In an interaction with CRN India, Amer Warsi, Director, Channels and Partner Ecosystem, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), India, delves deep into the company’s AI channel strategy and how it is helping partners succeed in this dynamic landscape. Warsi also explains how HPE is doubling down on innovation across its products, training, and programs to enhance partner profitability and create new revenue streams.
Q. How is HPE’s AI channel strategy leading to opportunities for all of HPE’s partners?
HPE’s AI channel strategy is designed to unlock significant opportunities for our entire partner community through a comprehensive and structured approach. Our strategy is built on three foundational pillars:
• Identifying and Working with Specialized Partners: We focus on partnering with those who have deep expertise in AI, machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL). These partners have robust data science capabilities and are specialized in high-performance computing (HPC).
• Creating Differentiated Offers: We are committed to developing unique and curated AI solutions, such as our Proactive Care AI (PCAI). These differentiated offers include solutions tailored for inferencing and generative AI (GenAI), helping partners deliver precise and impactful AI capabilities to their customers.
• Broadening the Community: We are expanding our HPC and AI Highflyers community, providing education on a wide range of topics to empower our partners. Our deep integration with NVIDIA further enhances our ability to deliver comprehensive AI solutions.
Our goal is to help partners transition from merely recognizing AI opportunities to effectively realizing them. By increasing their relevancy through innovation, we enable the evolution of the as-a-Service (aaS) business model. This approach helps our traditional partners evolve at their own pace and attracts new partner archetypes, such as managed service providers (MSPs), through the HPE GreenLake platform. HPE GreenLake facilitates the development and enablement of managed capabilities, allowing partners to scale and grow quickly while paying only for what they use.
Moreover, we are focused on expanding data services and storage opportunities. We aim to refresh and expand our installed base through competitive strategies and increased partner enablement, particularly within the technical community.
A significant advantage of working with HPE on AI solutions is our unwavering focus on security, privacy, and data protection. Neglecting these aspects can expose sensitive information, and we ensure that our entire ecosystem—compute, storage, and networking—is fortified against such risks.
Q. What has been the impact of NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE portfolio on partners?
The NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE portfolio is a game-changer for our partners, providing them with unparalleled opportunities to drive innovation and unlock new revenue streams. This program offers competencies and resources across AI, computing, storage, networking, hybrid cloud, and sustainability, along with enhanced HPE GreenLake offerings.
This comprehensive support equips our partners with the tools and skills they need to navigate the AI landscape and deliver cutting-edge solutions. This fully integrated private cloud can be deployed in just three clicks and 24 seconds, making it significantly more efficient compared to other solutions. This ease of deployment allows partners to quickly and effectively bring AI capabilities to their customers.
Q. How is HPE equipping partners with the tools and skills needed to navigate the AI landscape and capitalize on market opportunities?
At HPE, we are committed to delivering innovations that meet market demands and help our partners and customers streamline operations while creating competitive opportunities. While there is considerable buzz around AI, execution still has a long way to go. We expect AI adoption to grow and mature significantly over the next 12-18 months, and our partners need to be proactive in offering the right expertise and tools to help their end-customers expand their AI capabilities seamlessly.
To equip our partners for the AI landscape, we focus on several key areas:
AI Acceleration Workshops: We offer AI acceleration workshops that support partners on their AI journey. These include AI readiness assessments, tools for building tailored AI growth strategies, measurements of success, and a roadmap for building AI service practices.
AI Skills Development: We provide AI skills development workshops, self-paced content, and certifications through HPE Tech Pro. These resources help partners advance their AI skills, including the ability to sell and architect full-stack AI solutions from HPE and NVIDIA’s portfolio.
HPE AI Solutions Competency: This competency enables partners to develop a comprehensive AI practice supporting all stages of the AI lifecycle. Partners can develop skills to architect complete AI solutions, allowing customers to focus on accelerating AI use cases that enhance productivity or create new revenue streams.
HPE Compute Competency: This competency helps partners develop expertise in inferencing solutions to support the AI models and use cases planned by their customers.
HPE High Performance Computing (HPC) in the Enterprise Competency: This competency enables partners to support advanced enterprise customers in developing and customizing their GenAI models. Partners can integrate the HPE Cray portfolio, including NVIDIA-Certified HPE Cray systems, into their broader AI and HPC strategies.
HPE Storage and Data Services Competency: We have updated this competency to include expertise in supporting HPE GreenLake for File Storage, certified for NVIDIA DGX BasePOD and validated for NVIDIA OVX. This delivers a proven enterprise file storage solution for accelerating AI, GenAI, and GPU-intensive workloads at scale.
Our comprehensive support and innovative solutions ensure that partners are well-equipped to navigate the evolving AI landscape and capitalize on the significant market opportunities ahead. We urge our partners to be proactive and assertive in seizing these opportunities, as the AI-driven world will demand a robust understanding of data strategies and storage solutions.
Q. How is HPE AI Solutions competency enabling partners develop comprehensive AI practice that can support all stages of the AI lifecycle?
HPE AI Solutions competency enables partners to develop a comprehensive AI practice that can support all stages of the AI lifecycle – whether customers are starting with AI, scaling existing use cases, or conducting advanced AI research. In collaboration with NVIDIA, HPE will deliver a comprehensive enablement program for channel partners to recommend, deploy, and manage a complete AI software and hardware solution stack, which includes the new HPE Private Cloud AI, a full-stack turnkey private cloud designed for AI workloads. Partners will develop skills to architect a complete AI solution, enabling customers to then focus their resources on accelerating the development and deployment of AI use cases that can enhance productivity or create new revenue streams.
Q. What all new growth opportunities do you see for partners in the current AI revolution? Any opportunity for distributors, in particular, that will have a significant, positive impact on their game plan?
The current AI revolution presents numerous growth opportunities for our partners, enabling them to enhance their offerings and drive significant business transformation. Organizations are increasingly seeking advanced storage solutions to keep up with growing file storage demands and enable AI capabilities while maintaining high performance, affordability, and scalability. To meet these needs, we have made significant investments in our HPE GreenLake services this year. These investments help partners deliver faster time to value and provide powerful insights into customers’ hybrid cloud environments.
For example, our enhanced HPE GreenLake Flex solutions offer hybrid cloud environments with added sustainability and observability features, giving customers a competitive edge in their industries. Additionally, standardized rapid instances of HPE GreenLake make it easier and faster for partners to configure, price, and quote HPE GreenLake offerings in virtualization, containerization, and Zerto cyber resilience. These pre-validated hardware and software packages streamline the entire process, from quote to activation, ensuring a seamless experience for both partners and customers.
For distributors, in particular, these advancements present substantial opportunities. The ability to quickly configure and deploy HPE GreenLake solutions means distributors can respond to market demands more efficiently, reducing time to market and increasing customer satisfaction. The streamlined process for quoting and activating HPE GreenLake offerings enables distributors to scale their operations and expand their reach, ultimately driving higher revenue and growth.
By leveraging these new capabilities, distributors can enhance their game plans significantly. They can offer a broader range of solutions, address diverse customer needs more effectively, and position themselves as key enablers of the AI-driven digital transformation. The combination of HPE’s innovative technologies and the flexible, scalable nature of HPE GreenLake positions our partners and distributors to capitalize on the tremendous growth opportunities presented by the AI revolution.
Q. How will the new AI enablement program help your existing as well as new partners in this AI transition journey so that they can capture more market share, catalyze growth, and increase sales pipeline, and profitability?
The new AI enablement program, launched in collaboration with NVIDIA, is designed to equip both our existing and new partners with the necessary tools and skills to navigate the AI landscape effectively and capitalize on the immense opportunities it presents. The program offers new competencies and additional resources across AI, compute, storage, networking, hybrid cloud, sustainability, as well as enhanced HPE GreenLake offerings and capabilities.
Partners can leverage HPE’s expertise to build AI practice roadmaps that align with their specific business models and growth strategies. By doing so, they can effectively capitalize on AI opportunities tailored to their needs.
As mentioned earlier, our program includes AI acceleration and skills development workshops that enhance partners’ AI skill sets. These workshops are designed to help partners improve their ability to develop and deploy AI technologies, delivering a competitive edge across various industries.
Q. How closely HPE is working with partners to understand how they are using and budgeting for AI and their ambitions for the future?
At HPE, we are deeply committed to working closely with our partners to understand their AI journey, from current usage and budgeting to their future ambitions. The challenge many partners face is transitioning from recognizing AI opportunities to realizing them. Our goal is to help partners navigate this journey by first understanding their current position in the AI landscape, assessing their existing skills, and identifying their future goals. We then assist them in developing a comprehensive plan to achieve these goals.
By helping partners on their AI journey, we differentiate ourselves in the market. Our support extends to developing a plan that helps partners build and enhance their AI services practices, which is where significant margin opportunities lie. Our innovative approach with HPE Partner Ready Vantage has been a game-changer that builds competencies in AI, high-performance computing, sustainability, and sovereignty, setting the stage for partners to drive AI sales growth.
By working closely with our partners, we ensure they have the tools, skills, and support needed to budget effectively for AI and achieve their future ambitions. This collaborative approach underscores our commitment to partner success and our dedication to driving growth and innovation in the AI landscape.
