Driving success together: How HPE’s innovations and channel-centric approach are empowering partners in 2025
HPE’s indirect business in Q1 FY’25 was fueled by significant enhancements to our product portfolio and our unwavering commitment to powering up our partnerships
- Channel-led results contributed significantly to HPE’s overall Q1 FY’25 financial performance, with positive year-over-year revenue growth demonstrating the relevance and importance of our partners
- HPE’s innovation engine has been strong, delivering significant enhancements to its portfolio. HPE Alletra Storage, HPE ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers and standalone HPE VM Essentials Software offering via a ‘Channel-only’ sales motion, are paving the way for partners to unlock exciting new revenue streams
- ·The arrival of the first HPE Private Cloud AI units with partners has been met with strong support and enthusiasm. This included one of our first indirect deals with German HPE IT Service Provider and HPE Partner Ready Vantage partner COMLINE SE
- HPE Partner Ready Vantage and a continued expansion of competency offerings is helping partners stay ahead, differentiate and win with services
Our FY’25 HPE Channel & Partner Ecosystem vision remains consistent: to be our partners’ first choice when addressing the industry mega trends across Edge, Hybrid Cloud and AI solutions, powered by world class compute technology. To deliver on that vision, we have three focus areas of AI, profitability and growth, bolstered by key tenants of sustainability, expertise, and experience.
Following HPE’s Q1 FY’25 financial results where we set our expectations for the rest of the year, I am pleased to share meaningful progress in executing our indirect strategy during the first quarter of the year, with positive year-over-year revenue performance strongly aligning with our key areas of focus.
Enabling partners to capitalize on the AI opportunity.
In FY’25 we are focused on enabling partners to capitalize on the AI opportunity. Canalys estimates that the AI channel market will reach $159B by 20281, and HPE has been aligning its portfolio to leverage this trend and focus on enabling the partner community.
We have a clear AI Channel Strategy and complementary enablement program, co-developed with NVIDIA. This allows partners to enhance their skills to support all stages of the AI lifecycle, helping customers realize the productivity gains that AI can deliver.
The launch of HPE Private Cloud AI and the first units arriving with partners has been met with strong support and enthusiasm. This included one of our first indirect deals with German HPE IT Service Provider and HPE Partner Ready Vantage partner COMLINE SE.
“Partnering with HPE has been transformative for COMLINE SE, enabling us to empower our customers with cutting-edge solutions. With HPE Private Cloud AI, we're not only enhancing our own business evolution but also significantly expanding our cloud offerings. Our collaboration is set to provide our customers with a competitive advantage through generative AI, improving the efficiency and automation of the services we deliver. We're excited to launch our first GenAI project with a commercial customer, utilizing HPE Private Cloud AI to classify 1.6 million legal documents daily for compliance checks. This is just the beginning of our journey to revolutionize the way we deliver IT services”.
Focusing on driving higher profitability in the business built together with partners.
We remain committed to driving higher profitability in the business built together with partners. One of the most effective ways of achieving this is by hunting and winning profitable share, while empowering our partners to enhance their market capabilities.
Through HPE Partner Ready Vantage, our as-a-service partner program, we recognize partner capabilities with carefully aligned competencies that enable them to differentiate and win with HPE GreenLake, by adding their value added services. As of Q1 we have more than 1,450 partners enrolled in HPE Partner Ready Vantage, with the overall number of HPE GreenLake contracts growing double digits year-over-year.
We are consistently expanding our competencies to accelerate this journey. We began with nine competencies in FY'19, growing to fifteen today, spanning across HPE Partner Ready and HPE Partner Ready Vantage. Notably, in Q1 of this year, we introduced our first pan-HPE competency: HPE Solutions for Sustainability. Later this year, we will launch two further competencies: HPE Solutions for AI and HPE Solutions for Sovereign Cloud. These competencies continue to enable partners to gain industry recognition, stay ahead of trends and remain competitive in an evolving technology landscape.
Driving aggressive profitable growth across our broad innovation-driven portfolio.
Our final strategic area is focused on driving profitable growth across our broad innovation-driven portfolio. In Q1 FY’25 the indirect Hybrid Cloud and Server segments both experienced double-digit revenue growth year-over-year. These strong revenue results have been achieved through HPE’s innovation engine and the power of our partner relationships, enabling successful outcomes for our shared customers.
- The recent launch of HPE ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers, allows partners to provide customers an even more compelling technology refresh opportunity, due to enhanced security capabilities and breakthrough AI-driven automation.
- HPE’s simplified storage portfolio continues to create massive refresh opportunity to new platforms like HPE Alletra Storage, where partners can engage their customers around lower total cost of ownership, increased performance and at the same time building a more sustainable technology footprint.
- Following incredible partner interest and feedback since HPE announced entry into the virtualization market with HPE VM Essentials Software, we have since confirmed our standalone offering via a ‘Channel-only’ sales motion. This will present significant new revenue opportunities and re-enforces our commitment to our partner community.
Finally, at the start of FY’25 we created one, unified partner interface by integrating the HPE Aruba Networking Channel team into the WW Channel & Partner Ecosystem organization. This unified team has already contributed more than 85% of HPE’s Networking revenue in Q1, and we eagerly anticipate continued success as we move forward as one team.
Powering up partnerships at HPE Partner Growth Summit 2025.
As I reflect on the previous quarter, it's evident that we've achieved significant milestones in innovation and showcased our commitment to partnership. We’re excited about the upcoming HPE Partner Growth Summit 2025 at HPE Discover in Las Vegas this June, our largest partner event of the year. This summit will highlight our dedication to helping partners drive sustainable innovation in networking, AI, and hybrid cloud.
We remain committed to innovation in AI, hybrid cloud, compute, and networking, and growing profitably together with our partners around the world. Regardless of industry shifts and market adjustments, we will continue to make bold moves to enhance our portfolio and accelerate value for all of our stakeholders, including our customers and partners.
1 Source: Canalys Insights - Generative AI will be a US$158.6 billion opportunity for the channel ecosystem by 2028, August 2023