HPE drives HCI 2.0 message through the channel

HPE is driving a campaign through the channel to promote dHCI (disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure) with the aim of encouraging customers that have already invested in HCI technology to look at upgrading, or those fresh to the concept to invest.

The campaign has been running in the UK as a pilot project and the plan is to roll it out to other territories.

Lewis Simmonds, UK channel sales leader at HPE, said the company was keen to get partners and customers to view its dHCI offering, dubbed HCI 2.0, as a step forward from legacy installations from other vendors.

“We have really been putting the focus and the commitment into this campaign with what we believe is a bold, innovative campaign around HCI and it showcases the benefits of the platform,” he said. “So what we’ve done with our partners is really do a lot of work on enablement around the proposition. This campaign is fully backed across the channel.”

Simmonds added that the results of the campaign so far had already indicated that HPE was taking the right approach.

“Some of our opportunities that have been created off the back of this were roughly about a ten-fold increase in opportunities, created with all sets of our partners, from our gold partners, silver partners and our platinum partners. It is a big campaign that we’ve put out there. The message is resonating, and the product is working out there with the help of our partners.”

Simmonds added that HPE had worked hard to make the message that partners could take out to customers a simple and concise one that promoted the benefits of choosing a unified HCI solution that provided flexible storage, networking and compute for customers.

HPE has been open to feedback from partners around HCI, including the likes of Cristie Data, whose skilled engineers have provided their views on HPE’s plans. One of the clear demands was for the ability to scale different elements of the dHCI solution independently.

Ryan Smith, sales director at Cristie Data, said the HPE solution provided flexibility and cost savings around licensing and armed the channel with reasons to pitch against legacy installations. “I think this is really key for when we position dHCI against traditional HCI benefits,” he said.

Smith said the coronavirus had accelerated some customer movements around HCI and Cristie Data had been able to emphasise the flexibility the solution could offer.

Simmonds said the HCI 2.0 campaign would run until the end of February and then HPE would look at taking it to other regions.

“It’s an ongoing campaign and we have got other things around that and enhanced trading offers for our partners,” he said. “They have the ability to work with my sales team in the channel around opportunities. It’s a fully loaded campaign and it is not just external, it’s internal as well.

“We’re a pilot country, the UK, for this campaign. The idea is that this campaign will be rolled out globally, so we were the pilot for it and it was actually put together in the UK.”