Canadian Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) partners can now join the enterprise infrastructure vendor’s Cloud28+ program after it was opened up globally Nov. 29.
After running for two and a half years in Europe, the community of VARs, resellers, service providers, distributors, systems integrators, and government bodies has grown to include 330 partners. The community serves as a sort of marketing portal for partners that want to reach new geographies and perhaps collaborate with others involved in facilitating cloud services. The online catalogue for the community already contains more than 1,300 services across different flavours of cloud service – Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and so on.
Another purpose the community has served is a source for HPE to turn to when it needs to create a consortium to respond to a major bid proposal for a big government project. Earlier in November, HPE announced that it and three other members of Cloud28+ – Indra, Advania, and SixSq – were one of four consortia to make it through to the design phase of the Helix Nebula Science Cloud proposal, which will be an IT resource shared by 10 of Europe’s public research organizations, including CERN (which operates the Large Hadron Collider).
“There is a lot of activity around the public sector,” says Xavier Poisson G. Beauchamps, vice-president of worldwide indirect digital services. “I have meetings with a lot of clients in government from Latin America.”
Many universities are also members of the community and Poisson would like to see Canadian universities join as well.
“Some very respected universities are already members and are developing code and solutions that are being taken by industries and we want to propel that through the market,” he said.
While the community is now opened to Canada, Poisson recalled a couple of Canadian firms that have already made use of Cloud28+. One technology partner wanted to expand its services to Europe, so it got in touch with HPE to join the portal. Also, a Canadian video game designer used the portal to find service providers in France for its market expansion there.
Being an HPE reseller isn’t a requirement to join the portal, says Ken Won, director of cloud solutions marketing, though most partners tend to be working with HPE. There’s no financial transactions that take place within the portal, or any cost to join at all, it’s just meant as a directory for global exposure.
“Anyone that wants to promote their services beyond their local region of influence should join,” he says. “We may bring multiple providers together to address a single RFP.”
