HPE Partnerships With Nutanix, Google Cloud Will Expand Market For HPE GreenLake

‘Google and Nutanix are both very interesting partners,’ says Paul Harman, technology solutions director for Westcoast. ‘Going side-by-side with them and HPE is a great place to be. This opens up the market and makes it bigger for us. Leading with GreenLake is where we want to be.’

Partners say Hewlett Packard Enterprise's blockbuster deals to put Nutanix and Google Cloud on HPE GreenLake will drive more sales opportunities for the breakthrough on-premise pay-per-use platform.

Paul Harman, technology solutions director for Westcoast Limited, the $3 billion-plus United Kingdom distributor that has closed the largest GreenLake pay-per-use deal, twice the size of any other GreenLake deal, said the Nutanix and Google cloud partnerships "expands the market" for HPE GreenLake.

"There is lots to learn around both opportunities, but ultimately it gives our end users more choice and our channel partners more things to go sell," said Harman. "It's really exciting. Google and Nutanix are both very interesting partners. Going side by side with them and HPE is a great place to be. This opens up the market and makes it bigger for us. Leading with GreenLake is where we want to be."

Key to success is getting channel partners "skilled up" on the new Nutanix and Google cloud offerings, said Harman. "Our value is making it simple for our partners" to adopt the new GreenLake offerings, he said.

HPE partners said the two deals – which were announced last week at the same time – are GreenLake game changers.

The Nutanix deal puts Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software on HPE GreenLake. It also makes Nutanix available on HPE ProLiant and Apollo servers. The new offerings will be available sometime in the third quarter (July 1- Sept. 30).

At the same time, HPE committed to delivering Google Cloud with a Google Kubernetes Engine (environment) as part of an on premises infrastructure as a service offering with HPE GreenLake. HPE and Google said the deal will allow customers to benefit from the same container based system across their hybrid infrastructure.

The GreenLake pay-per-use sales offensive comes with market researcher IDC predicting that by 2020 consumption-based procurement will accounts for as much as 40 percent of an enterprise's IT spending. "We have to make this change as a distribution business to support our partners," said Harman. "We see it as a huge opportunity, but also a risk if we don't change. We see the multi-million dollar pipeline growing by the day."

Westcoast – working with HPE solution provider ONX- a CBTS company- knocked down the multimillion dollar Greenlake deal in January. One of the keys to getting that deal done was the "financial agility" provided by Westcoast along with "operational excellence" centered on API (Application Programming Interface) integration around metering on premise IT usage, said Harman.

"We are very happy about the deal we landed, but for me it is about when is the next deal going to land and the next deal after that," said Harman. "We have a multimillion dollar pipeline. We have made some good progress. There is still a lot to do. The future is very, very positive when it comes to GreenLake and this true consumption model which we are behind."

George Hope, vice president of worldwide distribution at HPE, said HPE has succeeded with GreenLake where competitors have failed because of the significant investment HPE has made in bringing the on premise pay per use model to its partners and distributors. "Most companies have not been able to figure out how to do this with their channel and more importantly with their distributors," he said. "A lot of that business has been direct. They have been not been able to crack the code. We have been able to crack that code because of our channel DNA. We partner first."

Hope credited partners like Westcoast with working through the many issues that come for partners doing on premise pay per use. "Being able to take this unique offering to market and include partners and distributors is the glue that makes this work," he said. "Bypassing the channel was not an option. We have been able to make it work and keep our partners whole. That is easy to say but not easy to do. Westcoast has been a pioneer with this."

HPE's Pointnext services business has changed the on-premises pay-per-use profit proposition for partners with an unprecedented 17 percent up-front rebate on the initial committed value of the multi-year deals. HPE, in fact, has gone to great lengths to make sure partners understand that selling GreenLake operating expense based services deals is a lot more profitable than selling a capital expenditure based IT project deal.

The beauty of HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity – which provides a public-cloud-like experience on premises – is it gives partners the ability to add their own managed services and to control margin and pricing for the life of the contracts, which run from three to 10 years. Partners make recurring revenue monthly for the term of the contract.

The prepackaged, pre-priced HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity offerings that are offered through distribution come with pre-built statements of work from HPE distributors. Those offerings include HPE ProLiant For Microsoft Azure Stack; HPE Synergy 480 Compute Modules; HPE ProLiant BL460c server blade; HPE 3Par StoreServe 8440, 8200, 9450, 520; HPE SimpliVity 380 and HOE DL380/385 Servers. All of the packages include HPE Datacenter Care.

Hope says the hard work HPE has put into GreenLake Flex Capacity is driving a significant GreenLake channel pipeline. "That is making this scalable and creating the VAR community interest that is going to make this fly," he said. "That's where we blow the top off this opportunity. This gives customers the best of both worlds- on premise capability and control but with the ability to consume like it is in the public cloud. It is an awesome opportunity that is teed up for our partners."

In the most recent quarter, HPE GreenLake sales through the channel were up 300 percent with gains in storage infrastructure solutions and SAP HANA.

HPE Partners said the Nutanix GreenLake deal significantly increases the software solutions that are available as an alternative to Dell EMC VMware.

"This is a big game changer for HPE and GreenLake," said Worth Davis, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Houston-based Computex Technology Solutions, an HPE and Nutanix partner ranked No. 116 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500,

"Nutanix has over 20 software products that span from virtualization to security to operations and storage services and data protection and it's now all tied together with HPE GreenLake. There is something for everyone with this offering. This is a world-class solution."

As for the Google Cloud HPE GreenLake offering, Davis said the deal positions HPE as a hybrid cloud leader providing seamless cloud integration with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and now Google Cloud.

Julie Barbieri, general manager of infrastructure at NTT Communications ICT Solutions in Melbourne, Australia, said she sees the Nutanix partnership as a "feather" in HPE's cap. "This is great," she said. "We certainly have come up against Nutanix in the marketplace quite often against SimpliVity. This gives us the ability to offer an OEM solution to the client. There is a place for Nutanix and there is a place for SimpliVity."

One of NTT Communications ICT's most impressive SimpliVity wins was a disaster recovery solution for Australian logistics and container provider Patrick Terminals, said Barbieri.

NTT Communications ICT Solutions' HPE business is up 40 percent in the last year, said Barbieri. "The engagement with HPE is working exceptionally well at the local level," she said. "We lead with HPE as opposed to other vendors."

HPE has flat out the best "partner enablement, partner rewards and partner engagement" across the IT vendor landscape, said Barbieri.

Barbieri said she sees continued strength in the software defined on premise infrastructure market with HPE's value systems. "Bringing solutions like GreenLake to the table enables the on premise cloud like experience that clients are asking for," she said. "I see a strong pipeline for as (HPE) service type offerings and consumption based models on premise."