HPE pushes high-margin vertical and services focus with new partner offerings

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ramping up its vertical push with the launch of new channel competencies targeting the high growth segments of hybrid IT, data and analytics and edge computing.

The expanded Partner Ready competencies are among a number of new channel-focused offerings launched this week at Discover 2017 which has also seen the vendor pushing the services opportunities for partners.

Chris Trevitt, Hewlett Packard Enterprise South Pacific director of partner sales, says "Every day I meet with partners to hear their feedback and perspective on how we can continue to drive the value, resources and expertise they and our joint customers have come to trust and expect from our company.

"The latest updates to our industry-leading Partner Ready program and the new digital marketing program reflect our continued commitment to deliver the solutions that speak to the needs of our partners and set them up for success," Trevitt says.

The new competencies include Rapid Provisioning, Enterprise Private and Hybrid Cloud and Private Cloud Express; Data Management and Analytics with SAP Hana and Mobile First Campus.

The vendor is also offering an expanded set of partner enablement assets, including reference architectures, solution guides, customer presentations and quick reference cards to support partners in the sales and support of the new competencies.

Also added to the Partner Ready program is a new Silver Data Center Specialisation, providing sales teams with the training to sell across the expanding HPE portfolio, including Arista, SimpliVity and Nimble, and reducing partner training time from nine to five days.

A new Digital Marketing program has also been introduced providing resources, tools, content, campaigns and education to enable partners to increase their digital marketing proficiency and increase their pipeline and revenue, HPE says.

The vendor says in today's digitally driven world, customers control their own research and purchase processes, requiring partners to actively engage customers with tools and content aligned to where and how customers are consuming purchase-related information.

HPE says the Partner Ready Digital Marketing Program will help partners accelerate their digital marketing proficiency and execution to drive pipeline and sales.

As well as providing access to HPE resources or marketing services agencies, and market development funds, the program will include educational resources and training on the latest digital marketing trends.

Partners will also be able to leverage HPE tools and co-marketing campaign content and launch digital marketing with a range of offerings including the Partner Ready Social Media Center and Content Syndication.

All HPE digital marketing assets will be unified under the one program to make it easier for partners to access and leverage the assets to drive growth.

Discovery 2017 has also seen the launch of HPE Pointnext, which is developing new services purpose-built for scale and delivery by the channel, as well as system integrator and advisory partners.

"HPE Partner Ready for Services allows partners and their customers to capture new revenue streams and increase sales velocity by selling end-to-end solutions with HPE Pointnext," HPE says.

Capacity Care from HPE Pointnext, launched this week, is a midmarket solution enabling capacity monitoring and procurement support for HPE ProLiant Gen10 systems. The service combines usage tracking, capacity monitoring and quarterly consultations to take the guesswork out of capacity management and 'get customers closer to cloud-like utilisation levels – lowering total cost of ownership', HPE says.