Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced changes to its Partner Ready programm as it nears the first anniversary of its separation.
At its 2016 HPE Global Partner Conference, being held in Boston from September 12 to 14, HPE announced new offerings and expanded resources.
The Partner Ready program will now include the integration of competencies, a new and fully integrated Partner Ready Networking Program, a revamped Partner Ready Service Provider (PRSP) Program, and an updated suite of ready-made partner marketing resources.
The Global Partner Conference is jointly conducted by HP Inc. and HPE partners. Partner ecosystem is vital for HPE because a majority of its business is driven through the channel. Under the Partner Ready Program, the company gives its partners incentives, skills and investments.
The first update to the Partner Ready Program is the introduction of channel “competencies”, where partners working to accelerate sales growth in selected areas will be rewarded.
HPE Partner Ready will feature a total of 11 competencies, with six formally launching at GPC and the remaining rolling out over the next 12 months based on partner feedback and market needs.
Planned Competencies are:
Application Development and Transformation, IT Automation and Orchestration, Risk Management and Secure Design, Incident Recovery, Threat Detection and Response, Data Discovery and Assessment, Data Management Infrastructure and Architecture, Data Analytics and Business Insight, Intelligent Workplace, Digital Collaboration, and Campus Mobility.
Secondly, HPE introduced a Partner Ready for Networking Program. It combines the capacities of the Aruba PartnerEdge and HPE Networking channel programs to enable partners to capitalize on the burgeoning enterprise mobility market.
The third update is Partner Ready for Service Providers Program, where the company offers flexible capacity to enable partners to align their data center operational costs with subscription revenues.
Further, partners will be provided with training and education to permit greater utilization of HPE technologies to deliver new service offerings. Besides, a Service Provider Certification will be given to create additional differentiation in the market and customer confidence.
Fourth is Partner Ready for Technology Partners Program to enable independent software vendors and independent hardware vendors to more easily integrate, validate and market product integrations together with HPE.
Fifth, is an expansion to on-demand marketing resources available to partners of all levels by including a social media center, a marketing concierge service, content syndications tools, marketing training tools and webinars.
Sixth is Partner Ready IT Investment Online Tools which are a variety of functional interfaces which will integrate directly into a partner’s online portal environment.
“HPE is an even more channel-focused organization committed to innovating new, collaborative solutions that enable growth for the company and our partners,” said Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
“As we work to build and deploy the platforms and tools that accelerate global enterprises, we must work in unison with our partners to move our businesses further, faster,” she added.
In addition to the expansion of the Partner Ready program, HPE introduced updated hardware and services designed to deliver on the promise of enterprise mobility.
The company introduced Aruba Mobile First Platform, a software layer that uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide third-party developers and business leaders with network insights to improve applications and services.
Aruba, an HPE company, also announced new network procurement and consumption models to give enterprise customers more flexibility and choice in how they obtain and support their network infrastructure.
Another product updates are an expansion of Hyper Converged 380 offerings for channel partners, extension of flash and software-defined storage to SMB.
As part of HPE’s partnership with Docker, the industry’s first HPE Docker ready Server is now available. The HPE pre-configured server platforms are ready for Docker Engines. The server models include the HPE ProLiant DL360, DL380 and BL460.
“As a large company the focus was on a lot of different programs. We are consolidating all of those under Partner Ready so that we can support all business models from a partner perspective such as resale, hosting, managed services and integration all in one program,” CDN news agency quoted Jesse Chavez, HPE’s worldwide leader for indirect strategy and operations for the enterprise group.
In the second quarter, HPE announced $8.5 billion spin-merger of its enterprise service business with with Computer Sciences Corp. Third quarter witnessed $8.8 billion deal to spin-merge its non-core software assets with Micro Focus.
When considering these moves together, its clear that HPE is now focusing on hybrid cloud. The new customer additions like Home Depot, Best Buy, Dropbox and the Rio airport in the recent months are complementing the company in its journey to top hybrid could industry.
In the third quarter, HPE reported $12.2 billion revenue, which was down 6.5 percent from previous year. Earnings per share were $0.49, beating an estimated $0.04 per share.
Arya MM
