HPE pushes partners beyond resale as AI, virtualisation and networking reshape channel margins

The company sees future partner profitability increasingly shifting toward AI inferencing, migration services, networking expansion and competency-led specialisation as enterprise buying models evolve.

HPE is increasingly repositioning its partner ecosystem around AI services, virtualisation migrations, networking expansion and specialised competencies as enterprise buying shifts toward outcome-driven solution delivery.

Speaking to CRN India, Simon Ewington, senior vice president, worldwide channel and partner ecosystem, HPE, and Gopalswamy Srinivasan, senior director, channel and partner ecosystem, HPE India, outlined how the company is redesigning partner profitability models for FY26. The strategy places growing emphasis on specialisation, software-led opportunities, AI inferencing, and networking expansion following the Juniper acquisition.

At the centre of HPE’s FY26 channel strategy is a deliberate push to move partners away from transactional product fulfilment and toward outcome-led solution delivery.

Ewington said customers “no longer require partners merely to procure products or licenses”. The real value, according to him, now lies in helping enterprises implement, migrate, integrate, and operationalise technologies inside real business environments.

“Customers don’t need a partner to buy licenses. They can do that anywhere,” Ewington said while discussing HPE’s virtualisation strategy.

“The value comes from partners helping customers with implementations, migrations, and outcome-driven services.”

Srinivasan described the transition as a natural movement up the value chain, where partners evolve from resellers into system integrators and strategic advisors capable of leading AI-led digital transformation engagements.

According to him, HPE’s role is to “equip partners” with the innovation, technical capabilities, and solution expertise required to support that transition.

“We want partners to become trusted advisors,” Srinivasan said.

That shift is already beginning to reshape how parts of the channel ecosystem are investing. HPE executives said they are increasingly seeing partners establish AI-focused centres of excellence and innovation labs across India to build vertical-specific use cases and create differentiated go-to-market models.

Ewington pointed to one partner that recently launched an AI innovation lab focused on use cases such as vision AI for retail theft prevention and manufacturing safety monitoring. According to him, these demonstrations are becoming critical in helping customers understand how enterprise AI can be applied in operational environments.

“The best way of doing that is use cases, use cases, use cases,” Ewington said.

Both customers and partners are still relatively early in the AI adoption cycle, and they need guidance. The best way to do that is through use cases and continually showing customers what’s possible.

“Because as soon as customers see something relevant, they immediately start thinking about how AI can apply inside their own environment,” he added.

Services and use cases drive profitability

While enterprise demand for AI infrastructure continues to rise, HPE executives repeatedly distinguished top-line growth opportunities and the areas where partners are likely to generate sustainable profitability.

Srinivasan said GPU-driven infrastructure and compute deals can help partners expand revenue, but the stronger margin opportunities are increasingly moving toward AI inferencing, AI platforms, services, and industry-specific use cases.

“The real profitability where partners are going to monetise is on AI inferencing and on the Private Cloud AI platform,” Srinivasan said.

According to HPE, partners building industry-specific AI models and integrating them into enterprise workflows are creating more differentiated business opportunities than those focused purely on infrastructure resale.

The company positioned its Private Cloud AI stack, jointly developed with NVIDIA, as a key part of that strategy. Ewington said the opportunity extends beyond hardware into pre-validated software ecosystems, ISV integrations, and implementation services.

“You can’t really do much unless you’ve got a use case and software,” he said.

HPE said its Unleash AI initiative is designed to help partners build and deploy validated AI solutions across industries while also giving them access to training, certifications, and enablement support. According to the company, several India-based partners participating in the program are already taking locally developed AI use cases into global markets.

The company also sees virtualisation emerging as another major profitability driver for partners following the disruption caused by Broadcom’s restructuring of the VMware ecosystem.

According to Ewington, “virtualisation is creating dual opportunities” for the channel ecosystem. The first is helping enterprises reduce virtualisation costs in response to rising licensing pressures. The second is the infrastructure refresh cycle that follows migration activity.

“It’s a great example of a margin-rich solution for partners because of the services and value attached to it,” he said.

That positioning place virtualisation migration services, consulting, and infrastructure modernisation among the areas HPE expects partners to increasingly invest in over the next 12 to 24 months.

HPE lowers entry barriers for smaller specialised partners

One of the more significant structural changes inside HPE’s channel strategy is the move toward competency-led specialisation.

The company said its Partner Ready Vantage framework allows smaller and mid-sized specialised partners to compete more effectively without requiring the scale traditionally associated with large platinum, gold, or silver partners.

Ewington said HPE currently works with approximately 70,000 partners globally.

“The majority of our ecosystem is actually made up of smaller partners,” he said.

Under the competency-led model, HPE is placing greater emphasis on technical expertise rather than partner size alone. Competencies around virtualisation, networking security, SASE, hybrid cloud, and AI are intended to help specialised partners enter higher-value markets while still accessing incentives and profitability opportunities.

One of the largest opportunities, according to HPE, is emerging from the disruption inside the VMware ecosystem.

Ewington said many “VMware-focused partners now feel marginalised” following ecosystem consolidation and channel rationalisation.

“There are many VMware partners who no longer feel strategically important in that ecosystem,” he said.

“For HPE, those partners are a strong opportunity.”

According to him, virtualisation competencies lower the barriers to entry for smaller partners by allowing them to focus on a specialised area without needing to compete directly across the full infrastructure stack.

Juniper integration opens a new networking opportunity for the channel

The Juniper acquisition is also emerging as a significant channel opportunity for HPE, particularly across networking and security.

Ewington said, “One of the biggest surprises following the acquisition was how little overlap actually existed between the HPE Aruba and Juniper partner ecosystems.”

“That’s why we’re so excited about the opportunity,” Ewington said.

The limited overlap “creates substantial cross-sell potential” by enabling Aruba-focused partners to sell Juniper solutions and vice versa, while also expanding networking conversations into broader infrastructure and data centre engagements.

The company has already launched multiple onboarding and enablement initiatives aimed at accelerating cross-portfolio adoption following the Juniper integration. One of those initiatives, called “Fast Track,” focuses on onboarding, certifying, and enabling partners that were strategically important to either HPE or Juniper but had limited engagement with the other side of the business.

Ewington said HPE onboarded approximately 1,000 partners within nearly two months following the acquisition closure. HPE is also working with distributors to onboard long-tail partners into each other’s ecosystems, particularly Aruba-focused partners entering the Juniper ecosystem and vice versa.

According to Ewington, “networking and security continue to remain among the healthier margin categories” within enterprise infrastructure, making the combined Aruba and Juniper portfolio a significant cross-sell opportunity for partners.

“There hasn’t really been a fully viable alternative in networking for 20 to 30 years,” he said.

HPE believes the combined Aruba and Juniper portfolio positions the company as one of the few vendors capable of offering a broader alternative in enterprise networking.

Channel success cannot be measured by revenue alone

Despite HPE’s broader push around AI, networking, virtualisation, and infrastructure expansion, Ewington said long-term channel success cannot be measured purely through top-line growth, arguing that partner profitability, innovation scale, and sustainable business expansion need to move together.

“If I drive strong top-line growth with the partner community but partners are not making money, then that success won’t last very long,” he said.

At the same time, he argued that profitability alone cannot become the only metric without sustained revenue growth and expansion into emerging areas such as AI, virtualisation, and networking.

According to Ewington, HPE internally evaluates channel success across three broad areas: overall revenue growth, scaling newer innovation categories, and maintaining healthy profitability across the ecosystem.

“If partners are not complaining about margins, then we are probably in a good place,” Ewington said.

Underlying that positioning is what HPE repeatedly described during the discussion as one of its biggest long-term differentiators: consistency in partnering.

Ewington argued that while competitors continue to reshape ecosystems around AI infrastructure, virtualisation, and networking consolidation, long-term trust within the channel ecosystem remains central to HPE’s positioning.

“Trust, predictability, stability, consistency, and track record,” he said.

“That’s what partnering is built on.”