Friday 7 October 2016

Our top takeaways from HPE GPC 2016

By Lee Prior



So the dust has settled on HPE Global Partner Conference 2016 in Boston and the great and the good of the HPE world have returned to their offices, the words of wisdom from the many speakers still ringing in their ears.

No doubt they’ll be reciting, “Hyper convergence” in their sleep over the next few weeks, such was the focus on the flexibility and agility the latest buzz word from HPE promises. With year-end fast approaching plans are afoot to re-position HPE messaging around the three core pillars they see as the future of their Hyper converged offering.

  • Hybrid IT
  • Software Defined…
  • The Edge

Three strong foundations it has to be said and it will be interesting to see what innovations FY17 brings for the UK Channel.

After they had recovered from jet lag and caught up on email, the Westcoast team were asked to sum their time in Boston. Here’s what they had to say:

  • “HPE’s Expanded Flexible capacity offering is now better aligned to the channel, helping partners to offer the best of both worlds for customers that want both on premise IT and the benefits of the cloud.
  • During the UK&I keynote Marc Waters’ message was clear - the spin mergers of the non-core Software assets and Enterprise Services business would mean a better focus from HPE and bring increased speed and agility for their partners and customers.  
  • New partner competencies should help partners that have created their own solutions aligned to HPE technology to differentiate themselves and receive other benefits from HPE.”  

3 days condensed down into 3 paragraphs might suggest many hours spent loitering around the halls of the Boston Convention Centre, but read between the lines and what it actually shows is a single coherent strategy that has the channel and some exciting new solutions at the centre.

The keynote speech by Meg Whitman underlined the core themes very early on and growth, profitability and innovation were central to almost all of the presentations. The importance of channel partners was reiterated time and again as it was made clear just how vital we all are to the continued success of HPE.

Enabling the solution sale was also at the forefront of the presentations and there were many nods of approval as Meg recognised the evolution of the sales cycle to end users and the importance of being at the leading edge of this evolution.

Other noteworthy sessions around the MicroFocus spin-merger & HPE Arista Partnership announcement simply added to the overall feeling amongst the crowd that 2017 was going to be a watershed year for all associated with HPE.

As the key HPE value add distributor for the UK & Ireland we at Westcoast are 100% on board with this new focus, and we already have plans in the works that will help our reseller partners and service providers make the most of this opportunity…so watch this space.

If you were unable to make it over to Boston then you can see the key sessions by clicking here and don’t forget that you can contact Westcoast at any time to discuss anything you need around HPE going forward.

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