At its 2016 Global Partner Conference, now underway in Boston, Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announced plans to add competencies to its Partner Ready channel program.
Beginning with the start of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor’s 2017 fiscal year on November 1st, HPE partners can pursue certified status in application development and transformation, incident recovery infrastructure and architecture, intelligent workplace, and digital collaboration. Another six competencies in fields such as IT automation, threat detection and response, and analytics will become available as well over the course of the following 12 months.
The changes introduced today are designed to meet rising demand among IT buyers for complete, services-led solutions rather than products. Adding competencies to Partner Ready will help customers find technology providers capable of selling, deploying, and supporting such solutions, according to Jesse Chavez, vice president of worldwide channel sales and alliances in HPE’s enterprise group.
“The program from a solutions provider perspective was very product-centric,” he says. “While we’re not changing the Partner Ready program at its core, we’re adding the competency component to identify those partners that actually have those solution skill sets that they can overall deliver to the marketplace.”
That thinking applies not only to end users, he continues, but to HPE’s own salesforce as well.
“It makes it easier for not only our customers but our sales representatives to actually identify those partners that have those competencies so that they can actually do more co-selling with them,” Chavez says.
Competency holders will enjoy access to marketing development funds and targeted demand generation activities too, along with specialized reference architectures, solution sizing tools, branding elements, and training resources. They will also be first in line for deal registration should they and a partner without competencies pursue the same opportunity.
HPE will grant competencies immediately to partners that already have proven solution expertise. Training and enablement programs will be available to partners that don’t yet qualify but wish to do so.
In another, also significant, announcement made today, HPE revealed that it will merge its present-day constellation of independent partner programs into a single unified offering.
Starting November 1st, partners enrolled in currently separate programs such as Partner Edge, which is operated by HPE’s Aruba networking subsidiary, will become members of an overarching Partner Ready program.
“Partner Ready will be the full umbrella for all partner programs going forward,” Chavez says.
The formerly stand-alone programs under that umbrella will retain a measure of autonomy, however, as sub-branded components of the larger partner organization. The AllianceOne program for ISVs, for example, will become the Partner Ready Technology Partner Program, while Aruba’s Partner Edge will combine with HPE’s currently distinct network partner organization to form a new Partner Ready for Networking Program.
To make the transition to that new network channel offering in particular as easy as possible for Aruba and HPE partner alike, HPE will initially make only minor changes to existing certification requirements. Furthermore, partners who belong to both Partner Edge and Partner Ready at present will join the new program at the higher of their two current membership levels.
“Essentially we’re going to grandfather all of our partners in under their existing certifications and their existing achievements in their respective fiscal year ’16 programs,” says Donna Grothjan, Aruba’s vice president of worldwide channels, who adds that Partner Ready for Networking will utilize Aruba’s deal registration system rather than HPE’s based on feedback from resellers who prefer its simplicity.
According to Chavez, the decision to combine all of HPE’s partner programs into one also responds to input from the channel.
“This is definitely something that they’ve been pushing,” he says.
Partners have also been asking for new and better marketing resources more aligned with how businesses research solutions in the era of social networks, according to Chris Ogburn, HPE’s vice president of worldwide channel marketing.
“The way they’re consuming information has changed dramatically,” he says of end users. “They’re trying to get all that information on their own.”
To help partners cope with that trend more effectively, HPE today unveiled a new set of marketing tools, including a social media center stocked with white papers, videos, infographics, and other resources that partners can add their brand to and then distribute via services like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
“They can actually take the information, customize it to some degree, and push it through their social media streams straight from the tool,” Ogburn says.
HPE also introduced new content syndication tools, marketing training materials, and a new concierge service today. The concierge service will offer personalized, 24/7 help to partners searching for relevant content within HPE’s vast library of marketing resources.
Word of HPE’s Partner Ready changes arrives on the same day as the announcement of new networking, hyperconverged infrastructure, and financing options.
