Having multiple channel organisations and programmes was making partners’ lives “a little complicated”, HPE’s global channel boss acknowledge as it unveiled a unified partner programme.
The enterprise infrastructure giant today confirmed that all partner programmes will combine under HPE Partner Ready Vantage from 1 November.
This will spell the end of the HPE Partner Ready and HPE Partner Ready for Networking programmes, as well as eight other programmes the vendor is currently running.
It is also mulling a new “Triple Platinum Plus” status for top partners.
“We were making partners’ lives a little bit complicated”
On a press briefing ahead of its Partner Growth Summit today, HPE’s global channel VP Simon Ewington described the unified programme as “Step 2” of a wider effort to present a single front to partners.
“12 months ago… Antonio [Neri] asked that we investigate building one channel and partner ecosystem, because we were making the lives of our partners a little bit complicated,” he said.
HPE last November united its main global sales channel organisation with that of HPE Aruba. The intent is for Juniper’s channel organisation to slot straight into the enlarged organisation if and when the $12bn deal closes (it is currently snarled up with the US Department of Justice).
“[Antonio] also said we need to deliver on Step 2, and that was creating one unified programme that combines all the partner programmes that we have,” Ewington said.
A year ago, HPE revealed that around 2,000 of its top partners had migrated to Partner Ready Vantage, which it introduced the previous November to help partners build out their services business.
That compared with around 34,000 that sat in its traditional Partner Ready scheme.
Taking the Partner Ready Vantage name, the unified programme will roll out in phases, beginning with an initial launch on 1 November.
$300m partner AI sales
Ewington also gave an update on HPE’s progress in taking its Private Cloud AI (PCAI) solution to the channel, in partnership with NVIDIA.
HPE now claims to be working closely with around 100 partners in 30 countries to help them scale AI practices, all of which have passed an AI maturity assessment.
“It’s been pretty successful. About two-thirds of these partners have now sold AI solutions totalling around $300m,” Ewington said.
This programme will be expanded to cover 50 countries and include more distribution partners to help HPE target parts of the market that are “somewhat untapped,” Ewington added.
HPE is also adding a new Triple Platinum Plus tier for partners that want to be Platinum across all three ‘centres’ in the new unified programme – namely Compute, Hybrid Cloud and Networking.
“We are working through the benefits of what a triple Platinum Plus Partner would get,” Jesse Chavez, Vice President Worldwide Partner Programmes and Operations confirmed.
Partner Ready Vantage combines all the partner programmes HPE has, recognises partner competencies and the importance of those competencies, encourages the penetration of services and provides a clear path to improved partner profitability, Ewington said.
“So we’re very excited for next week,” he concluded.
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