HPE Has Plan To Put GreenLake Into Distributor Cloud Marketplaces

‘We have been working closely with a lot of the top distributors on how to plug in to their marketplaces because that is their scale engine out to their resellers and customers,’ says HPE GreenLake Cloud Services Senior Vice President and General Manager Keith White. ‘We have got the teams working on a set of APIs. We are starting to test those now to allow them to take and integrate GreenLake into their marketplaces.’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched an all-out distribution sales offensive for its GreenLake channel model, including plans to put the pay-per-use platform within distributor cloud marketplaces side by side against public cloud providers.

“We have been working closely with a lot of the top distributors on how to plug in to their marketplaces because that is their scale engine out to their resellers and customers,” said HPE GreenLake Cloud Services Senior Vice President and General Manager Keith White in an exclusive interview with CRN. “We have got the teams working on a set of APIs. We are starting to test those now to allow them to take and integrate GreenLake into their marketplaces.”

The spotlight on GreenLake is front and center at the HPE Virtual Distribution Partner Conference this week with more than 1,000 attendees from 300 distributors around the globe going virtual to discuss the top channel priorities for HPE’s new fiscal year, which begins Nov. 1.

New HPE Worldwide Channel Chief George Hope said he sees the distribution cloud marketplace initiative as the next step in the evolution of GreenLake. He said it gives HPE an opportunity to significantly scale the GreenLake business. “It is an IT function at this point to be able to offer that, but from a value perspective it is an enormous opportunity for partners, distributors and for HPE,” he said.

As to when GreenLake will be available directly from the distribution cloud marketplaces, Hope said that will vary based on how quickly the APIs can be implemented. “That is going to vary because we’re working with different distributors on the APIs,” he said.

That said, Hope stressed that HPE is working with all of its distributors under the new Swift program to dramatically increase the sale of the new midmarket version of GreenLake, which is priced from $70,000 to $300,000.

“Swift is in motion,” said Hope of the new initiative aimed at rolling out standardized versions of GreenLake. “We piloted it in the U.S. and have rolled it out to 36 different countries. It is available. If any customers in the midmarket and SMB space thought that GreenLake is out of their [price] range, that is not the case. The idea of Swift was to put together prebuilt compute and storage solutions that they can easily price and provision quickly.”

As an early adopter of the Everything-as-a-Service model, HPE is now ready to reap the rewards of all the investments it has made to make the pay-per-use channel model successful, said Peter Larocque, president of North America Solutions for Synnex, the winner of HPE’s 2020 North America Distributor of the Year.

GreenLake, in fact, is now ready to benefit from the consumption-based model that is driving the modern technology market, said Larocque.“We believe in the message that [HPE President and CEO] Antonio [Neri] and his team have laid out,” he said. “This is all about transformation, making the solution the best and being cost-effective and future-proof. There are a lot of ways to manage applications, and this is a very good way to do it.”

Larocque praised Neri for putting together all the critical pieces to make GreenLake successful. “HPE has built up all the assets: hardware, storage, networking, SD-WAN and software,” he said. “The capabilities HPE has on the software side are now very strong. … Antonio has said that his goal is to make this a huge part of their business in short order. As the biggest player they have in distribution, we would be foolish not to double and triple down to get there. Antonio knows where the puck is going.”

HPE has made big strides working out all the kinks in the pay-per-use go-to-market model with the channel, including working closely with distribution, said HPE partners.

HPE’s GreenLake distribution strategy has helped lay the groundwork for channel success with GreenLake, said Paul O’Dell, a director at CPP Associates, a Clinton, N.J. , HPE Platinum partner that was recently named HPE Solution Provider of the Year. “We work closely with Synnex, and that has certainly helped us grow the business,” he said.

HPE’s move just three months ago to a group of 17 standardized GreenLake building block offerings that are now available from distributors is key to scaling the GreenLake business, said O’Dell.

“Making the 17 GreenLake solutions available is a big plus,” he said. “That means there is one less hop to make in the supply chain. If they are in factories ready to be distributed, that means we can deliver fast. Distributors are how we get supply with credit lines and everything else. It’s really important. Distributors allow us to get the GreenLake solutions to end users faster.”

Dan Molina, chief technology officer for Nth Generation, San Diego, one of HPE‘s top enterprise partners and No. 297 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500, said he is looking forward to being able to purchase GreenLake through the distributor cloud marketplaces.

“It’s great to hear that HPE is doubling and tripling down on GreenLake,” he said, noting it is critical that distribution help reduce the time from quote to delivery. “We are seeing a significant acceleration from quote to delivery in terms of what these deals used to take. We are seeing a substantial acceleration.”

HPE’s partner enablement—combined with the profitability of the GreenLake solution—has been a channel game-changer, said Molina. “To make these solutions easy for the customer, the partner and HPE need to do the complex work on the back end,” he said. “HPE is helping us deliver something that truly makes our clients’ lives easier and less complex. I applaud HPE for continuing to drive enablement through distribution.”

Molina credited Synnex with providing strong support for GreenLake. “Having HPE leverage distribution is a win-win,” he said. “It’s a great way to scale the business.”