HPE Is Upping Its Everything-As-A Service Partner Ready Vantage Game

‘At the end of the day, we want partners to develop their own solutions that drive business outcomes around these technologies with their own innovation. These competencies enable them to do that,’ said HPE Worldwide Senior Vice President of Partner Programs Jesse Chavez. ‘The competencies are based on hybrid cloud, edge and AI. We want partners to take our innovation, get enabled through competencies with their own value added services and IP’

HPE Aruba’s Beth Jensen (left) and HPE’s Jesse Chavez

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Monday stepped up its Partner Ready Vantage everything-as-a-service ecosystem offensive with new hybrid cloud competencies and plans for future offerings including AI and high performance computing.

The new hybrid cloud offerings—which were announced at the HPE Discover Partner Growth Summit—set the stage for a new era of business-outcome-based selling that is focused on partners building out their services capabilities. That’s a sharp contrast to the traditional HPE medallion-based Partner Ready program.

[Related: CEO Antonio Neri: Partners Will Be Included In HPE’s ‘Bold’ AI Journey]

The new Hybrid Cloud competencies, which will be available on November 1, include Hybrid Cloud Solutions, Private Cloud Solutions, Data Services & Storage, HPE Data Protection and Disaster Recovery and HPE GreenLake solutions along with the prior offerings: HPE Solutions for SAP HANA and HPE VDI Solutions.

“At the end of the day, we want partners to develop their own solutions that drive business outcomes around these technologies with their own innovation. These competencies enable them to do that,” said Jesse Chavez, worldwide senior vice president of partner programs and operations for HPE. “The competencies are based on hybrid cloud, edge and AI. We want partners to take our innovation, get enabled through competencies with their own value added services and IP [intellectual property].”

Partners will be able to deliver the new hybrid cloud competencies through a Centers of Expertise model, whereby HPE will make its own business outcome intellectual property to drive the services transformation.

Chavez said the new competencies hit the market with the as-a-service market growing at 57 percent, and partners now seeing as-a-service account for about 35 percent of their portfolio mix.

“Customers are looking at business outcomes and we want to be able to help customers find those types of partners,” he said. “We are going to enable those partners and identify those partners through the competencies.”

HPE plans to release more details on the hybrid cloud certifications in the next several months. “At the end of the day, the certifications are not going to be that easy to make,” he said. “It’s not like we’re taking 80,000 partners that we have in Partner Ready and thinking they will move over here to Partner Ready Vantage. We are going to identify partners that truly have the capabilities to go deliver on these business outcomes.”

One requirement for the hybrid cloud certification will be auditing by Information Security Systems International (ISSI), which does managed services audits.

Beth Jensen, worldwide vice president of partner programs for HPE Aruba Networking, said the Partner Ready Vantage model is aimed at helping partners build out the everything-as-a-service model.

“Every deal now incorporates some sort of services opportunities. As these deals keep selling, there are more services needs, and we can’t do it alone,” said Jensen. “So we have to reach out into our partner community as an extension of us to deliver all of the services that the customers need to be successful. That is the big opportunity. Partners can grow their business through higher margins by delivering and beefing up their services base. We are enabling them to be able to build their capabilities to deliver what the customers want. It’s a business-outcome-based approach. The whole sales motion switches from selling by a value or a solution to selling on business outcomes.”

Michael Maher, director of professional services at CPP Associates, Clinton, N.J., one of HPE’s top GreenLake partners, said he sees the opportunity to drive new services revenue and profits.

“This opens the door to a lot of new opportunities to us,” said Maher. “I think the focus on competencies is the right focus. It does provide partners with the ability to showcase their talent and lead with HPE gear.”

Maher praised HPE for its everything-as-a-service channel leadership. “This is the most evolved partner-focused channel offering that anybody in the industry is really coming out with right now,” he said. “I think it’s the right move. I think it is ultimately going to enable partners to be more self-sufficient and deliver more value at the end of the day.”