Hewlett Packard Enterprise upgraded its recognition program for Canadian partners, with five awards being handed out to Canadian partners at HPE Discover in Las Vegas last week.
Here’s a breakdown of the awards and the winners:
- Canadian Solution Provider of the Year 2018 – Compugen
- Canadian Distributor of the Year 2018 – Tech Data Corp.
- Canadian Top Growth Partner of the Year 2018 – Telecom Computer Inc.
- Canadian Pointnext Partner of the Year 2018 – OnX Enterprise Solutions Ltd.
- Canadian Hybrid IT Partner of the Year 2018 – Mobia Technology Innovations (branded as MOBIA)
As HPE’s solutions for the enterprise become more complex in nature, tying together hardware, software, and services in a tight package, a committed channel of veteran IT practitioners will be even more important to its success in the future. So offering some more recognition in the form of some award hardware can only help. After past years where there was perhaps not enough recognition of the Canadian channel at Discover, HPE Canada Channel Chief Zack Dickson, says it was time for a change.
“We made a special point of ensuring that we got our fair share of airtime for the great work that our value-added reseller community did,” he said on the expo floor in Las Vegas. “In years past, we would’ve only had the specific partner of the year award. But given the strength of the channel in Canada, we wanted to expand that to be more inclusive of a broader set of markers.”
Award winners receive a trophy and advertisement of the win through HPE’s marketing channels.
OnX tops revenue charts for Pointnext
OnX receives its award from HPE Canada Channel Chief Zack Dickson.
Last year, OnX Enterprise Solutions Ltd. was the Canadian Partner of the Year for HPE. With that title no longer on the table this year, it claimed the Pointnext Partner of the Year award. Pointnext was launched by HPE last year as a dedicated services arm and has been woven into some of its other new offerings, such as the GreenLake Hybrid Cloud as a Service unveiled at Discover.
By becoming certified in HPE Partner Ready Services, OnX was able to collaborate with HPE in delivering on Pointnext. It won the award because it’s the partner that posted the highest revenue in this area. The key was to work with HPE collaboratively on delivering the service, says Ron Nemecek, business alliances manager at OnX.
“We start the sales process and depending on our resources with might deliver the service or we might collaborate with HPE to do so,” he says. “Our customers trust us because of our expertise and they trust us because of our business outcomes and the right blend of support we bring to those.”
Dickson says that HPE is more often being asked by its clients to play an advisory role. So a partner that can provide that is a welcome asset.
“OnX has found a unique way to collaborate with Pointnext in an advisory position to bring meaningful impact and business outcomes to our biggest clients,” Dickson says. “For us, OnX grew significantly, but more importantly we went really large together because they’re embracing the Pointnext strategy.”
Compugen nabs Solution Provider of the Year
From left: Zach Dickson – channel chief, HPE Canada; Johanna Delroy – director of marketing, Compugen; Jeremy Erlick – vice president of sales Central and East, Compugen; Terry Richardson – vice president of North America Channels & Alliances, HPE (Photo provided by Compugen).
Compugen, which CDN ranks as third on its Top 100 IT Solution Providers list by overall revenue, is the largest HPE solution provider in Canada by revenue and enjoyed 70 per cent growth with HPE year over year, says Jeremy Erlick, vice-president of sales Central and East Canada for Compugen. It lead many successful projects with HPE’s Synergy line over the past year, including a project that helped one public sector organization reduce its 10 server racks to one and a half.
“It’s the culmination of many years of work with HPE to build a partnership and a working relationship,” he says. “We have customers putting trust in our collective ability to support them.”
Many years is right, as Compugen has been partnered with HPE since the 1984. It’s also winning recognition from other arms of the vendor, having won Aruba Networks Partner of the Year in April. That close relationship means Compugen can work together with HPE, sharing strategies and engaging on the sales process. The firms work together to identify businesses that could benefit from the unique solution they offer.
“We’ve not a velocity seller,” Erlick says. “That means fewer customers, but more solutions that are broader and deeper.”
Dickson says it was tough to pick just one solution provider for the award, but Compugen was the clear winner.
“What’s always amazed me about Compugen is their ability to reinvent themselves,” he says. “Not only did they grow revenue substantially, but they had deals that made a meaningful impact on verticals like health care and public sector.”
Tech Data on top for HPE distributor of the year
The Tech Data team poses with the awards hardware.
Also showing impressive growth for HPE in the past year was Tech Data, the Distributor of the Year award winner. Dickson says it managed to represent just over half of HPE’s sales in the country.
“And they were doing it in places that we want to grow in,” he says. “Portfolios where we’re driving really different solutions through our partner community and Tech Data did that in big ways.”
Tech Data’s win comes in a year that saw it make a major $2.6 billion acquisition of Avnet Inc.’s Technology Solutions Business. That’s how Brian Aebig joined the Tech Data team as vice-president of sales for Canada. He credits the whole Tech Data team with doing the hard work necessary to win this recognition.
“Our alignment to HPE’s objectives is very good,” he says. “It speask to the importance of what HPE sees as the future of the IT supply chain.”
Giving more specifics on what Tech Data has done with HPE’s technology stack, Aebig separates HPE’s business into a couple of different components.
“There’s a big chunk of HPE dependent on the efficient transactional behaviour of moving Intel servers,” he says. “There’s also an equally important and much different touchpoint around composable infrastructure and hyper converged.”
Tech Data has embraced the new technology HPE has acquired in recent years, Aebig says. It’s seeing substantial growth in the Aruba Networks portfolio. At the same time, it’s made acquisitions of its own to keep pace with a market moving at rocket speed.
“HPE is standing toe to toe with any othe firm in the industry,” he says. “You only do that by making acquisitions and that’s where we shine.”
Mobia and Telecom Computer also awarded
Mobia accepts its award from HPE in Las Vegas.
Dickson shared thoughts on the other two award winners as well. For Mobia, the Hybrid IT Partner of the Year, he describes it as a small team based in Nova Scotia that is punching above its weight.
“This is a service-centric, value-added reseller that builds really unique services and capabilities that are based on HPE technology,” he says.
Telecom Computer won the Growth Partner of the Year Award. It’s a long-time partner of HPE that’s stuck out the peaks and valleys of the vendor’s history.
“Their loyalty stayed very strong and weathering the storm helped put us in a very exceptional position,” Dickson says. “Their growth is absolutely off the charts. We did some really meaningful stuff in the federal government space together.”