HPE GreenLake North America Partner Of The Year CPP Is Proving ROI With Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments

‘Every assessment we do is to determine where the workload should reside to deliver the best return on investment for our customers,’ says CPP Associates Managing Partner Pat O’Dell. ‘What we have found is that when the workload is 24x7x365 mission-critical, over 90 percent of the time GreenLake is better than traditional public cloud offerings from a cost, performance and internal control standpoint.’

CPP Associates, whose Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments helped it deliver a triple-digit increase in Hewlett Packard Enterprise GreenLake sales growth over the past year, received the HPE GreenLake North America Partner of the Year award.

“What a huge honor to be chosen from the tens of thousands of HPE partners as GreenLake Partner of the Year,” said Pat O’Dell (pictured), general manager and managing partner for Clinton, N.J.-based CPP Associates, No. 357 on the 2023 CRN Solution Provider 500. “I greatly appreciate that HPE is recognizing CPP as No. 1 when it comes to their top priority, which is GreenLake. I believe we have been successful due to a confluence of the vision that HPE CEO Antonio Neri had, the great program that HPE put together and the diligence and hard work of our CPP teams.”

The blockbuster award—part of a ceremony held at HPE Discover—is also a testament to the independent Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments from the technology-agnostic CPP Associates’ solutions sales and development teams, said O’Dell.

“CPP does our own analysis on all as-a-service solutions using our [Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments] to make sure we are providing the right solution for the client,” said O’Dell. “We do the hard work with data from the customer to make sure GreenLake makes sense. Every assessment we do is to determine where the workload should reside to deliver the best return on investment for our customers. What we have found is that when the workload is 24x7x365 mission-critical, over 90 percent of the time GreenLake is better than traditional public cloud offerings from a cost, performance and internal control standpoint.”

O’Dell emphasized that the ROI on average for those nonstop mission-critical workloads is often in excess of 30 percent cost savings compared with public cloud. “I am tremendously grateful for the HPE GreenLake consumption-based service,” he said. “How could I not be grateful? HPE is providing our customers with a solution that costs 30 percent less while often offering better control and performance.”

That said, CPP is also seeing robust public cloud sales growth, said O’Dell, stressing that CPP’s independence in doing Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments is key to driving sales growth of the GreenLake edge-to-cloud service as well as other solutions.

“When we do these assessments, we take the time to pull together all the variables to see what is the best for the client,” he said. “We do the work to show whether GreenLake makes sense both financially and operationally. The results vary with every client. That is why doing the Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments for our clients and customizing the right solution for them whether it is GreenLake, public cloud, on-premises or any combination thereof is so important.”

O’Dell said the prestigious award is a testament to the hard work of the CPP team and the leadership of his partner and brother, CPP sales leader Paul O’Dell, and CPP Director of Professional Services Michael Maher.

O’Dell credited Paul and the sales team for investing the extra one to two weeks needed on each and every Infrastructure Anywhere Assessment conducted by CPP, gathering critical customer data on the workloads and the proposed solution. “Our team’s commitment to do what is right for the customer—no matter how much time or effort it takes—is the key to our success,” he said. “The truth of the matter is these assessments require some extra work that is not normally done by others in the industry, and we deliberately dig into the data. CPP is not the right place for a sales rep looking for a quick payday as we are only interested in long-term win-win relationships. Doing right by the client is paramount to us at CPP.”

As for the “top-notch” CPP technical talent led by Maher, O’Dell said the team ensures that the technical analysis on the Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments are “verifiable” and that the GreenLake consumption-based solution delivers a “best-in-class” cloud services customer experience. “Mike and his team have the technical ability to do the detailed assessments but also have the business acumen to tie the customer’s business needs to the right solution,” he said.

The GreenLake sales model, which is resulting in deals of three to five years, has elevated the tight partnership between CPP and its customers, said O’Dell. “CPP has always been assessment-driven with a long-term focus on customer success, but GreenLake has brought it to another level,” he said. “When we work with a customer on a GreenLake solution, we are committing to each other for three to five years or more. It makes us true partners with the customer. That ability to become a true partner is the highest level of achievement for us. GreenLake and the benefits it offers our customers has definitely helped us to reach our goal to become that true partner to our customers.”

O’Dell said the GreenLake on-premises cloud service is gaining momentum in the wake of the intense pressure on IT budgets in the face of higher interest rates. “Customers love the idea of paying only for what they use,” he said. “The more expensive money is and the tighter budgets are, the more important cost savings and only paying for what you use are to customers. More customers than ever before are looking closely at GreenLake solutions. We couldn’t be more excited about the success we are having with GreenLake and the future for even greater sales growth in the years ahead.”