HPE’s Whitman to Partners: Don’t Believe the Public Cloud-Only Hype

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HPE GLOBAL PARTNER SUMMIT — Hewlett Packard Enterprise laid out a host of resources and solutions for its partners to use.

HPE’s Meg Whitman

HPE, which is making a point of labeling itself as a leader in hybrid IT, rolled out multiple changes to its Partner Ready channel program on Monday, including new competencies and simplified training. The company added several competencies that include rapid provisioning, SAP HANA data management and analytics, and “mobile first campus.”

HPE also reduced the amount of time it takes partners to train for a Silver Data Center Specialization and made their Knowledge Credit curriculum equivalent to what is required of an HPE employee. HPE also launched a digital marketing program within the Partner Ready umbrella.

“The latest updates to our … 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,” said Denzil Samuels, HPE’s senior vice president of worldwide indirect sales.

The company made these announcements at the HPE Global Partner Summit in Las Vegas, an event that coincides with the HPE Discover conference.

The company also announced new partner opportunities through Pointnext, its technology services program. HPE on Monday launched Capacity Care, a Pointnext offering that gives procurement support and capacity monitoring for HPE’s ProLiant Gen10 servers.

CEO Meg Whitman said her company is looking to help partners expand their capabilities and develop a deeper services business.

“But if you don’t have a services business, you can resell HPE PointNext, and then that will allow you to add a full set of solutions for your customers, and that means more revenue and more margin for your business,” she said.

Whitman, who told the audience of partners and media that partners account for more than 70 percent of HPE’s infrastructure revenue, stressed her company’s belief that hybid IT is the way of the future.

“What we mean by hybrid is this: It’s applications running on-prem, off-prem and more and more at the edge, all working seamlessly together,” she said. “All of this is fueling the emergence of software-defined infrastructure innovation.”

And a byproduct of hybrid IT is customers not wanting all of their workloads in the cloud.

“The reality is that while we keep hearing the hype that everything is moving to the public cloud, it’s just not happening,” Whitman said.

She cited IDC, which says that 53 percent of enterprises are considering bringing workloads back on premises or already have. Public cloud still makes sense for various types of applications and scenarios, she said, but many customers have hit a “cloud cliff.”

“Simplicity, time to deploy and cost are what made the public cloud so popular, but many customers who pushed everything to the public cloud are now asking us to help them optimize with a hybrid environment,” she said.

HPE executives dedicated much of their time to recapping the long list of acquisitions the company has made in the last year, including SimpliVity, Cloud Cruiser, Nimble Storage and SGI.

“HPE’s expanded partnerships with ISVs and industry-specific alliances is creating new opportunities for channel partners and system integrators to drive customers’ digital transformation services around applications and data as well as edge-to-core network integration,” said Olivier Suinat, senior vice president of global industries and strategic alliances.

Aruba Networks, which HPE acquired in 2015, announced a new core switch series and a new operating system said to help with “intelligent edge” capabilities. Aruba also launched an asset tracking solution.

HPE also announced six partner awards:

• Global Distributor of the Year: Also
• Global Solution Provider of the Year: Itochu Techno-Solutions Corporation
• Global Service Provider of the Year: CenturyLink
• Global Alliance Technology Partner of the Year: Microsoft
• Global Alliance Advisory and SI Partner of the Year: Accenture
• Global Financial Services Partner of the Year: Shi