Partners Cheer ‘Stupendous’ New HPE Aruba Global Go- To-Market Sales Offensive

‘Instead of dealing with two groups of sales and technical teams, we’ll be dealing with one,’ says CPP Associates Managing Partner Pat O’Dell. ‘That has to save at least 20 percent time and cost in our sales motion.’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise partners expect dramatic go-to- market sales advantages from a new global networking sales offensive that integrates the Aruba Networking channel team into the HPE global sales organization effective Nov. 1.

The integration into the HPE global sales organization is going to have a “stupendous” impact that will help partners move the networking “sales needle,” said Pat O’Dell, general manager and managing partner at Clinton, N.J.-based CPP Associates, one of HPE’s top enterprise partners.

“Anytime you consolidate operations and process, it’s a good thing,” he said. “Today when CPP is talking to end users we have to deal with an Aruba team and an HPE team. We have to escalate pricing requests through an HPE team and an Aruba team. Just being able to talk to one team moves the needle for us.”

HPE Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem Simon Ewington called the new global sales alignment a “massive opportunity” to simplify and deliver a better partner experience.

“This is a massive opportunity to turbocharge the partner business that we do with them and leverage the opportunity we have across AI by leveraging our compute, storage and networking portfolio, which I think is unique in the industry,” he said. “Most importantly, it demonstrates that we continue to have partnering in our DNA and continue to listen to the feedback for our partners and how we can drive an optimal experience for them. I think it is a great example of us listening to what partners are asking for in terms of a simplified experience working with them across the complete portfolio and delivering on that promise.”

As to just how big an impact the new go-to-market model could have on partner sales and profitability, O’Dell said, “I know it’s substantial. It is really hard to quantify, but basically instead of dealing with two groups of sales and technical teams we’ll be dealing with one. That has to save at least 20 percent time and cost in our sales motion.”

The go-to-market change also paves the way for the big additions to the HPE portfolio that will come with the expected completion of HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks later this year or in early 2025, said O’Dell.

“Juniper brings solutions advantages to HPE with Mist AI and AI Ops, which will automate network problem resolution, security with firewalls and new high-end core switching,” said O’Dell. “This is going to put much more pressure on Cisco because now all of a sudden HPE’s networking and AI solutions become much more comprehensive.”

Most importantly, the HPE, Aruba and Juniper Networking teams will all be “rowing in the same direction, leading to gains in “customer acquisition” and overall better networking solutions for customers, said O’Dell.

“A lot of smart people in the market are making big bets on HPE based on the comprehensiveness and the strength of the portfolio,” he said. “Juniper makes HPE better.”

Erik Krucker, CTO of Ramsey, N.J.-based Comport Consulting, No. 312 on the 2024 CRN Solution Provider 500, said he expects integrating the Aruba channel networking team into the global sales organization to make it “easier” to get price quotes to Comport customers faster.

“Having a separate team from Aruba worked in the beginning after HPE acquired Aruba,” he said. “That allowed Aruba to operate at a fast pace. It was one of the better decisions HPE made for an acquisition. But over time the returns on that have diminished with two teams, two quoting processes. You had to navigate two of everything. This should simplify that and give us more velocity. This should cut down on the friction.”

With the Juniper acquisition, Krucker said he is looking forward to a single sales offensive on the networking front with a new enterprise core routing platform. “HPE has done a strong job on campus networking, but they have to build out the portfolio and go into the core of the data center,” he said.

The HPE Aruba and Juniper combination comes with customers seeking alternatives to Cisco with a new emphasis on software and how easy it is to manage the networking platform across an entire hybrid multi-cloud IT estate, said Krucker.

“It’s no longer just about speeds and feeds for the hardware any longer,” he said. “HPE is going in the right direction with an easy way to manage things with Aruba Central. I hope HPE continues to build that out and fold Juniper into it with the GreenLake cloud console and management platform. That provides customers one single pane of glass with visibility into the entire IT estate.”