Paul Hunter: HPE GreenLake Channel Pipeline Tops $850 Million

'We’ve made really great progress in terms of evolving the partner-led GreenLake business,' says HPE Worldwide Channel Chief Paul Hunter. 'We delivered an outstanding quarter for GreenLake in total and the partner segment of that delivered even faster growth.'

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s soaring GreenLake pay-per-use channel sales pipeline has surpassed the $850 million mark, said HPE Worldwide Global Channel Chief Paul Hunter.

The sharp rise in the GreenLake sales pipeline comes with HPE GreenLake channel sales up 326 percent in the fourth fiscal quarter ended Oct. 31, said Hunter. For the full fiscal year, HPE GreenLake channel sales were up 231 percent, he said.

[Related: HPE CEO Antonio Neri: GreenLake Channel Sales Are Up 326 Percent]

The robust sales growth comes with the number of active partners selling GreenLake hitting a “record” high in the fourth fiscal quarter, said Hunter in a conference call with partners alongside HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

The GreenLake channel business now makes up 27 percent of total GreenLake revenue, up from just 5 percent a year ago.

“We’ve made really great progress in terms of evolving the partner-led GreenLake business,” said Hunter. “We delivered an outstanding quarter for GreenLake in total and the partner segment of that delivered even faster growth.”

Hunter singled out SHI International Corp., the $10 billion Somerset, N.J. solution provider behemoth, for closing in the fourth quarter the “largest ever” partner-led GreenLake deal. “Congratulations to the SHI team,” he said.

The channel—which accounts for 70 percent of HPE’s total annual sales—also delivered double-digit sales growth for Nimble, hyperconverged and Synergy.

Hunter said he was particularly “pleased” with the Nimble storage channel sales performance. “The Nimble business had a very strong quarter in North America,” he said. “For the past four consecutive quarters, Nimble has shown accelerating growth. The team has really done a terrific job with it.”

HPE also grew its SMB sales in the fourth fiscal quarter by 3 percent and is gaining share, said Hunter.

Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., solution provider, said HPE is breaking new channel ground with HPE GreenLake. “That’s huge,” said Goldstein of the HPE GreenLake channel sales momentum. “HPE has the right product at the right time with GreenLake. Customers are asking for as-a- service and partners are interested in moving to as-a-service.”

Neri, for his part, thanked partners for the strong GreenLake services sales growth. “We’ve had a record, record year in terms of selling as-a-service and adding your value-added services on top of it,” he said.

Besides GreenLake, HPE delivered double-digit growth in strategic areas like Composable Cloud where sales were up 47 percent, hyperconverged sales growth of 25 percent, and high-performance compute with 15 percent sales growth.

Neri pointed out that the focus on higher-value high-growth segments of the market is paying off in higher profitability for HPE and its partners. He said HPE partners’ gross margin was up a whopping 300 basis points for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, while HPE itself closed out the year with a 270 basis point increase in gross margin compared with the prior year, said Neri.

Another big area of improvement for HPE is a cultural shift that has resulted in HPE employee engagement scores up 10 points this year and 18 points since Neri took the helm. “I’m really, really proud of the fact that we have improved the culture of the company,” he said. “We now have a record employee engagement score of 81 percent, which we never achieved in this company. We see momentum with our employees.”

HPE is also seeing increased momentum with partners with channel sales becoming a higher percentage of total sales, said Neri. “Thank you for everything you do for customers and for Hewlett Packard Enterprise,” said Neri. “I am really proud of our journey and what we have accomplished together. I am very excited about our future. I believe we have the right strategy, the right innovation and the right culture. We have a big competitive advantage—which is you, our partners. We are and will continue to be a partner-led company. That has always been my message to you, and that will not change. So come along on our journey. Let’s invest together where the customer demand is and grow the business.”