HPE Global Channel VP Archer: Acquisition Of AWS Superstar CTP Is 'Huge' Win For Partners, Full CTP Portfolio Will Be Available For Channel
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's acquisition of Cloud Technology Partners (CTP), a cloud-agonistic solution provider with deep Amazon Web Services expertise, ultimately will open the door to bigger cloud transformation deals for HPE and its partners, said HPE Global Channel Vice President Ken Archer.
"This is a huge benefit for partners," said Archer, a highly respected 30-plus-year channel veteran who was recently appointed as the head of the Pointnext partner business. "It is going to help us all win bigger and more strategic deals. This acquisition expands our HPE Pointnext [services] capabilities to partners. This enhances our value proposition to partners."
The HPE plan is to make sure partners have "full access" to the complete CTP services portfolio, said Archer in an interview with CRN."This is going to be part of the Pointnext services portfolio and will be available for partners," promised Archer.
The deal with CTP comes with Pointnext in the midst of building out specialized industry expertise that can be shared with partners. "We are building specialized expertise so that partners can get access to these resources, augmenting their own capabilities and further delivering value to customers jointly," said Archer. "This is a huge value-add for partners."
Once the deal is completed, Boston-based CTP will become part of a Pointnext advisory and professional services team led by HPE Pointnext Senior Vice President and General Manager of Advisory Services Parvesh Sethi.
Archer told CRN he is looking forward to making sure the CTP services are rolled out to the partner community "as soon as possible." Archer's reassurances to the partner community came after HPE Monday said it was acquiring CTP – a 200-employee born-in-the-cloud provider focused on the Fortune 500 that has completed 500 cloud transformation projects.
CTP is a premier partner for AWS, Google, a Silver partner for Microsoft Azure and an OpenStack cloud provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Archer and his team are currently working in the sales trenches to build deep services partnerships with solution providers for what HPE sees as a $2.1 trillion digital transformation services opportunity.
The HPE Pointnext vision, said Archer, is for solution providers to lead the services effort with HPE intellectual property or augment their own capabilities with HPE Pointnext services.
HPE Pointnext has reached out initially to partners with strong professional services teams that are looking to increase their services portfolio and competencies.
HPE Pointnext is also in the midst of crafting rules of engagement that will act as a sales engagement road map of sorts for partners and the Pointnext advisory services team.
Archer, for his part, has pledged a no-holds-barred focus on partners and partner profitability as HPE builds out the HPE Pointnext portfolio.
HPE said that it will combine with CTP to provide customers with a comprehensive IT strategy that includes private, managed and public clouds, as well as traditional IT. "More and more, customers are seeking a trusted adviser who knows where the market is going, and can shape their long-term road map and provide the solutions that will allow them to keep pace in this digital world," said HPE in announcing the deal. "Together with CTP, HPE will provide customers with the ability to more quickly build new innovative digital experiences, simply manage and forecast IT costs and ensure the applications running their business stay secure. All while optimizing their environment so they can free up resources to grow, innovate and stay ahead of the competition."
CTP was initially looking to follow up its August 2016 Series C round of venture capital with a Series D round of funding, according to CEO Chris Greendale. But during those discussions, Greendale said it became clear that HPE stood out from the rest.
"Uniquely, HPE provided us the opportunity to maintain our industry-recognized brand and rapidly scale through new revenue streams, new markets, larger and more diverse enterprise accounts, and additional human capital," Greendale said in a note on the CTP website.