Hewlett Packard Enterprise has its strongest-ever product portfolio, has backed it with a channel program that rewards growth and tuned its team to make sure it can help partners to win.
That’s the view of Marina Fronek, HPE’s Australian general manager for channels and alliances.
Fronek admits that most of the pieces of the company’s channel program have been in place since mid-2018, when its new plan kicked into gear. That plan saw HPE emphasise edge computing, hybrid cloud, intelligent flash storage, AI to help organisations manage data, shifts to software-defined infrastructure and a move to as-a-service models. The company also flattened its incentives so that every dollar of a deal earns the same reward.
Fronek thinks partners have appreciated that simplicity and consistency. More important, she says, has been HPE Australia’s willingness and ability to get into the trenches with partners to help them win and execute.
I think one of the advantages we have is that we award our own HPE reps on the same basis whether they go direct or through a partner,” she said. “That encourages them to work with partners.”
“Another thing is the experience we offer partners by making our most senior people available. The level of intimacy with partners and the reach into parts of their business has real cohesiveness as part of our teaming strategy.”
Fronek said a few hero products have emerged: the company’s Aruba networking portfolio has proven popular, while the GreenLake service that packages IT-as-a-service is helping to move the channel and end-customer organisations alike into operational expenses models.
One offering Fronek said will soon receive a little more exposure is Cloud28Plus, a cloud services directory that lists HPE parnters and their capabilities.
Fronek said HPE Australia is “actively onboarding” local partners to Cloud28Plus.
As 2019 unfurls, Fronek said local partners can expect more training opportunities too.
“We’ll work on the capability of partners to make sure they have the capability to deliver on industry trends,” she said. “We’’ll do that with a variety of training mechanisms - we have an intimate way of training sales people and more technical people.”
Local partners also have the prospect of new global changes to HPE’s partner program washing up on our shores: in October 2018 the company’s CEO Antonio Neri teased dramatic simplification for the company’s quote-to-cash processes, and pledged they will debut in March 2019.
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