HPE Mounts Massive North America New Account Acquisition Offensive

HPE is powering the aggressive new account logo sales discussion and engagement with its fast growing GreenLake pay-per-use, everything-as-a-service offering.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is mounting a massive new account acquisition sales offensive that is resulting in a dramatic increase in the sales pipeline for new logos.

The new account attack targets 8,000-plus accounts in the enterprise that have not purchased HPE product in the last three years and tens of thousands of midmarket and small medium business accounts.

After stacking the sales leadership team last year with channel savvy tech sales veterans, HPE Managing Director Dan Belanger says the emphasis now is on “accelerating” by working hand in hand with partners to break into new accounts.

[RELATED: Dan Belanger: HPE Partners Are ‘Accelerating’ With GreenLake]

“We are at the tip of the iceberg,” said Belanger of the new account opportunity. “We have been successful with our channel without truly attacking the (new account opportunity) because we have played primarily in the installed base. Now I have leaders in place who recognize the opportunity.”

That new sales team- which includes channel savvy sales veterans Terry Richardson and Peter Brennan – has dramatically improved both new and existing account planning and engagement, said HPE partners.

Belanger, for his part, credited his charged up channel sales team with driving changes that are making it easier for partners to succeed in the field. “Every single leader on my team is completely open to the channel community and their feedback,” he said. “Every one of them has DNA that came from the channel.”

HPE is powering the aggressive new account logo sales discussion and engagement with its fast growing GreenLake pay-per-use, everything-as-a-service offering.

That GreenLake as a service business model– which provides a public cloud pay-per-use experience on premise- is in some cases resulting in a 30 percent cost savings in overall customer IT spend along with significant new competitive advantages powered by digital transformation

“Customers are asking for ways to improve their cash position using GreenLake to fund their digital transformation,” said Belanger. “More and more of our partners are engaging with us on this because that is where customers are going.”

The GreenLake pay per use business is up nearly triple digits in North America in the wake of a big investment in field resources to help partners close deals, said Belanger.

HPE has tripled the number of GreenLake business managers in North America working with partners in the field under HPE Vice President and General Manager GreenLake North America Dave Twohy.

The new account acquisition strategy is already paying off in a double digit growth in new account logos in the enterprise market segment, said Belanger. “That is 100 percent channel!” he exclaimed.

HPE Vice President North America Channels and Ecosystem Leslie Maher said the new account logo sales offensive is driving “huge upside” for partners both in the enterprise and small and medium business accounts.

“Part of the planning process is taking the capabilities that partners have and marrying it to accounts where we can disrupt together,” she said.

Maher singled out the new account gains being made in the SMB market under HPE Vice President Commercial Accounts Jas Sood. Those SMB gains come in the wake of a “substantial” investment in SMB partner business managers and additional resources to recruit, on-board, and train new partners. “I am working to build out incremental partners to add to that (SMB) ecosystem,” she said.

Partners, for their part, said they are seeing an unprecedented new account focus that is driving a dramatic increase in both new and existing sales pipeline and growth.

Paul O’Dell, a director at CPP Associates, a Clinton, N.J. HPE Platinum partner, said he has never seen a more aggressive new account focus from HPE.

“Every discussion we are having with HPE is around how we can partner up and penetrate new accounts with new ideas,” said O’Dell. “HPE is using GreenLake, artificial intelligence and new solutions to help penetrate these new markets with partners. I have never seen this kind of enthusiasm to break into new accounts.”

The GreenLake focus on saving customers 30 percent on overall IT spend combined with driving IT time to productivity from 133 days to close zero is resonating with customers, said O’Dell. “That is the power of GreenLake,” he said. “Customers are catching on to this. GreenLake provides customers with the best of both worlds – a cloud like experience with on-premise control and governance.”

HPE has a significant first mover advantage in the race to capture the on premise pay per use market, said O’Dell. “None of the competitors have a program even half as good as GreenLake,” he said. “The time for us to strike is now! Our team is fired up to go out and sell GreenLake. Our GreenLake pipeline is growing.”

CPP has opened up 16 new accounts working with HPE in the last three months, said O’Dell. “This is all about new approaches with as a service, AI and data analytics,” he said. “It’s a new way to get in front of customers in a way that HPE competitors are just not doing.”

Richardson’s appointment in the US East has made a difference, said O’Dell. “Terry truly understands the value partners can play in the enterprise space,” he said. “We are going into accounts that HPE hasn’t been in in years. We know with Terry at the helm we are going to be supported in the field. That has permeated all the way through the organization. Everyone is singing the same song.”

Dan Molina, chief technology officer at San Diego-based Nth Generation Computing, one of HPE's top enterprise partners and No. 354 on the CRN SP500, said HPE’s GreenLake pay per use model is a “grand slam” that is paying off in new account wins.

“The GreenLake model is resonating with customers,” he said. “Customers need a lot of help with digital transformation and GreenLake is helping them get there. The word has spread among our customer base around GreenLake. We enjoyed substantial success with GreenLake last year and our pipeline looks extremely healthy going into 2020.”

Molina said HPE’s hybrid cloud vision is spot on particularly with customers disillusioned with the high costs of the public cloud. Many customers are realizing that an increasing percentage of workloads are more economical and better suited to on premise, he said.“GreenLake makes a ton of sense for customers that want to maintain their applications on premise, but also want public cloud agility on premise with the ability to pay for only what they use,” he said.

The HPE North America sales leadership team’s “proven channel commitment” and enterprise solutions’ expertise has given HPE a big competitive advantage against competitors, said Molina.“You don’t often find sales leadership that has both strategic and tactical talent,” he said. “They truly get the value of partnership and are helping us accelerate net new account acquisition. HPE has put together one of the strongest – if not the strongest team in the industry. These people know how to execute.”

Ron Nemecek, business alliance manager for CBTS, the $1 billion HPE Platinum partner with 260 plus HPE certifications, said the HPE new account acquisition offensive is a game changer.

“We expect net new account acquisition to be up noticeably this year plus we are having new discussions with our existing customers to go deeper and wider with HPE,” he said. “That double impact will catapult us into places that we haven’t been in for a long time.”

CBTS, in fact, just last week held a session for 20 customers at the new technology packed HPE executive briefing center in San Jose, Calif. to drive home the as a service, business outcome opportunity with HPE GreenLake. The session resonated with customers that are anxious to drive business outcomes in areas like artificial intelligence, deep machine learning and intelligent storage in a pay per use, as a service model rather than as a major capital expenditure, said Nemecek.

“HPE has always been known for innovation with leading edge products like The Machine, Primera, 3Par, Synergy and SimpliVity, but the real innovation HPE has brought to the table is in business outcomes and that is GreenLake,” said Nemecek. “That’s the business discussion customers need to have.”

GreenLake, in fact, said Nemecek, represents a “strategic inflection point” that allows customers to drive game changing business outcomes at a rapid clip with big balance sheet benefits. “Nobody else is doing this,” he said “HPE has a 10 year head start with this. We’re taking away the biggest (on premise) expense for customers which is over-provisioning. That amounts to 59 percent (over-provisioned on average) in compute and 48 percent (over-provisioned on average) in storage. Imagine what those costs are? That is significant. GreenLake takes that away.”

HPE has provided breakthrough tools and enablement that is powering the GreenLake sales effort, said Nemecek. “The proof is in the pudding with the enablement and training HPE has provided with quick quote tools and the analytics portal,” he said. “HPE has done a great job of enabling us and training us and delivering resources to help us get there including the Marketing Pro Academy which is allowing our teams to better market GreenLake in the marketplace. That is critically important.”

HPE has also done a great job driving GreenLake into the high end of the small medium business market with aggressive, standard GreenLake packages focused on Nimble and ProLiant, said Nemecek.

The GreenLake model is resonating in all industries from retailers to manufacturers to universities and cities, said Nemecek. “We’re seeing this everywhere,” he said.”This is not an industry play but rather an inflection point for the business.”

Paul Cohen, vice president of sales for New York-based PKA Technologies Inc., one of HPE’s original Platinum enterprise partners, said the HPE new account attack has already resulted in a growing sales pipeline.

“HPE has put more focus on new account acquisition than they ever have before with more aggressive marketing and programs for the channel around GreenLake,” said Cohen. “HPE has really doubled down on this from a sales and marketing perspective.”

HPE’s North America leadership team has doubled down on partners and it is having an impact in sales engagement in the field, said Cohen. “We have seen a big positive difference in our relationship with the HPE sales teams,” he said.

Kelly Ireland, founder and CEO of CBT, Orange, Calif., which has bet big on a “Refinery of the Future” platform with Texmark Chemicals alongside HPE and Aruba, said Belanger’s decision to put Richardson and Brennan in sales leadership roles has resulted in a “monumental” shift in the channel climate.

“What HPE has done is taken two top executives who get the channel and put them into sales leadership roles,” she said. “We’re now pulling in the HPE sales team into white space accounts. Peter and Terry clearly understand the value the channel can bring and CBT’s unique capabilities.”

Belanger is also personally making sure partners understand the big opportunity that comes with teaming with HPE. In fact, in HPE’s first fiscal quarter, Belanger had more than 78 separate sales meetings with partners.

“I am spending the majority of my time with the channel to just make sure they understand what we did to get to where we are,” he said. “But more importantly to let them know how we are accelerating.”