HPE claims it has scored an industry first by launching an NVIDIA-flavoured AI enablement programme for its partners.
Unveiled to coincide with today’s launch of HPE Private Cloud AI (PCAI), the new scheme includes AI workshops and competency programmes designed to help HPE’s “leading enterprise partners” to boost their AI skills.
During a media pre-brief ahead of this week’s HPE Discover (and the associated Partner Growth Summit), HPE’s global channel VP Simon Ewington characterised AI as one of three main opportunities facing its partners.
The enterprise IT vendor doubled AI systems sales sequentially to $900m in its recent Q2, with cumulative orders now standing at $4.6bn, he stressed.
“AI will be a pervasive theme throughout the Partner Growth Summit and HPE Discover,” Ewington said.
“I believe we are the first vendor in the market who is not only bringing a turnkey solution with PCAI, but also a turnkey enablement programme co-designed with NVIDIA, to really help our partners grasp that opportunity to take them from AI opportunity to AI reality.”
“Delivering AI leadership in the channel”
Working with NVIDIA, HPE has already identified “many” partners it wants to help build AI practices, carry out proof of concepts, and begin targeting customers, Jesse Chavez, Vice President Worldwide Partner Programmes and Operations at HPE said.
Ewington billed PCAI as the “first of its kind turnkey AI solution to accelerate enterprise AI adoption”.
“PCAI provides the deepest integration we’ve seen yet in the industry of NVIDIA computing, networking and software, together with HPE’s AI storage, compute and the HPE GreenLake cloud,” he said.
“Not every partner knows how to grasp that opportunity or where to start. We want partners to better understand these steps, and that’s why we will be taking control and will be delivering AI leadership in the channel.”
Tech refresh is coming
Ewington flagged HPE’s as-a-service business – which is growing at 42% year on year – and tech refresh as two further hotspots partners should target.
“We have a fantastic opportunity to continue scaling that business with partners who can drive repeatability,” he said of as-a-service.
The HPE channel hasn’t been able to speak about tech refresh for “many, many years”, Ewington said, meanwhile.
“Refreshing old generation servers from gen 11 technology, refreshing our primary storage platforms in our install base with Alletra MP… the opportunities are numerous and I think we have a very healthy pipeline of the innovation and opportunity for partners,” he said.
Vantage advantage
On the call, HPE also revealed that around 2,000 of its top partners have migrated to its Partner Ready Vantage programme, which it introduced on 1 November in an effort to help partners build out their services business.
This compares with around 34,000 that sit in its traditional Partner Ready scheme.
HPE’s efforts here “have gained a lot of momentum” and are “on target”, Chavez, said.
“Right now, Partner Ready Vantage is for those partners selling as-a-service, so we expected it to be a smaller group of partners,” he said.
“At some point, we’ll merge both programmes together, so we don’t have two separate programmes. They will be combined into Partner Ready Vantage.”
Following in the footsteps of Dell, HPE also announced it has added an HPE Solutions for Sustainability competency to Partner Ready Vantage.
Offered in collaboration with NVIDIA, it is designed to allow partners to “master an understanding of how to leverage a comprehensive portfolio of more sustainable and power-efficient technologies such as direct liquid cooling, as well as IT sustainability insights from end points and applications that can help minimise the impact of carbon emissions within the enterprise”.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
