HPE Eases Partner Requirements During COVID-19 Downturn

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) this week followed up a previous commitment to making $2 billion available to fund IT deals during the downturn brought on by COVID-19 pandemic by suspending revenue threshold requirements and making its Integrated Lights-Out (iLo) Advanced remote server management software available to partners and customers free of charge for the rest of the year.

At the same time, HPE is also making funding available for distributor faster and increasing the number of virtual training sessions, online demonstrations and briefings it conducts for channel partners.

Specifically, HPE has suspended the revenue targets required for partners to maintain their status in the HPE Hybrid IT Partner Ready program and the Aruba Partner Ready for Networking Program. During 2020, both of those programs will continue to focus on enabling partners to meet training and certification goals.

HPE also announced that from May 1 until July 31, 2020 distributors and service providers in North America that do not participate in factoring programs can take advantage of extended Early Pay Discount terms to improve their working capital. For partners that do participate in factoring programs, HPE will extend payment terms from 60 to 90 days in North America and Europe.

Finally, HPE has added more pre-configured pricing option for its line of managed Greenlake severs and has temporarily suspended or significantly reduced Strategic Development Initiative (SDI) targets in most geographies.

Many of these initiatives are accelerating changes HPE was already planning on implementing, Paul Hunter, head of worldwide partner sales for HPE. In fact, Hunter predicts the relationship between HPE, partners and customers will only grow tighter in the wake of the downturn.

“We’ll be exiting this a better company than we entered it,” says Hunter.

As for the channel itself, Hunter notes most of the organizations that make up the channel today are more resilient than many might appreciate.

However, Hunter predicts one of the most immediate impacts of the current economic downturn that will impact partners is the rate at which organizations will embrace consumption-based approaches to consuming IT will significantly accelerate as customer priorities change and evolve. Fewer organizations are going to be interested in allocating capital to buy IT infrastructure when they can pay for it on an as needed basis, says Hunter.

It’s still too early to say what precise impact the economic downturn will have on HPE and the rest of the channel. The one thing that is clear, however, is whenever a channel partner is ready to close a deal the terms and conditions HPE and others are willing to provide have never been more favorable.