As-a-service expertise is in the spotlight at this week’s HPE Distribution Partner Conference, held virtually this year. The vendor wants to help partners grow their businesses with as-a-service initiatives, the company said on Tuesday.

But that’s not HPE’s only focus for partners. The company wants them to grow their sales in the SMB and midmarket. The HPE Distribution Partner Conference, in its third year, is attracting more than 1,000 virtual attendees from 300 distribution partners worldwide.

HPE’s George Hope

“The initiatives we’re announcing today stem from key partner feedback and aim to better enable distributors of all of our channel partners to monetize their as-a-service strategy,” said George Hope, HPE worldwide head of partner sales. “We see our distribution partners not as an extended sales force, but rather as team members. As HPE advances along our journey to becoming an edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company, we see an opportunity for our distributors to strengthen relationships with our shared partners and become their trusted advisers, helping them embrace and accelerate HPE’s as-a-service business.”

Hope, HPE’s new global channel chief, replaces Paul Hunter, the company’s new managing director for North America.

Sets Strategy and Initiatives

The HPE Distribution Partner Conference aims to define a clear strategy and new market opportunities for channel partners. More than 80% of HPE’s partner business moves through distribution.

Here are some new initiatives partner can expect from HPE and its distribution partners.

In its 2021 fiscal year, HPE will increase support for HPE GreenLake specialists and dedicated enablement initiatives. At the HPE Partner Growth Summit in June, GreenLake was the focus. At that time, the company announced HPE GreenLake Cloud service offerings. Those new cloud services for distributed environments included cloud services for containers and virtual machines, storage and compute, as well as cloud services for data protection and networking.

HPE enablement initiatives for partners include workshops to help partners with their as-a-service strategies. Solution providers and distributors will also be able to work with HPE Storage Rangers. These pros are outcome-based solution selling experts with deep technical skills.

Partners will also see HPE debut the SMB FlexOffers program. It provides distributors and solution provider partners the ability to customize their built-to-order products, and more.

Also addressed at the conference is an enhanced partner onboarding process for the HPE Partner Ready Program. Distributors will be at the core of the new initiative. This improvement beefs up the onboarding process with end-to-end visibility and partner referral.

HPE also enhanced its Pro Series learning, training and networking program. Beginning in fiscal year 2021, which starts Nov. 1, 2020, partners can earn HPE sales certifications in a new modern, interactive learning environment via the HPE Sales Pro Learning Center. Additionally, enhancements to the HPE Demo Program give partners new options to demonstrate HPE solutions virtually, at customer locations or in their own offices.