HPE Channel Ready for Massive Juniper Networks, Aruba Opportunities

It's already been a big year for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) in the channel, but that's only poised to get more substantial as the 2024 draws to a close.

The IT giant recently announced that it's integrating Aruba Networking's channel team into its global sales organization. It's been a long time coming, now nine years after HPE closed on its acquisition of Aruba.

It's a move that Aruba SVP of worldwide sales Alain Carpentier blogged about earlier this month will allow the company to "deliver a seamless experience to all of its channel partners."

Just last month, HPE rolled out its Private Cloud AI solution, co-developed with Nvidia to help businesses to build and deploy generative AI applications.

The pièce de résistance could come before the year is out − or early in 2025 − when the company expects to close on its acquisition of Juniper Networks, a deal that HPE says will make it a serious rival to Cisco in the networking space, with partner opportunity aplenty.

We caught up with Phil Soper, North America head of channel sales at HPE, at last week's Canalys Forum North America in Miami Beach, Florida, to get the very latest on all of those topics, HPE GreenLake, the simplification of the company's storage portfolio and more.

HPE's Phil Soper

We've edited the conversation for length and clarity.

Related:AI Shines at Canalys Forum North America: Dell, Lenovo, HPE

Channel Futures: I'd like to learn more about Private Cloud AI and the opportunity that presents partners. I know there's an AI partner program built around that.

Phil Soper: It's multifaceted. AI is very similar to how we built the hybrid cloud practice with partners. We've created an AI elite channel program so those partners that have an AI profile, we do assessments, we identify if they have the skill sets. We also make investments in demonstration units. We have Private Cloud AI, which is a solution we announced at [our HPE] Discover event, in partnership with Nvidia — really strong, purpose-built systems of hardware and software from both HPE and Nvidia, which, I don't want to say makes it easy for partners − because they come in [various shapes and] sizes − it gives partners the ability to sell a customer almost a starter kit, and to get started with AI projects.

We're also providing assessments that they can use for customers. My communication to partners is that everybody at HPE and everybody at our partners need to have a minor in AI. So we're providing all of our training materials that we're all going through at HPE to our partners.

CF: It seems like you need a proposition where the partner, the customer and HPE are all getting this training at the same time. It's interesting.

Related:HPE Bringing Aruba Networking Channel Into the Fold

PS: What's interesting too, is for those of us in this industry, for a long period of time, we've seen a lot of these movements. Remember, virtualization 15 years ago was the hot topic. Cloud, public cloud was the hot topic. AI, though, is disruptive, and it's disrupting at a much quicker pace. I would say to you that even as an HPE employee, I went to Discover this year, and it was eye-opening to me and our partners, because PC AI is here right now. These are purpose-built systems that can be sold. We're not building a practice for the long term; we're in market now, and we can't miss that opportunity. The training is absolutely required.

Also interesting ... sometimes as a vendor, we must teach these partners to build an AI practice. What we're finding is, in many cases, partners are with us already or ahead in terms of their own development, the right resources — and that's exciting for us. We're seeing opportunity today because partners are already capable.

CF: Do you also see an age gap, partners with young staff in particular, who are on board faster than those with an older average age of staffer?

PS: Yes. And I would tell you from my own experience, I was in the partner community. I ran a Canadian partner that was going through a cloud transformation. We were building a cloud practice. What was interesting is we wound up buying a company, and they were a company of new entrants into the market. All they wanted to do was play in the sandbox. And with AI, there's so much brain mass out there. It's capturing those people who want to play in that AI sandbox. The infrastructure is almost immaterial to the outcome that they're trying to solve.

Read the rest of our Q&A with Soper in the slideshow above.