Collaboration during COVID-19, and how we protect our channel partners

In the past few weeks, it’s been humbling to see people around the world respond to the crisis at hand with remarkable levels of support for their peers, communities and oftentimes strangers. I’ve spoken many times about how our channel partners are an integral part of our team at HPE, and the respect we have for them globally in helping our customers. I’ve witnessed collaboration on projects directly - not only work we’re doing with partners to fight the pandemic itself, but in the ways that HPE has stepped up to protect our channel.

We are taking action to relieve financial pressure for all our partners, while helping them focus on expertise and differentiation. Since we have suspended the revenue thresholds required for entry into the FY21 partner programs, partners can plan for the future and invest in enhancing their skills, continuing certification and engaging with customers. Through our HPE Tech Pro Community, partners have access to the same learning and collaboration opportunities as HPE teams, including over 100 tools for sales and presales. Additionally, members of the Tech Pro community have been invited to consult on and provide feedback on the development of our in-house tools.

We are continuing to focus on and invest in partner enablement with our competitive virtual training, learning paths and award-winning virtual examinations. With new tools for virtual demonstrations and Innovation Center briefings, partners can continue to upskill and engage with customers without travelling or meeting face-to-face. Since making iLo Advanced free until the end of the year, download demand has more than doubled, meaning more partners and customers are now able to remotely configure and monitor their server environment, and keep their businesses running, without having to be on site.

In fact, a number of our partners have been at the frontline of HPE and Aruba’s responses to COVID-19, bringing critical technology solutions to hospitals, research labs, schools and other businesses directly addressing the pandemic.
 

• In Italy, where additional hospital space became an urgent need to address an influx of COVID-19 patients, our partner Mantero Sistemi worked around the clock with us to help convert a ferry boat into a floating hospital.
  
  
• In the UK, a number of hospitals have been equipped in record time to deal with the increased demand on their services thanks to our partners.
  
  
• In Germany, HPE Financial Services and MCL addressed an urgent request for laptops across five different hospitals and health institutions. In just a few days, they were supplied with 1500 devices to manage the crisis.
  
  
• Our North American partner PKA has been providing HPE Gen10 solutions to customers requiring additional server capabilities in the midst of the crisis.
  
  
• As fewer people are heading to the grocery store and instead ordering food to their homes, HPE Financial Services worked with SCC to help a major UK food retailer accommodate a huge increase in demand on their online ordering system.
   

Last year, HPE announced our commitment to becoming a wholly as a Service company, providing a range of subscription based, pay-per-use and as a Service offerings across our entire portfolio by 2022. Today, this strategy remains stronger than ever.

Through HPE Financial Services and our GreenLake consumption propositions, our aim is to help partners reduce the financial risk of our customers. With the ability to avoid over-provisioning IT capital before it is needed, customers can get the capacity they need to meet demand and pay for it as they use it.  This is vital in today’s uncertain marketplace.

HPE is mobilizing the full weight of its resources and global ecosystem of partners to help our joint customers through this uncertain time. We’ll continue to take all appropriate measures to protect the health and safety of our team members, their families and the communities where we live and work -- with the mutual support of our channel partners.

You can read more about these new initiatives in our press release here.