HPE Prepping Partners To Go It Alone

HPE says recent updates to its Partner Advantage Program are designed to reduce partners’ reliance on the vendor.

“What we’re asking our partners to do… is build their own skills and expertise and competencies, rather than us spoonfeeding them,” said Charlie Tunley, HPE’s UKIMEA channel and partner ecosystem director.

HPE's Charlie Tunley

“We’re asking them to build their own capability so that they can be more successful in the market and we’re giving them the skills to be able to do that," Tunley said.

HPE rolled out an AI enablement program with Nvidia at Discover in June. It includes new competencies and resources around AI, compute, storage, networking, hybrid cloud, sustainability, and HPE GreenLake.

HPE’s focus is now on making the announcements at Discover a reality for partners, said Tunley.

“How can we drive adoption? How can we get our partners in the UK or Europe, the Middle East and Africa thinking about AI and how we can help support them?” he said.

As part of this, HPE is making internal training resources for sales and tech pros available to partners.

“We are democratizing access to those training materials and assets to our general partners, irrespective of whether they work for HPE or are an HPE Authorized Partner. In that, we have lots of training and information around AI in conjunction with Nvidia,” said Tunley.

Related:HPE Expands GreenLake with Morpheus Data Acquisition

HPE is also building an AI incubation program for partners globally.

“We are assessing partners’ current levels of capability and desire to want to partner with us,” said Tunley.

HPE Partners Size Up VMware ‘Alternative’

Elsewhere, the vendor recently launched HPE virtualization, although execs stopped short of calling it a VMware alternative.

“There’s been a lot of uncertainty in that part of the market over the last few months,” said Tunley. “We’re not saying this is the only choice, point or answer for all your virtualization needs and requirements. But for specific workloads, customers are looking for choice when it comes to virtualization, particularly at a time when the market is changing and is a bit uneven. That’s something that other partners are interested in.

“I think customers are interested in exploring how they can have more choice or how they can have [fewer] of their eggs in one basket.”