HPE Steps Up GreenLake Sales Blitz, Pledges Everything-As-A-Service By 2022

“Three years from now, this company will become consumption driven and everything we do whether it is at the edge, the core, the cloud business, software or infrastructure and services will be available to you and to our customers as a service,” said HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Tuesday stepped up its fast-growing GreenLake pay-per-use model with a pledge to transform its entire portfolio to as-a-service by 2022.

The all-out GreenLake as-a-service sales offensive is aimed at taking the GreenLake model from hundreds of partners to thousands of partners.

The first phase of the sales blitz is a version of GreenLake for the midmarket and a new Network as-a-service version of GreenLake from Aruba.

[RELATED: Antonio Neri’s 5 Boldest Statements On HPE’s Partner Commitment]

“Our vision for our company is to deliver everything we do as-a-service,” said Neri addressing partners at the Global Partner Summit. “Three years from now, this company will become consumption driven and everything we do whether it is at the edge, the core, the cloud business, software or infrastructure and services will be available to you and to our customers as-a-service.”

Neri said now is the time for partners to pivot to GreenLake. “This is the time to transition and be bold and take the opportunity we have in front of us,” he exclaimed.

HPE also followed up on its GreenLake Google Cloud partnership that was announced two months ago with an expansion of that deal. The new HPE – Google offering provides a hybrid cloud for containers with the option of service delivery through HPE GreenLake. That deal brings together Google Cloud’s Anthos multi-cloud platform with HPE ProLiant and Nimble storage.

For partners, all of the GreenLake advancements mark a huge leap forward in the race to drive bigger sales and profits with a pay per use model that delivers business outcome-based services in a long-term contract for customers with robust partner recurring revenue opportunities.

The new midmarket offering will target a sweet spot of $300,000 but can stretch down to $100,000 depending on configurations and customer need.

The new Aruba Network as-a-service version of GreenLake, meanwhile, for the first time combines the Aruba Central SaaS model with network hardware including campus core network switches and wireless access points in a monthly pay per use offering. It includes enterprise Wi-Fi, edge switching, security, end user analytics, and end user experience validation.

HPE is also rolling out partnerships with colocation providers Equinix and CyrusOne to power next day rollouts of GreenLake.

HPE said the new versions of GreenLake for the midmarket, the Aruba networking as-a-service GreenLake offering and the co-location versions of GreenLake for Equinix and CyrusOne are available now.

Xara Tran, CEO of Champions Of Change, the Australian solution provider which closed the first deal under the GreenLake 3.0 channel model, said she sees the new midmarket offering as a big “game changer” for midmarket customers anxious to take advantage of an on premise pay per use model.

“I have a lot of clients that want to adopt the GreenLake model but feel they are not big enough,” said Tran, who bills her company as a disrupter of the “norms” so readily accepted in the IT business. “I see a number of opportunities for clients who will be a perfect fit for this new $300,000 to $100,000 offering. There is definitely demand for this. This gives us more reach and shows HPE is investing more in GreenLake because of the positive response from customers.”

Tran expects to double her GreenLake business over the next year and drive about $5 million in GreenLake sales over the next three years. “It’s exciting to see HPE building a pay per use model like this that supports the channel,” she said. “Competitors have tried to emulate GreenLake but they are not providing the same consumption model as HPE.”

Bruce Geier, CEO of Technology Integration Group (TIG), San Diego, said moving GreenLake into the midmarket is a significant opportunity for partners. “The prime opportunity for the majority of partners is the midmarket,” he said. “Moving GreenLake into the midmarket makes it more appetizable for us.”

Key to driving the midmarket version of GreenLake is strong training and channel enablement, said Geier. “We’ll start looking at this for customers we already have a relationship with,” he said.

Aruba Networking as-a-service is also a major new opportunity, said Geier. “With Greenlake, Aruba and all we are hearing about partner commitment, HPE definitely has good positive channel vibrations,” he said. “If HPE follows through on this it is going to be a winner for the channel.”

HPE Worldwide Channel Chief Paul Hunter, for his part, said the everything as-a-services sales offensive is aimed at driving even greater growth for the HPE channel, which booked more GreenLake sales in HPE’s second fiscal quarter than all of last year.

“What we are talking about is how do we take that (GreenLake) rocket ship and get it to the moon even faster,” said Paul Hunter.

The dramatic changes move the GreenLake business from a custom configuration, bespoke-like model to a standardized midmarket workloads that open up the market significantly for partners, said Hunter. “With the extension of the portfolio down market, we are not thinking about this in the millions now, we are thinking about it in the billions,” says Hunter.

Today, over 400 partners sell the as-a-service portfolio, and the HPE GreenLake channel business has grown over 275 percent year over year.

Overall, HPE said it has $2.8 billion in total contract value, and over 600 customers. What’s more, HPE said it has 99 percent renewal rate with GreenLake with Net Promoter Scores (NPS) of 86 percent. That puts HPE GreenLake in the top one percent for scores in IT service delivery.

For partners the 17 percent rebate up front combined with the ability to add in their own managed services represents a big opportunity to increase their margin in market that is demanding consumption-based IT services, said Hunter. “I think for every partner it is going to be vital to their healthy growth that they embrace consumption,” he said. “Customers are asking for it.”

The no holds barred GreenLake offensive is a direct shot across the bow of competitors. “There is no bigger profit opportunity for partners than GreenLake,” says Hunter. “The rebate value applies to the hardware. If you are selling servers you are getting paid a single digit rebate from us at best. You have a chance to incorporate that into a consumption offer and get paid double digit rebates. It is double what our competition is paying. This is as good as it is ever going to get.”

The advancements make the GreenLake simpler than going to the public cloud, boasts Neri.“With a few clicks, you are in business,” he says.

The call to action for partners at Discover is to accelerate the GreenLake Flex Capacity pay per use sales offensive, said Neri, who envisions at least 30 percent of HPE’s revenue coming from consumption-based services in five years.

“For us it is important that partners come along that journey because there is no choice,” he says. “You have got to do it. If you want to just sell boxes it is going to be a challenge. The reality is that is being commoditized. We want to be a solution provider that drives that consumption through our partners.”

As part of the GreenLake sales offensive, HPE is doubling down on sales tools including a new GreenLake Quick Quote configuration sales tool- a multimillion dollar investment for HPE -- aimed at taking partner sales rep customer quotes from 15 hours down to 15 minutes.

The GreenLake Quick Quote tool – which runs on a sales reps’ mobile phone or can be accessed via a portal- accelerates the sales cycle for both GreenLake Flex Capacity prepackaged offerings through HPE distributors and also custom deals that partners build for enterprise customers.

Neri reaffirmed his commitment to treat partners as an extension of the HPE sales force. “I always say I consider you nothing more than an extension of our sales force,” he told partners. “What I do for our own sales people even our direct salesforce is exactly the same thing I do for you whether it is training, certification, sales enablement. All of the tools we make available to our own internal people we are making available to you… I think about you as nothing more than an extension of the 66,000 employees in our company.”

The pivot to the everything as-a-service requires that both HPE and partners work hand in hand to deliver business outcomes for customers, said Neri.

“We know that this transition to a solution oriented as-a-service model will require both of us to work in concert together to deliver that user experience and that solutions set approach,” he told partners. “I don’t believe there is any other way (we can do this) than working with our partners.”