year-on-year increase in GreenLake sales and more than 500 resellers already selling the edge-to-cloud aaS offering. 

Jesse Chavez, vice president of Worldwide Partner Programs and Operations at HPE, said that the GreenLake activity indicated there was already, "a lot of momentum and we are adding partners on a monthly basis". 

He added that enhancements made to the partner programme, which came into force at the start of this month, were designed to help those traditional resellers that were looking to move to a subscription-based model. 

Eric Loe, senior director, Partner Ready Program & Channel GTM Strategy, HPE., said that since it had made GreenLake available to the channel three years ago it had attracted more service specialists: "We are seeing a whole new set of partners, like MSPs." 

He added that the vendor carried out regular reseller satisfaction surveys and had maintained high scores that indicated it was meeting channel needs. 

HPE is offering competencies around GreenLake and as a Service (see box) and is encouraging partners to get trained up on the technology as part of its Tech Pro Community. 

The enhancements also include steps to improve life for partners and multiplier rewards that have been in place this year, with the chance to earn 5x times a deal, are being kept in place to encourage partners to get out there selling more. 

Feedback from the channel also made it clear that the quote process needed to be speeded up so they could react to competitors that were providing faster offers to customers.  

With the launch of the GreenLake Quick Quote tool going forward partners will have an offer for customers in a matter of hours, giving resellers the chance to compete for deals with rivals. 

The vendor has also made the decision to make it easier for resellers to get hold of demo kit with the costs of that being reduced along with an option to offset some of the charges against MDF. 

"Hundreds of units are out in the marketplace," he added "We recognised that our high value partners like Primera demos." 

Along with promoting Greenlake, improved rewards and pricing tools the final push is around storage with Chavez keen to use the demo programme to get the products into the hands of more partners.