Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced key changes to its industry-leading HPE Partner Ready program that will accelerate solution providers’ profitable growth by rewarding them for investing in product lines aligned to high-growth market areas including composable infrastructure, hyperconverged solutions, storage, software and consumption services. The program will also feature simpler, globally consistent design for easier partnering.
Key updates to the HPE Partner Ready program, which will take effect beginning November 1, 2018, include:
Rewarding partners for their investment in market growth areas with greater rebates and quicker access to higher membership tiers with accompanying benefits;
Simplifying program design to make partnering with HPE easier, including rewards from the first sale, without gates, caps or targets;
Creating global consistency across the program with visibility across the entire sales cycle, one consistent transaction process for quote configuration, and a faster pricing process; and
Driving technical enablement and excellence in the channel to accelerate partner sales capabilities with new aligned training categories.
HPE IS MAKING THE INDUSTRY’S LEADING PARTNER PROGRAM EVEN BETTER
“HPE is making the industry’s leading partner program[1] even better with enhancements that will maximize partner experience and make it easier and more profitable to do business with us,” said Paul Hunter, Worldwide Partner Sales Leader, HPE. “Partners will earn more through the increased focus on high-growth areas of the market, as well as improve their skills to more effectively sell solutions in the future through new training and competencies.”
Rewarding Solution Provider Partners for Shifting to High-Growth Areas
Today’s hyper-connected world has created an explosion of data and accelerated the pace of business. Organizations are embracing solutions that allow them to increase their speed and agility, improve insights and actions through data analytics, and leverage flexible IT consumption models. HPE has built an innovative portfolio of products and services that enables customers to successfully take advantage of these trends. The enhancements to the HPE Partner Ready program announced today reward solution provider partners for selling these high-growth offerings within the HPE portfolio.
Specifically, the program features a simplified rebate model that offers greater rewards for selling HPE high-growth products and services, ranging from composable and hyperconverged solutions such as HPE Synergy and HPE SimpliVity, to storage solutions such as HPE Nimble Storage and HPE 3PAR, to software solutions such as HPE OneView and HPE OneSphere, to services led solutions such as HPE GreenLake and HPE Datacenter Care. Further, the HPE Engage & Grow[2] partner incentive program, which rewards partner sales representatives for selling across the HPE portfolio, will expand to encompass high-growth products and services, enabling even more partners and partner sales representatives to qualify for rewards.
The shift to consumption-based financial models that allow customers to pay for the infrastructure they use each month while avoiding capital expenses is a notable industry trend. In fact, according to IDC, by 2020, consumption-based procurement will account for as much as 40% of enterprises' IT infrastructure spending[3]. Recognizing this market shift, HPE is introducing a new competency in the HPE Partner Ready program for HPE GreenLake, the company’s suite of pay-per-use on-premises IT solutions, as well as a robust rebate that rewards HPE Partner Ready for Services partners for their capabilities with consumption-based models.
In addition, as part of the program enhancements, HPE is accelerating access to HPE Partner Ready program membership tiers, allowing partners to unlock higher membership tiers and accompanying benefits more quickly. For example, the criteria for a new Hybrid IT specialization have been designed to accelerate progression through the partner tiers up to five times faster.
Simplifying Program Design to Make Partnering with HPE Easier
HPE has simplified the FY19 HPE Partner Ready program to allow partners globally to earn rewards from first sale, without gates, caps or target. This change creates a simpler model for channel partners, allowing them more predictability through the rebate levels.
SIMPLER MODEL FOR CHANNEL PARTNERS, ALLOWING THEM MORE PREDICTABILITY THROUGH THE REBATE LEVELS
In addition, HPE Partner Ready for Services partners can take advantage of a streamlined compensation framework for HPE Pointnext. The services structure is a simplified model with just four globally consistent rebate elements, as opposed to the 14 previously included. The highest rebate places special emphasis on our HPE GreenLake consumption-based IT solution.
Creating Global Consistency Across the Program
The HPE Partner Ready program is a simple, transparent program designed to allow partners to focus on sales and meeting customer needs. Beginning in November, HPE partners will have end-to-end visibility across the entire sales cycle, one consistent transaction process for quote configuration, and a faster pricing process with one single source for data. The global uniformity of the HPE Partner Ready program will provide a responsive support route for partner sales through an accessible, dedicated global community.
“The first-class industry standing of the HPE Partner Ready program reflects the long-term relationships we build with our partners through a stable partner program” said Hunter. “We consistently look for ways to strengthen and enhance the program, so channel partners can continue to count on us to lead and drive growth through predictable earning potential."
Driving Technical Enablement and Excellence in the Channel
Partner technical presales and solution architects are leading digital transformation projects for customers. HPE is accelerating partner capabilities in high-growth segments by aligning partner training, certifications and competencies to the higher-value selling priorities tied to market trends.
In addition, HPE is rolling out a global technical community for HPE presales and channel presales that offers ongoing engagement and training opportunities to improve their ability to deliver innovative digital transformation solutions for customers. More information will be provided about this community at the formal program launch in FY19.
[1] Canalys Candefero Vendor Benchmark, July 2018.
[2] HPE Engage & Grow is a global incentives platform named "Partner Sales Rewards" in APAC and India
[3] IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Datacenter 2018 Predictions Nov 2017