HPE Discover: Partners Talk GreenLake, HPC Storage, IP Building

Written by Lynn Haber
June 20, 2019

HPE partners we talked to are feeling upbeat about the company's strategy and messaging.

HPE DISCOVER — The velocity at this year’s HPE Partner Global Summit and HPE Discover event has everyone – vendors, partners and business customers – moving at full speed. Channel Futures was grateful to get some unscheduled time with a few channel partner attendees to get their take on this year’s event and the value of HPE’s messaging for their businesses.

Here’s what three partners shared with us.

Camera Corner Connect Point (CCCP) (U.S.)

The 66-year old company that got started as a corner camera store has evolved into a large IT VAR selling AV, VoIP, physical security, and MSP services — and the partner still operates a specialty electronics store. Last October, CCCP merged with Arlington Computer Products (ACP Creative IT), creating a substantial solution provider with combined sales of $160 million, 250 employees and coverage that spans the SMB and enterprise customer markets. Together, ACP and CCCP rank among the top channel partners for HP, HPE and Dell.

Dave Pisani, senior vice president of strategy and operations at CCCP, told us that when you’re a key HPE platinum partner, you show up at the vendor’s big event to hear what the company has to say, have some executive meetings and learn more about how HPE interacts with its partners.

So, what’s resonating with Pisani at this week’s event in Las Vegas?

CCCP’s Dave Pisani

“A lot of what we do at Camera Corner is SMB-focused and a lot of the things here are not SMB-focused — but there were some nice announcements and a lot of direction indicating that HPE is paying extra attention to SMB, which is a great thing for us,” he said.

Pisani is pleased to hear that HPE’s GreenLake strategy now embraces midmarket customers.

“One of the things I have to do today is find out exactly what that means in terms of midmarket — which means a lot of things to different people. What’s important to us is … the minimum number of seats needed to make GreenLake a worthwhile discussion with customers.”

Once armed with that information, Pisani will take it back to his company’s salesforce to promote it with customers.

“GreenLake is interesting and it’s repeatable revenue, and everyone wants MMR (monthly recurring revenue). I don’t know how many of our SMB customers it will apply to, but it will apply to many customers at our sister company ACP because they’re more enterprise-focused.”

What does Pisani think about HPE’s strategic vision?

“I think that HPE is leading the game, and that’s what makes us excited about working with them,” he said. “I’m not a technical person, but [HPE] demonstrates how [its] technology applies to the real world and what it means to customers and partners. It’s pretty exciting.”

Sempre Technologies (New Zealand)

Sempre Technologies focuses on high-performance compute (HPC), higher education and media around storage and infrastructure, where the partner works primarily with Dell EMC. What brings Antony Bridle, director at Sempre, to sunny and hot Las Vegas (it’s winter in New Zealand) is to scout out another vendor’s product portfolio.

“We’re looking to see what HPE has to offer,” he said.

Bridle said that aligning with another vendor’s product portfolio will …