HPE Partners to Get Bigger, Better Rewards

Written by Lynn Haber
August 27, 2018

The new updates and enhancements are the biggest changes the vendor has made to the HPE Partner Ready program since it rolled out several years ago.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on Monday announced the fall lineup of changes to its Partner Ready program targeting bigger and better rewards for partners who focus on high-growth market areas. The program improvements reflect one of the bigger changes HPE has made in the program since launching it in 2015.

Composable infrastructure, hyperconverged solutions, storage, software and consumption services top the list of the more profitable areas that Partner Ready partners might want to target when the FY19 HPE Partner Ready program takes effect on Nov. 1.

The Partner Ready program redo is also structured to recognize, reward and enable smaller HPE partners, many of whom come from acquisitions such as Nimble, SimpliVity, Aruba, and SGI that HPE has made over the past four years.

“We’ve put together mechanisms to help these partners move up the membership tiers in our program, say from Business Ready – an entry-level tier – into our silver or gold tiers for selling our focused products,” Eric Loe, senior director, HPE Partner Ready program and channel go-to-market strategy, told us.

Eric Loe

But that’s not all. Taking a closer look at the fundamental updates to the HPE Partner program, the vendor is:The vendor’s strategy here is to complement its leading market position in selling servers with a laser-focus on selling products of the acquired vendors, and the partners that have strong competencies in selling those offers.

Rewarding partners for their investment in market growth areas with greater rebates and quicker access to higher membership tiers with accompanying benefits.
Simplifying program design to make partnering with HPE easier, including rewards from the first sale, without gates, caps or targets.
Creating global consistency across the program with visibility across the entire sales cycle, one consistent transaction process for quote configuration, and a faster pricing process.
Driving technical enablement and excellence in the channel to accelerate partner sales capabilities with new aligned training categories.

What HPE calls the “hyperconnected world” is creating an explosion of data and a swifter pace of business fpr its partners. Accompanying technologies such as data analytics and flexible IT consumption models, and the company’s financial reward structure are designed to entice Partner Ready partners.

A simplified rebate model offers greater rewards for selling HPE high-growth products and services from composable and hyperconverged solutions, such as HPE Synergy and HPE SimpliVity, to storage solutions such as HPE Nimble Storage and HPE 3Par. Software solutions that the vendor targets includes HPE OneView and HPE OneSphere, and on the services-led side, partners are encouraged to focus on HPE GreenLake and HPE Datacenter Care.

The HPE Engage & Grow partner incentive program, which rewards partner sales reps for selling across the HPE portfolio, is also embracing high-growth products and services, enabling partners and partner sales reps to qualify for rewards.

At the HPE Partner Summit in June, the vendor rolled out the HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity partner program as a door opener to selling HPE’s flexible capacity consumption solutions. HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity is a program with seven HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity prepackaged and pre-priced solutions: HPE ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack; HPE Synergy 480 compute modules; HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8200 and 9450; HPE SimpliVity 380; HPE Proliant BL460c server blade; and HPE StoreOnce 5100. Each prepackaged offer includes buffer, metering, variable capacity and room for growth based on unique customer requirements.

At that time, HPE highlighted IDC research about consumption-based procurement, which by 2020 will account for as much as 40 percent of enterprises’ IT infrastructure spending.

Today, HPE introduces a new competency for HPE GreenLake as well as a rebate that rewards HPE Partner Ready for Services partners for their capabilities with consumption-based models.

HPE Partner Ready for Service partners will also be able to take advantage of a streamlined compensation framework for HPE Pointnext. The services structure is a simplified model with four globally consistent rebate elements, reduced from 14 that were previously included. Additionally, the highest rebate targets the HPE GreenLake consumption-based IT solution.

Finally, HPE is driving partner capabilities in high-growth segments by aligning partner training, certifications and competencies to the high-value selling priorities that reflect market trends — specifically around partner technical presales and solution architects. Expect to see a new global technical community for HPE presales and channel presales that offers ongoing engagement and training opportunities to improve their ability to deliver digital transformation solutions to customers. More information about the global technical community will be made available closer to launch time in FY19, according to the vendor.