HPE Global Partner Summit (GPS)/Discover 2019, held last week in Las Vegas, saw upward of 10,000 partner and customer attendees, and participation at GPS was ahead of where it was last year, said Paul Hunter, worldwide partner sales leader at HPE.

“We started later, and we filled it quicker,” he told Channel Futures.

That fact reflects a trend of increased partner participation that HPE is seeing globally. At the company’s most recent Technical Solutions Summits, attendance was up 30% at the European event, 40% at the U.S. event, and 20% at the event in Asia. 

As a “new” company in its second year (launched November 2017), HPE moved full-speed ahead at this year’s GPS/Discover, making a rash of announcements, such as the company’s strategy to deliver its entire portfolio as a service by 2022; the unveiling of HPE Primera, a new storage platform; intelligent edge innovations; and its hybrid IT strategy.

On the partner front, the company, which says partnering is “in its DNA,” promised tighter alignment between its direct and indirect sales team; addressed investments in partner enablement and programs, such as the Sales Pro Community; a beefed-up digital marketing strategy; doubling down on the SMB segment; and HPE Next, a single consolidated ERP effort that’s in the works.

Our slideshow above offers some not-to-be-missed highlights from HPE GPS/Discover 2019.