HPE

Lewis Simmonds, UK channel & MM/SMB director, HPE, notes the uptake of as-a-service offerings throughout the channel. However, the question of, “is everything-as-a-service really a thing for partners?” is still asked.

The short answer, he says, is “Yes, it is.”

“Partners are a key element of our vision to make digital transformation affordable and secure, and to introduce the concept of ‘a cloud experience everywhere.’ How this could look like was tested in 2019, when we piloted our HPE GreenLake cloud services with partners. The focus was on making pre-configured architectures available in t-shirt sizes in as few as 14 days to small and medium customers through the Swift Sales Program. With success – after three years and substantial investments in enablement, activation, and progression – we are seeing more and more partners turn HPE GreenLake into repeatable business.

“Another development we see is resellers launching their own managed cloud services.  They are increasingly leveraging white-labelled cloud services with limited upfront investment and global networks of service providers. [These are] provided by vendors to offer their own branded cloud solutions, retain the customer relationship end-to-end and elastically scale services in line with demand. In the coming years this market will see significant growth, with data sovereignty, security and compliance as some of the key drivers.”