VMware Deepens HPE Bond As Partners Take Note

While HPE and VMware have partnered on a number of products over the years, the relationship remained at arm’s length until Dell spun out the virtualization all-star. Now, over the last year, the two are cozying up with VMware for HPE Greenlake.

Ricky Cooper

VMware has been deepening its bond with HPE since the company was spun out from Dell more than a year ago, a fact the two vendors are not shy about.

“The large global OEMs are facing great change. We’re facing great change and we want to recognize that,”

VMware Channel Chief Ricky Cooper told CRN. “As we go to the SaaS and subscription model in order to meet our customers demands, nobody stepped up to the plate quite like HPE last year.”

[RELATED: ‘Age of the Partner’ Has Dawned, VMware Channel Chief Says ]

To reward this newfound friendship, VMware named HPE its “partner of the year” in April, an award that HPE’s Global Vice President of Alliances Joseph George said should surprise no one who has been paying attention.

“Folks might say, ‘Hey, that’s interesting,’ but to VMware and HPE, it’s business as usual,” he told CRN. “This is how we’ve been running our partnership for a long time. And it’s just it’s great to get this kind of recognition.”

George said HPE and VMware have partnered on various projects for 22 sraight years, with significant revenue, business, and with important customers. Additionally, HPE has VMware-authorized training centers, in more than 90 countries, delivering VMware training in 45 languages.

“There are new technologies that are out there, artificial intelligence, all the different cloud options that are available to them. We are both extremely passionate about doing what it takes to make our customers successful. Like full stop,” George said. “That’s really what it’s all about.”

One longtime VMware partner said Dell is likely fretting over the VMware-HPE coziness to a degree.

“There certainly has to be concern amongst Dell, but what they do have as an advantage is that they’ve already established such a significant footprint that their architecture and cloud approach is already full-steam ahead and fully integrated with VMware, while HPE is just finally getting to tap into the full value of VMware,” the partner told CRN.

However the partner, who asked not to be identified, said a barrier to compete in new territories has been removed for VMware.

“VMware establishing a deeper relationship with HPE makes a ton of business sense for them after the spin-off from Dell EMC,” the partner said. “Being under the Dell EMC umbrella for as long as they were, a large footprint among their customer base has been established with Dell. HPE is no longer a ‘competing’ company, so they can expand much deeper into an entirely new customer base while they maintain their existing relationships.”

Another VMware partner, who asked not to be identified because of their ongoing business with Dell, said while a relationship with HPE makes sense, it’s only a positive if it results in winning products or deals for partners.

“I look at all of these in the same way, which is they are great only insofar as it helps the reseller community become more essential to their customers,” they said. “These two could come up with something great. I hope they do.”

VMware’s Cooper said HPE and VMware have crafted a go-to-market partnership that is angled towards better delivery of SaaS and subscription products, in a multi-cloud environment using HPE’s cloud services platform GreenLake, which Cooper called a “perfect fit.”

“Customers want that look and feel sometimes of a public cloud provider. They’re very used to that,” Cooper said. “Fitting our multi-cloud strategy and multi-cloud vision into the offerings that HPE has with GreenLake was just such a perfect fit.”

Cooper said the two have more announcements coming this year as VMware looks to embed more of its technology into HPE.

“We’re building out the go-to-market with them,” Cooper said. “We’re just a couple of months away from announcing what that looks like. And you’ll hear all about our strategic solutions that were placing were in the GreenLake offering.”