HP Hopes Partners Will Drive ‘Faster’ AI Adoption With Amplify AI Program

In an interview with CRN, HP Global Channel Chief Kobi Elbaz says the goal of the Amplify AI program is to help the company and industry at large drive ‘faster’ adoption of AI-based solutions. ‘We are probably the only vendor that is taking this approach,’ he says.

HP Inc. hopes it can help channel partners speed up the sale of AI PCs and other AI-based solutions with a new set of tools and resources that are tailored for salespeople.

The PC and print giant began rolling out the HP Amplify AI program to partners in November, the beginning of its 2025 fiscal year, as an extension of the Amplify partner program.

Other partner-related changes for the new fiscal year include the expansion of HP’s Business Partner Program, which provides non-Amplify partners a “clear path to membership” through authorized distributors and the release an AI chatbot that can answer questions and provide recommendations in the HP Partner Portal.

In an interview with CRN, Kobi Elbaz, senior vice president and general manager of global channel, sales innovation and operations, said the goal of Amplify AI is to help the company and industry at large drive “faster” adoption of AI-based solutions.

“I think the number one challenge we see today in the industry is that many of the customers find curiosity around AI but need help understanding how it can help them to improve productivity [and find other ways] it can really help them. We believe by having those tools to salespeople that are in front of customer, it will help overall the industry get [faster] adoption of the AI,” he said.

An executive at a U.S. solution provider focused on selling technologies to the federal government told CRN that he sees Amplify AI as a “fantastic program.”

“I like the fact that it empowers our salespeople in the channel to have more insights and more data available to them so that they can be more effective in their selling. I think it gives people the ability to be more efficient and more targeted in how they go about approaching the end customers,” said Mike Turicchi, vice president of strategic relations and marketing at Manassas, Va.-based NCS Technologies.

To Turicchi, the most significant aspect of Amplify AI so far are the use cases that explain various scenarios in how organizations can take advantage of AI technologies.

“The use cases are super helpful because AI is a very nebulous term, and it means different things to different people, so giving people specific use cases about how AI can be leveraged in their organization or for them individually gives it relevance,” he said.

Amplify AI Comes With Variety Of Resources

HP is calling Amplify AI a “persona-based program tailored to enhance partners’ unique capabilities and drive AI outcomes,” The program includes the Amplify AI Hub, which is a “centralized resource for AI training, certification and tools, offering role-based opportunities to help partners sell AI devices and solutions more effectively.”

Elbaz (pcitured above) said Amplify AI will provide salespeople at solution providers with regular updates about “training, certification, use cases, software demos and demo units” they can acquire to showcase AI-based solutions to customers.

“They are in front of the customer, and we want to make sure they’re equipped with this knowledge,” he said.

The global channel chief emphasized that Amplify AI is not just about driving sales of certain products but about helping customers achieve desired outcomes using AI.

“It’s not about just which notebook we introduce or what kind of printer. It’s also about what use cases, what software, what solutions, and now we can demonstrate [these] to the customer,” he said.

To Elbaz, Amplify AI is unlike anything that HP’s rivals offer.

“As far as I know, we are probably the only vendor that is taking this approach to really create an AI program that everybody can jump into and get the resources and use cases,” he said.

Amplify AI To Help Partners Stay On Top Of Training

Among its offerings, Amplify AI will recommend courses from HP’s AI MasterClass training and certification program, which the company introduced in March. Elbaz said 12,000 users have already taken courses within AI MasterClass.

“This gives us encouragement to continue investing,” he said.

Mary Beth Walker, vice president and head of global channel strategy at HP, said Amplify AI offers personalized information to salespeople to provide simpler guidance on what to do next.

“One of the things that is really cool about the persona-based journey is that we can basically track where a sales rep has left off the last time they came and visited the hub and say, ‘Here's all the new things that have happened since you were last here,’” she said.

With AI MasterClass, for instance, HP is adding new courses every 90 days, so Amplify AI will help channel partners know which ones they should check out.

“We want to be able to make it as easy as possible for them to stay up to date without having to sort through what's new and different,” she said.

Amplify AI Gives Partners Access To HP Experts

One feature unique to Amplify AI is the ability to request a consultancy with HP’s AI experts, which can result in meetings held with multiple channel partners, according to Walker.

“It isn’t just one-to-one when they request it, but we’re like, ‘Hey, if he wants to know about that, she wants to know about that, let's do that for everybody and set that up so we have a calendar of events, where we're doing webinars and podcasts and additional kinds of support,’ things like that, other than just material that you can look at,” she said.

This, along with Amplify AI’s other tools and resources, is all about helping channel partners solve complex problems using HP’s portfolio AI-powered products and services.

“We’re trying to do everything that we can to build ease around the complexity that they’re really faced and overwhelmed with,” she said.

HP Expands Capabilities With Non-Amplify Partners

In addition to the launch of Amplify AI, HP is expanding globally its HP Business Partner Program, which is designed to help the company reach a broader channel of solution providers, who do not belong to the Amplify program, through distributors.

“We’re going now to scale and expand our HP business partner program across the world, and making sure that partners that are not yet Amplify partners will have tools and capabilities and really easy on boarding into the HP environment and give them access to our partner program [and] to our AI chatbot in order [for them to] find information easily about products and solutions,” Elbaz said.

In addition to giving non-Amplify solution providers access to the partner portal and AI chatbot in the Amplify program, they will also be able to use HP’s AI-powered Configured Price Quote platform and the HP Curiocity training program.

Walker said the Business Partner Program can help non-Amplify members figure out how to join and work towards joining the Amplify partner program.

“We’re making it visible to them what they would need to do to become an Amplify partner should they become interested and what the opportunities are for that,” she said.