Afleveringen
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Carrie Hopkins, senior director of business development and sales for Exclusive Networks Canada
Exclusive Networks describes itself as a specialist distributor — hyper-focused on cybersecurity and advanced networking, deliberately not trying to be everything to everyone. As the company makes a serious push into the Canadian market, In The Channel sat down with Carrie Hopkins, senior director of business development and sales for Canada, to talk about what that actually means in practice for Canadian partners.
Hopkins walks through what Exclusive is building in Canada specifically — in-country finance and operations, and a prescriptive approach to partner recruitment that goes beyond adding names to a portal. Rather than waiting for partners to come to them, Exclusive analyzes what existing partners buy, what they conspicuously don’t buy, and builds outreach strategy around those gaps.
We also get into Ignition, Exclusive’s newly launched cybersecurity channel incubator, which arrived in North America earlier this year. The program is designed to bring emerging vendors to channel partners with the vetting and enablement baked in — addressing a real problem for MSPs and VARs who are being pitched constantly by early-stage vendors and don’t have the bandwidth to evaluate them all.
And then there’s the Westcon thread. Hopkins spent years at Westcon and Comstor before moving through vendor-side channel roles at Ixia, Infoblox, and Sisense. When asked whether Exclusive feels like the evolution of what Westcon was doing before North American distribution consolidated, her answer is worth a listen.
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Read Full TranscriptROBERT DUTT: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.
If you’ve been paying attention to the distribution landscape in Canada, you may have noticed that Exclusive Networks has been quietly building something. Exclusive is a global cybersecurity specialist distributor, and the emphasis on “specialist” is deliberate. They’re not trying to be everything for everyone. They focus specifically on cybersecurity and advanced networking, and they’re making a real push to make that model mean something in the Canadian market.
My guest today is Carrie Hopkins, senior director of business development and sales for Canada at Exclusive Networks. Carrie’s background is worth noting. She spent years at Westcon and Comstor before moving through a series of vendor-side channel roles, and she brings that perspective to bear on what Exclusive is trying to build here. We talk about the state of play in Canada, the distributor’s recently launched Ignition cybersecurity incubator program, and whether what Exclusive is doing today is the evolution of what the specialist distributor used to look like in the market, or something genuinely new.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Carrie Hopkins.
ROBERT DUTT: Carrie, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
CARRIE HOPKINS: Thank you, Robert. Great to see you.
ROBERT DUTT: For listeners who may not be familiar with Exclusive Networks, how do you describe what you do differently from the broadliners? What does specialist distribution look like in practice, especially in a modern context?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah. So, Exclusive Networks Canada is hyper-focused on a very curated line card. We’re able to provide the right support structure to scale faster and win faster for our partners. We have programs both for our core vendor lines, as well as our new Ignition vendor lines, that will provide combined deep channel expertise, as well as hands-on enablement through our engineering team.
ROBERT DUTT: You joined Exclusive, I guess, coming up a year now. What was the pitch that brought you in, and what were they asking you to build in Canada? What’s kind of the big goal?
CARRIE HOPKINS: So, the big goal, obviously, with any business is revenue generation, but it’s also to improve our footprint geographically, nationally. We are also from an in-region support perspective, as well as improving the number of vendors that are selling into our partner community. To do that, we have to bring our partner community to the right vendors that will help them grow their business. So, that’s really what we’re focused on.
ROBERT DUTT: You touched on geography and that. What were the gaps, both geographical and otherwise? Like, what did the Canadian market look like for Exclusive when you showed up? What were the gaps, and where has your focus been in this first year?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah, I think the biggest gaps were really more vendor alignment. Geographically, we do have people based from Montreal out to Calgary. So, we do have physical presence there to help our partners with feet on the street, but we tended to be a little bit more hyper-focused on a few of our top vendors. I think for the whole team, and what we’re seeing, is that by curating a better cybersecurity and network security vendor list, we’re able to give our partners more. We’re able to reach new partners that we haven‘t talked to in the past because maybe they weren’t aligned to our top vendors. So, growing that vendor list has really helped us expand across the country.
ROBERT DUTT: You spent quite a bit of time at Westcon and Comstor, which is probably the closest model I can think of to what Exclusive is doing that’s existed in the North American market. When you look at Exclusive now, do you see it sort of as the evolution of that model, or is it something genuinely different given the changing times?
CARRIE HOPKINS: It’s actually funny that there’s a number of ex-Westcon-ers here now, and that’s what brought us all together, is that this is — it feels like the Westcon of the mid-2000s aughts. When we all were working there before 2010, it was just such a great vibe. We had great people that were aligned to vendors and to partners, and we all worked together really collaboratively. That’s what I’m seeing now. While Exclusive Networks Canada is our own entity — we have Canadian footprint, we have Canadian finance, we have Canadian operations and sales — we do work really collaboratively with our North American team, which includes people like Heather Allen and Andrew Warren, who are also ex-Westcon. We’re able to really remember the great times of building up that business and then to also bring it into this new era with all these great new vendors who are bringing something new and innovative to the market, as opposed to just the old traditionals.
ROBERT DUTT: It’s not every day you get a chance to run it back, as it were. Keep it in that lane. Westcon obviously got absorbed into broadline here in North America, at least. Do you think the market lost something when that happened? And is what Exclusive is doing filling that gap?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Agreed. I think so. I think with the broadline, of course, there’s some great people still there today who are really great at holding those relationships. But what happens with the broadline, of course, is you have so many vendors and you have so many partners, and you can’t possibly give the same level of touch and care and commitment that we can here when we’re keeping it under that 20-vendor mark. We’re able to really go after our partners with the right mix of vendors that aren’t over-distributed, I would say.
ROBERT DUTT: So to that point, one of the fun things you’re able to do in the specialty distribution mode is embrace vendors who are a little bit earlier in the game, which brings us to Ignition, which just launched in North America. Cybersecurity channel incubator. Can you walk me through what that actually means? What does a vendor get out of being in Ignition, and what does a partner get access to?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah. For the vendors, we’re giving them — again, we’re giving our vendors a team of highly skilled distribution people that knows the market. Most of my employees here have been either in distribution or in service provider and resale in Canada for anywhere from six years to 15, actually, or more, for a couple of us. And so they’re getting a strong team. They’re getting a team with the right support structure. They’re getting dedicated SE support. So we have dedicated SEs aligned to each one of these vendors. And then they’re also getting an integrated hyperscaler pathway as well as we build out our hyperscaler go-to-market motion. So the partners that we align with, we will help them nurture, grow, and scale well, and also enabling our channel partners to differentiate because they’re bringing on something really cool and unique to be relevant and bring new value, whether it’s from vendor platform visibility or network detection and response, but done in a more unique way. We’re hoping that we can bring them that value.
ROBERT DUTT: Looking at the initial North American cohort with ExtraHop, Zluri, Docker, Sendmarc, PagerDuty, Meter — that’s not all pure-play cybersecurity in the traditional sense. I’m curious, how are you defining the scope of what Ignition is about?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah. I think it has to fit with our partner mix as well. In Canada, our partners are possibly not as verticalized as in some other larger regions. In Canada, most of our partners, if they’re selling networking, they also will sell security, or they’re looking for that vendor that’s going to bridge the gap. So even though a vendor, for example, like ExtraHop — you might think of them as network detection and response, but there is a security play in there. There’s a security SOC play that works really well, and it helps our Canadian partners who are talking to the network team introduce a vendor that also connects them with the SOC. That could be said for Sendmarc as well. Again, you think of that as email demarcation points, which could lean into the networking team, but we need to talk to everybody. Our Canadian partners are talking to both sides of the fence, so we need to give them those vendors.
ROBERT DUTT: Well, and yeah, it speaks to the moment too, in that security is part of every sale, but particularly every networking sale.
CARRIE HOPKINS: Exactly. Yeah.
ROBERT DUTT: From the Canadian partner perspective specifically, what does Ignition mean for them? Is it about giving them earlier access to emerging vendors, de-risking those bets with players who may be less familiar, something else?
CARRIE HOPKINS: I think you hit the nail on the head. We’re doing all the research for them. I was speaking to a partner just yesterday at the Winnipeg Western Canada Information Security Conference, and he was saying that his inbox for his LinkedIn is filled with vendors reaching out saying, “Please, sell us.” How does an MSP or service provider decide which vendors they should engage in? We’ve done that heavy lifting for them. We’ve researched, we’ve determined that these are the right fit for the Canadian market and the US market, and we’re happy to bring them a more curated list. Again, let us do the heavy lifting. We also are getting our engineers trained, so it’s not just a team of people sitting in a room deciding that monetarily this is a good fit. These are our engineers who can speak to their engineers and show them exactly how this fits with what they’re selling. It also provides our partners with a really unique differentiated approach. They’re not selling that one vendor, they’re selling a combined solution.
ROBERT DUTT: Yeah, I was going to say, how prescriptive, how in the weeds do you guys get in terms of, “Dear MSP, think about this vendor along with this vendor,” piggybacking the core vendors with the Ignition folks?
CARRIE HOPKINS: That’s exactly the play. We’ve done extensive research on what are our partners currently buying from us, but also what aren’t they buying from us, maybe because we don’t sell it or they’ve chosen to go a different direction. What are their websites saying that they sell? We’ve taken all of that information, we’ve compared it with the new vendors that we’re bringing on, so we have an extensive list of top-priority partners that we feel are a great fit for multiple of these vendors. Then we have the next level down, so we’ve completely curated a target list of partners that we’re going to reach out to say, “We know you’re a business, we understand it. We think that Docker is the right next step for you,” or, “We believe that Zluri really fits when you’re selling A, B, and C.”
ROBERT DUTT: This is North American in scope. How are you getting in front of those vendors and assessing where they are at currently in Canada and where you can step in, make introductions, ease path to market, those kinds of things?
CARRIE HOPKINS: That’s one of the things that we find with the Canadian market is there’s not always feet on the ground with new vendors. That’s, again, where we step in. We do have feet on the ground. We’re learning about their solutions, so if they don’t have a local CAM, that’s us. That’s our job is to help them build their business and help them build the right business. Recruiting a lot of partners isn’t always the right first step. It’s recruiting the right partners who will embrace the technology, learn the technology, and help it lift. Then we can see what is the right number of partners for the technology in Canada today. We don’t want to flood the market. We want to make sure that all of our vendors have the right partners to properly serve the market.
ROBERT DUTT: I’d imagine that dynamic’s also working in the other direction, in so much as you say, MSPs and other solution providers are being flooded with new vendors, especially in the security space. The fact that you guys are, to a degree, backstopping them — that you’ve done the vetting and you’re standing behind them — has to add something.
CARRIE HOPKINS: Exactly. Yeah.
ROBERT DUTT: Beyond Ignition, what can you tell me about the broader push for Exclusive in Canada right now? In terms of, you said you want to stay pretty strategic on vendor lines. What are you thinking about partner recruitment, headcount? Basically, where are you building right now?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Yes. Building with headcount. Where we’re adding right now — in fact, this morning, we’re adding to our quoting and order management team because we never want to lose sight of one of our biggest values, which is our speed and efficiency and accuracy of our quoting. When it comes to distribution, you have to do the basics really brilliantly. We do that here. Sub-[time] turnaround on quote request, sub-[time] order management process. We are quick and efficient, full stop. We’re going to keep doing that. We’re going to add headcount to that. We’re opening up headcount in the second half of the year to help us really embrace all of the new vendors that we have on board. In the last six months, we’ve also onboarded vendors like A10 and Infoblox who are going to make a big impact in the coming year. We’re fully supporting them with extra headcount.
ROBERT DUTT: What’s the long-term vision for structure? I know distributors in particular tend to vacillate somewhat over time between a heavily North Americanized model and independent Canadian. Just curious what the long-term thinking is there for you guys.
CARRIE HOPKINS: Long-term is that we will always have feet on the ground here in Canada. That gets reinforced to me, and I reinforce it with my leadership every time, every chance I get. I am also a big advocate for having in-country vendor business managers so they can have those channel business conversations. They’re talking to the peers who know the market. They know the FX challenges. They know that we’re provinces instead of states. It’s like that. The great news is with our Ignition team is that the leader of that team, Michael Compizzi, he’s located just in Rochester, New York, which is a short two-hour drive from where I’m based. He will be in Canada quite often as well. We will have North American support, but in-country dedicated resources.
ROBERT DUTT: I would add he’d be closer if it weren’t for a rather inconveniently placed lake.
CARRIE HOPKINS: [laughs]
ROBERT DUTT: Canadian partners have a lot of choices in terms of distribution, maybe not quite as many as 10 years ago, but still there’s a number of choices there. What’s the honest pitch for why a Canadian MSP or VAR who isn’t already working with Exclusive right now should take a look at you guys?
CARRIE HOPKINS: Our partners will never be lost in the shuffle. They will have dedicated support. They will have quick and efficient turnaround, and they will have a vendor line card that supports their business. Simple to the point.
ROBERT DUTT: That works. The last one for me: what should Canadian partners be paying attention to over the next six to 12 months, either from you guys exclusively or in the market more broadly?
CARRIE HOPKINS: I don’t think that a podcast about technology can end without saying the word AI. [laughs] Didn’t get your [nerd/name] achievement unlocked.
ROBERT DUTT: There you go.
CARRIE HOPKINS: I think that it’s important to note that there’s so many vendors and so many technologies coming out saying that they support AI, saying that they support different security functions around AI. It’s important that you work with a distributor who’s going to take the time to research each of those vendors on your behalf and have a fully engaged engineering staff who can speak to what it’s doing. Do you need it yet? Is it something that’s going to actually sell to the Canadian market? We’re going to make sure that our Canadian resellers have fully vetted solutions, that they’re not chasing rabbit holes. The number one important thing is that they know their business, they know their customer’s business, and where all those assets are. What does your Canadian partner need? We feel like we have the line card to fulfill that.
ROBERT DUTT: Well, look forward to seeing how things roll out with the initial Ignition cohort and beyond, as you continue to develop Exclusive here in Canada. Carrie, thanks for taking the time.
CARRIE HOPKINS: Thank you so much, Robert. I appreciate you.
[Music transition]
ROBERT DUTT: There you have it. Carrie Hopkins from Exclusive Networks.
I’d like to thank Carrie for her time today. It was a genuinely good conversation, and I appreciated that she was willing to get beyond the talking points and into what the model actually means in practice for Canadian partners.
If there’s one thing I take away from the conversation, it’s that the specialist distribution model Exclusive is building — and Ignition is probably the clearest expression of this — is trying to solve a real problem. Canadian MSPs and resellers are being pitched by an enormous number of emerging vendors, and they don’t have the bandwidth to vet each and every one of them. What Exclusive is saying, essentially, is: we’ll do that work. We’ll bring you the vendors we believe in. We’ll backstop the relationship. You focus on your customers. Whether they can deliver on that promise at scale is something we’ll be watching, but the thesis is certainly sound.
The Westcon thread that came up in the conversation stuck with me too. There was something that worked about that model before consolidation rolled through North American distribution. It sounds like at least some of the people who built it think there’s a second act here.
Thanks for listening. If you’re finding the podcast useful, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most of the major directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated and really help other people in the channel find the show.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
[Music]
A couple of quick flags:
“Sub-[time] turnaround” – I couldn’t decipher the exact numbers she threw out there. Worth a quick listen on your end to fill in the blank.“Didn’t get your [nerd/name] achievement unlocked” – MacWhisper clearly mangled this. Sounds like some kind of gaming joke about saying the word AI on a tech podcast. “Nerd achievement unlocked” is the most common internet phrase, but if you remember what she actually said, drop it in.“monetarily” – I left it as-is since it could be correct, though it scans a bit awkwardly. Could also be “more than merely” if you want to give it a listen.Otherwise this should be ready to go. Good batch recording session?
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
OpenAI Partner Network: OpenAI’s inaugural Partner Network is officially live as of July 15, with vice president of strategic global partnerships Colleen Kapase confirming the three-tier program is backed by $150 million in channel investment. Partners can progress through Select, Advanced, and Elite tiers while earning specializations in areas like Codex, cybersecurity, and AI agents. OpenAI says it aims to train 300,000 certified consultants by year-end and is recruiting solution providers of all sizes that can put AI systems into production. OpenAICarbon60 MSP 501: Carbon60, a Toronto-based managed cloud services provider, has been named to the 2026 MSP 501 at position 206, ranking among the world’s top managed services firms by revenue and operational discipline. The company has built a differentiated practice around Canada-first sovereign cloud and Azure expertise, and the ranking follows a broader push by Canadian MSPs to demonstrate global competitiveness in compliance-heavy verticals. Carbon60RecordPoint channel-first: RecordPoint has launched a global partner program that CRN describes as a channel-first move, enabling resellers, consultancies, and systems integrators to resell, co-sell, and refer its data and AI governance platform. Partners will receive enablement, joint sales support, and platform access to build practices around data retention, compliance, and AI-ready data classification. Channel InsiderBlackpoint Cyber 2026 threat report: Blackpoint Cyber has released its 2026 Annual Threat Report, finding that attackers are increasingly exploiting trusted IT tools rather than using perimeter breaches. The report highlights abuse of remote monitoring and management platforms, VPNs, and identity credentials as primary vectors. ChannelPro NetworkManaged security market growth: Acronis and Omdia project the global managed security market will grow from $93 billion in 2025 to $106 billion in 2026, a 14.4 percent increase. The growth reflects sustained demand for outsourced security operations among mid-market organizations that lack internal SOC capacity.RAMageddon pressures PC refresh: Industry analysts and OEMs continue to signal significant PC RAM price increases through 2026 due to the ongoing memory supply shortage. Channel partners should advise clients on refresh timing and alternative configurations to manage budget impact. CNETExabeam MSSP licensing: Exabeam has expanded its APEX partner program with pooled and federated licensing options designed specifically for MSSPs. The new framework is intended to reduce onboarding friction and simplify compliance across multi-tenant security operations centers. Security BriefRead Full TranscriptWelcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Thursday, July 16, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
OpenAI’s inaugural Partner Network is officially live as of yesterday, July 15, with the company backing the three-tier program with $150 million in channel investment. Vice president of strategic global partnerships Colleen Kapase confirmed the program is open to solution providers of all sizes, not just global systems integrators. Partners can progress through Select, Advanced, and Elite tiers based on sales performance, technical capability, and deployment experience. The program includes specializations in Codex, cybersecurity, and AI agents. OpenAI says it aims to train 300,000 certified consultants by the end of 2026, and is actively recruiting solution providers that can put AI systems into production. Philip Larson, senior director of the OpenAI Partner Network and a former Google Cloud channel leader, said the program is designed to reward partners for the value they create with customers. Canadian VARs and MSPs with existing AI practices should evaluate the program alongside their current AWS, Google, and Microsoft partnerships, as the specializations in Codex and AI agents may create differentiation in automation-heavy verticals.
Carbon60, a Toronto-based managed cloud services provider, has been named to the 2026 MSP 501 at position 206, marking the company as one of the world’s top managed services firms by revenue and operational discipline. The ranking, published by Channel Futures, evaluates financial health, operational maturity, and recurring revenue growth. Carbon60’s inclusion follows a broader trend of Canadian MSPs demonstrating global competitiveness in specialized infrastructure and compliance-heavy verticals. The company has built a differentiated practice around Canada-first sovereign cloud and deep Azure expertise. As Canadian public sector and healthcare clients face stricter data residency requirements, sovereign cloud capabilities are becoming a key differentiator for domestic MSPs seeking to compete with larger global firms on government and enterprise contracts.
RecordPoint has gone channel-first with the launch of a global partner program enabling resellers, consultancies, and systems integrators to resell, co-sell, and refer its data and AI governance platform. The program arrives as AI adoption drives a surge in demand for data governance across regulated industries. RecordPoint says partners will receive enablement, joint sales support, and platform access to build practices around data retention, compliance, and AI-ready data classification. CRN reports that the move represents a strategic shift for the company. Canadian partners serving regulated industries like finance, government, and healthcare may find particular opportunity as clients confront unstructured data sprawl ahead of AI deployments.
In Brief – OpenAI commits $150 million to launch its inaugural Partner Network with tiered AI specializations. Acronis and Omdia project the managed security market will reach $106 billion in 2026. Blackpoint Cyber’s 2026 Annual Threat Report highlights attackers hiding inside trusted IT tools and RMM platforms. RAMageddon memory shortages continue to pressure PC pricing and enterprise refresh cycles. Exabeam adds pooled and federated licensing options to its APEX partner program for MSSPs. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post.
Later today on In The Channel, we’re talking specialist distribution in Canada with Carrie Hopkins of Exclusive Networks. We get into the Ignition program, what broadliners can’t deliver, and why the model might feel familiar to channel veterans.
And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday we wrapped our HPE Discover 2026 arc with HPE vice president of North America channels Jeremiah Jenson. He talks about the quote-cycle win, the Canadian angle on data sovereignty, and what partners should stop doing.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North Amiercan channels at HPE
In The Channel has gone deep on HPE Discover 2026 – from Justin McGarry‘s walkthrough of the compute and AI infrastructure story, to Ben Fallon on the networking pivot and partner program overhaul, to front-line perspectives from Canadian partners CompuGen, Powerland, and Long View.
Today, we’re closing the arc with HPE vice president of North America channel and partner ecosystem Jeremiah Jenson, recorded on the final afternoon of the show.
Jenson says the temperature on the floor is “white hot,” driven by the clarity of the message and the proof points HPE brought to partners this year. The 30-day quote validity and expanded credit terms – announced at Partner Growth Summit – got what he called the strongest reaction in the room, and he credits Canadian partners specifically as “by no means the quietest voice in the room” in making that change happen.
On networking, Jenson says he’s reset targets higher for data center networking and wants the Canadian channel to lead the charge. He points to partners historically from the Juniper and Aruba sides now expanding into HPE’s Private Cloud AI business, and to data center partners adopting Marvis and the data center networking stack to take share from Cisco.
He also walks through what he calls the “great VM reset” – HPE’s push around Morpheus Enterprise and VME as alternatives for partners and customers facing Broadcom’s VMware changes – and sets an aggressive target for North American partners to lead globally on VME certifications.
On the Canadian front, Jenson highlights conversations around provincial government opportunity and data sovereignty as distinct from the broader North American channel, and offers a direct message to partners: stop worrying about what HPE used to be, and start picking a clear point of view on where the portfolio fits your customer base.
Read Full TranscriptHello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.
Since HPE Discover 2026, we’ve been all over the subject. You’ve heard from HPE’s Justin McGarry on the compute and AI infrastructure story, from Fallon McCarthy on the networking pivot and partner program changes, and from three Canadian partners, Compugen, Powerland and Long View, on what HPE’s strategy looks like from the front lines of the Canadian channel.
Today we close the arc as we sit down once again with HPE’s Vice President of North American Channel and Partner Ecosystems, Jeremiah Jenson. It’s a conversation that takes the temperature of the show floor after three days of partner meetings, looks at where the biggest margin opportunities actually are for partners, and asks what one thing Canadian partners should stop doing and start doing as they head into the second half of 2026.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Jeremiah Jenson.
Interview:
Robert Dutt: Jeremiah, thanks for taking the time. Once again, good to catch up with you.
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, great to see you, Rob. Thanks. It’s Wednesday afternoon at Discover as we sit down, and the good news is you’re still standing. That’s a win in its own right at this point. You’ve now sat in a lot of rooms with partners who have heard the full story that we talked about in the previous podcast we did together. I’m curious your thought on the temperature, the reaction, what’s landing differently in the conference room than it did on the keynote stage, that kind of thing.
Jeremiah Jenson: I mean, the temperature is phenomenal. There’s so much excitement about… There were a lot of announcements this week, but the clarity of message, while I say it this way, we’ve packed a full month into this week, but the clarity of that message and how it’s being very clearly communicated, clear opportunity for partners to go execute on and take advantage of that very real opportunity that we have right in front of us. So I think it’s landing really well from a temperature standpoint. I mean, white hot, I mean, there’s just a tremendous amount of excitement.
Robert Dutt: I want to start with a thing that I felt got one of the strongest reactions on Monday, the 30-day validity terms announced. Now the partners have a few days to process that, as well as the quote-to-cash stuff and the expanded credit terms. Is it changing the feel of the deal conversation or is it still a, you know, we have to see it roll out before it does?
Jeremiah Jenson: I think it changes the feel. It did get a very strong reaction. It got the strongest reaction in the room. I think one thing that it says, it’s a very clear proof point about how we’re very in tune with the market. We know that it’s been a very difficult situation with what’s going on in the industry with rising commodity costs and things along those lines. And it’s a very clear proof point around how we’re listening to our customers, how we’re listening to our partners, and changing how we can help support them through this time. So I don’t think it’s a wait and see. We have a very clear proven track record of building and earning trust with our channel community. And now we’re executing. So we are what, two and a half days later, a day and a half later, and executing.
Robert Dutt: On Monday, on the podcast we ran Monday, you asked partners to go one more mile to consider bringing, you know, one more HPE product line to their customers. Three days later, are you seeing an appetite for that? And that was certainly also a theme throughout the event is the idea of cross-selling and representing more of the portfolio. But I’m curious what you’ve seen in terms of appetite for that, or is it still a heavy lift in a situation where a lot of partners are trying to go deeper and do better in single areas?
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah. So a little bit more about that for your listeners and for those of you who have not met personally, I use the one more mile thing. I’m known as long distance runner. It’s my hobby. It’s something that I’m passionate about and I’m happy to get distracted talking about. But the analogy lands really well. Can we just do one more? And again, back to how clear the message has been, how clear the opportunity is right in front of us. And we are seeing partners adopt that cross-sell motion, but it’s also beyond just cross-sell or upsell or something along those lines. It’s a very clear opportunity to help them grow their business. It’s not just, okay, would you like fries with that? It’s you’re really good in the data center. Now you have a data center networking opportunity that not only can you take that to your existing customer, but you can build your business around that expanded opportunity that we now offer you. And that is very real. So love for you to run another mile with us. We had our inaugural 10K run this week as well. But at the same time, we want to help you grow your business in yet another direction.
Robert Dutt: What’s the signal it tells you that partners are buying into that and are succeeding in expanding beyond? Whether it’s adding networking, if they’re a traditional compute and storage house or whatever that expansion is.
Jeremiah Jenson: We see a very clear signal, a very strong signal in how partners are adopting the Partner Ready Vantage Triple Platinum Plus framework. We are seeing partners move up that stack and across the portfolio in a very meaningful way. That is a very clear proof point, not only in the opportunity in the market, but how we’re supporting partners to take advantage of that opportunity.
Robert Dutt: And that’s Triple Platinum Plus is a big ask. There’s a lot behind it, but it sounds like there’s some real momentum too.
Jeremiah Jenson: There is real momentum. It is a big ask because there’s a lot of very real dollars, but I would also say don’t get consumed with, “Oh my God, I’ve got to get to Triple Platinum Plus.” The framework around how that program lands around the different centers is very attainable to help you grow. Again, back to the mile analogy, one more mile at a time. No one goes from running a 5K to a marathon. We’d love to help get you there. And at the same time, let’s go through the right training, the right enablement, and the right support process to get you there.
Robert Dutt: All right. What’s the conversation you’ve had this week that surprised you? Not the one that you expected you have, but the one that partners are bringing to you that maybe caught you a bit off guard or just weren’t expecting to be as big a focus as it has been.
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, I mean, networking is front and center. I don’t know that I want to say that I was surprised by that, but I will say the energy and excitement around networking, HPE networking, how the progress we have made over the last year has just been absolutely phenomenal. So that’s first and front and center. And it really starts with how we’re integrating and accelerating our efforts there. Another thing that I would say that is really just an equal amount of excitement is the Great VM Reset. So some of the announcements we’ve made around Morpheus Enterprise, VME, how we’re working with partners to take advantage of the Great VM Reset. Look, no one’s looking for a greater expense. So the 90% cost savings opportunity that’s out there, there’s just a lot of momentum in a couple of these very, very strategic areas. And to put a finer point on it, sometimes historically, you get through the base of the business and then you try and work into some strategic areas. We are starting from the strategic areas. We’re starting from networking. We’re starting from Morpheus Enterprise and VME. We’re starting from storage and then bringing the rest of the very strong pieces of the portfolio along with us.
Robert Dutt: Canadian partners are a specific cohort and usually aren’t terribly shy about sharing their opinions on things. I’m curious what you’re hearing from the Canadian contingent that feels distinct from the broader North American channel. In terms of data sovereignty, in terms of market relevance, those kinds of things.
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, I mean, I’d love to meet a shy Canadian partner first and foremost. I mean, they have a very clear voice and a very clear, passionate point of view around what is important to the Canadian market. So certainly there’s data sovereignty. Data sovereignty is really important to them, but then there’s also other pieces around what’s going on with things like provincial governments. I’ve had a number of conversations around what’s going on with what I will call broadly the public sector space in Canada. We had a very deep conversation around provincial business and how we can work together with partners to help capture that. And that was very distinct and a very, well, certainly a new opportunity and an area for us to grow, but also had a very clear point of view that comes from a Canadian perspective. And then of course, there’s data sovereignty. There’s the requirements of how Canadian partners are helping Canadian customers. And I always love the Canadian cohort, just their passion, their commitment to their country and to their business, and the fact that doing business locally is important. And that’s where, just from my standpoint, they have a level of intimacy with their customers that I could never… We as HPE don’t intend to and don’t want to replace. We simply want to help and accelerate that because they have a level of knowledge that I will never understand.
Robert Dutt: Fidelma Russo framed the enterprise AI shift this morning as moving from pilots to production systems. For a partner listening to this, what does the unlock look like practically and what do they need to get ready for?
Jeremiah Jenson: I mean, the AI phenomenon isn’t a future opportunity. It is here right now. I’ve said that a couple of times. It is here now. So it’s not pilots. It’s how are we helping them just accelerate that with customers? And I say the word accelerate a lot, but to make it a little bit more real, what I would ask Canadian partners to do to get ready for is frame a point of view. AI is a very broad, amorphous topic. Agentic AI is very real, but there are pieces of this phenomenon that partners should have a clear point of view on, whether that’s getting the data structure in the exact right place, whether that’s the security angle and what we’re doing to help with our software components around security for AI, or whether that’s what we’re doing around agentic AI and having the right governance and control. But it all starts with what is the customer business problem that we’re trying to solve and then working backwards from that and how we enable the partner to help solve that business problem. But it’s incumbent upon the partner to have a very clear point of view. And we will underpin that and enable that with our programs, with our technology and with our capability in partnership with them.
Robert Dutt: Similar idea, but from a partner financials point of view, where do you see the biggest actual margin opportunities for partners in the AI and the agentic AI shift right now and into the near future?
Jeremiah Jenson: I mean, directly the largest margin opportunity is in the services aspect. So partners that have a very mature or have built out a services practice, whether that’s professional services or whether that’s managed services practice customers are looking for a partner who can help them make that requirement to insert AI into their business. They’re looking for them to help that become a reality. So that’s the first part. So we’ve got a number of capabilities, whether that’s partner branded services or things along those lines, but services is always the most profitable piece of the business. Beneath that, I think it’s really important for partners to understand where is their business, where is their business, who is their customer base and what are they looking for and whether that’s our networking business, whether that’s our cloud business or whether that’s our AI business. So we have award winning programs to support that. We’ve announced a number of new things, whether that’s NBO in the new business competitive takeout in the storage space, NBO for compute. There’s new business opportunity compensation on the networking side. So there’s a number of different places and it’ll depend on the partner’s business, but there’s a fantastic margin opportunity across the portfolio.
Robert Dutt: There’s a lot of aggressive actions going on here. In terms of you’ve got a Cisco displacement opportunity, you’ve got the VMware migration opportunity, you’ve got some of the things you point out. I’m just, I guess I’m curious how you’re prioritizing those competitive opportunities within the channel and for a partner with limited bandwidth, where would you suggest they focus?
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a difficult question to ask and the reason it’s difficult to ask or it’s difficult to answer is because every partner has a different go to market and has a different strategy. We, I wouldn’t prioritize any one area above the other because there are networking partners that have, I’ll give you a couple of examples and proof points. There are networking partners that have come to us from the Juniper side or from the Aruba side, what we now call HPE networking. That are now expanding directly into our PC AI business. I had a meeting this afternoon with a very sizable partner who historically has been from the networking side of the business that saw an opportunity to expand their business into our AI business and they’re leading with PC AI as an example. We see other partners who have historically been very strong data center partners and see an opportunity from networking and have are very strongly adopting our Marvis solutions and our data center networking solutions and are bringing that to their customer base and using that to take new market share with Cisco. So what I would say is partners have chosen a very strong point of view. They understand their customer base and they’re expanding with our portfolio to very strategic adjacent areas.
Robert Dutt: I sat down with Brad Shapiro a little while ago from the HPEFS side of things and got the view of how things are going and what kind of struck me about that conversation was the way that they’re getting closer with the business units and being able to sort of better present the whole thing. I’m curious how you’re viewing financial services in the channel org and the opportunity there to remove friction, to make deals easier to do all the things that they’re going to.
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah. HPEFS is a strategic weapon and a strategic enabler of the business. Full stop. What they’ve done with that 90, there’s a current initiative called the 99 promotion that they have around how they’re helping customers overcome some of the financial hurdles to get to a full modernized hybrid IT infrastructure. And so their integration and the just interlock between the different business units to help unlock that opportunity for customers. It was very clearly an opportunity is very clearly a situation where we saw an inhibitor of the business HPEFS as a strategic partner to us to help unlock that opportunity. And I would just use that as an opportunity to say how leaders such as Brad Shapiro or any other leader of any other business unit are working together to solve for customer problems and help them get to where they need to go. It’s just a very clear proof point. So that 99 for your partners out there, have a look at that 99 opportunity and how we can bring that to customers sooner rather than later. Don’t use it as a diving catch. Get it in sooner. Make it a part of what you do day in and day out.
Robert Dutt: By the time this episode airs, listeners will have heard from three Canadian partners that I talk to this week, Compugen, Powerland, Long View. Without knowing what they told me, what’s the one thing that you’d hope that they’re telling me about how they’re working with HPE right now? And maybe one thing you worry they might have said.
Jeremiah Jenson: Well, I don’t know that I worry about anything that they would have said. Those are all very strong Canadian partners. They’re all very strong HPE partners, Hewlett Packard Enterprise partners. And we’re excited about our growth plan with each of them. They are all leading in different areas. So from a Powerland standpoint, I suspect there’s probably a conversation around GreenLake and how they’re taking GreenLake a little bit more broadly. They have headed back to what I said earlier. That is a partner that has a very clear point of view with their customer base and how they are using some of our more strategic pieces of the portfolio to really drive a strong customer outcome. You mentioned Compugen. Compugen love what they’re doing in Toronto and more broadly and how we’re working together with them to really… That’s a partner we really listen to in terms of what they’re seeing from a market standpoint, from a pricing standpoint, and how we can execute faster. And so they’ve been very tight with us in terms of how we need to frame some of our policies and how we need to accelerate based on real world customer feedback and work from there. And then from a Long View standpoint, I sat down with Dave this week. Great man. Love to see what they’re doing and how they are expanding their business across the portfolio. They’ve got a very strong, again, very strong clear point of view, what we want to do around storage and networking especially. And so again, they’ve understood the pieces of the portfolio that are very relevant to their customers. And we were just very explicit about what we are going to do together to help grow that piece of the business. So that’s what I… If you can learn from those three partners, if nothing else, have a very clear point of view.
Robert Dutt: All right. One of the things that Canadian partners always raise is the issue of data sovereignty. The sense that being north of the border means different rules, different customer expectations, sometimes different product availability. Where does that show up in your priorities in the channel org in the second half of the year?
Jeremiah Jenson: Well, I guess I would frame my answer this way. The rules are different. And that’s where Canadian partners are so valuable, not only to me, but to the broader Hewlett Packard enterprise. Though the partners that are in that market have a depth of understanding and a depth of knowledge of those requirements and are really helping to put the right, whether that’s, I want to say solutions, a word that is too often used, but at the end of the day, they are solving business problems around those requirements. You know, data sovereignty, product availability, what level of service is offered based on whether that’s location geography, whether that’s in the provincial government or whether that’s in a commercial customer, they have an understanding. And I think that that’s the piece that is so valuable about the channel is they have a level of understanding and a way to work with us to help satisfy the customer. So I’m hearing a lot about data sovereignty. I’m hearing a lot about pricing requirements and things along those lines. I mean, let’s be honest, some of the feedback that we heard from Canada was some of the loudest feedback that we heard in terms of, and that helped us make the change that we did around 30-day quote validity. So we made some very specific changes and Canadians were by no means the quietest voice in the room. And, you know, we’ve mentioned some people here today that were very clear in their escalations and what they needed to service their customers.
Robert Dutt: All right. If you’re a Canadian partner listening to this, you know, what’s one thing that you’d like them to stop doing and one thing they should start doing? Degree of difficulty. The answers are not selling the other guys and selling HP.
Jeremiah Jenson: No, yeah. You know, I don’t ever have the ask of stop selling the other guys. At the end of the day, we have the right products. We have the right program. And we are going to earn our place based on our channel heritage, based on our predictability and based on the trust we will earn. So I have a tremendous amount of confidence that when we work with channel partners, we will win based on our predictability, based on our trust, based on the quality of products and programs that we put in market. So I don’t have that ask of partners. We are going to earn our place very intentionally. So my ask of them, the one thing to do is, I say it a lot, but pick a point of view. There is a place in this portfolio where we can help one another and help your customer produce the business outcome that they want. Let’s identify what are those one or two things that we can do together to help go that extra mile. How can we run one more mile together? That’s my ask. The other piece that I would ask is to what not to do is, I think the past helps frame where we want to go, but we don’t have to worry about what used to be. We don’t have to worry about what used to be with HPE or going all the way back to HPE or to Compaq or things along those lines. I’ve been back at HPE for a year now and the past helps frame where we want to go. So my what not to do is we don’t have to worry about what used to be. What we do want to help do is where are we going. So that’s the way I would say that is it’s a new day. We are on the front foot. We are very aggressive about where we’re going and what we’re going to do. And come join us.
Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about that future a little bit. Where do you want the HPE channel to be on January 1, 2027 that it is today? What are you kind of focused on for the back half of the year?
Jeremiah Jenson: A back half of the year, just to be, if you will, a little bit more point in time. I have some very clear goals around our networking business and to make that a little bit more real, the data center networking business, our wireless business, our campus and branch business is performing very well. Our data center networking business is also performing very, very well. And so I’ve reset some targets higher than they were around our data center networking business. So I have some very high expectations around data center networking. So I would love the Canadian channel to lead that charge from a data center networking standpoint. Also our hybrid cloud business. So we have very clear expectations around VME certifications and things along those lines because customers are demanding a different level of outcome from their virtualized environments. I mean, let’s be honest, no one is looking for more Broadcom in their business today. There isn’t customers saying, I’d like some more of that. I want to be treated more like that. And we have a very clear solution. And so we’re looking at VME certifications and you see how we’ve put out the virtualization competency and then we’re helping partners use VME for IT so that they can drink their own champagne. So I want Canadian partners and I want North America to lead the way globally around VME certifications. So I have some very high expectations around our hybrid cloud business. That also extends to our storage business. Our storage business is growing at triple digits. It’s phenomenal with what we’re seeing there. And so storage is another piece. And then by no means last, but the third thing I would say is I have very clear goals around co-selling, what we call co-selling. How are we bringing the HPE Salesforce, which is a very different sales force now. It’s a growing sales force. It’s one, Phil Mottram, our chief revenue officer, is making investments in North America sales. How do we get our sales teams together with our partner sales teams and again, go to a new customer, a new opportunity, go take that extra mile? So it’s those three things.
Robert Dutt: All right. Similar idea, but waking up January 1st of next year, what will be the metric or two that would tell you that Discover 2026 was a turning point for some of these important changes that you see coming?
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah. What’s interesting is just the conversation has at Discover or some of these sort of events, you always kind of start with the base of the business, the core of the business, and then you expand the conversation to some of the strategic areas. This year is very different in that we are working from the networking, the hybrid cloud pieces of the business, the software pieces of the business, and that has been the conversation all week, and it’s been really exciting to see. So waking up January 1, knowing that it’s real, we will have surpassed the raised expectations that I had around the networking business. We will have surpassed our expectations around hybrid cloud, Morpheus Enterprise, and storage. And then I also want to see us look at very strongly how do we accelerate our compute business, our AI business? That is, we’re producing very real customer outcomes. How do we take that to the rest of the market that hasn’t yet taken the first step around AI? So that’s the third thing I would put in there.
Robert Dutt: Okay. Not so much a strategy question as a human one, but what’s one moment from this week that you’re going to, you think you’re going to remember six months from now?
Jeremiah Jenson: Six months from now, what’s a moment? I will certainly remember the 30-day quote announcement. Six months from now, that’s more of a human moment. Also, I mean, just the connections that we’ve had, you know, as much as that’s maybe a straightforward answer, one thing my boss and I did, we had a, I mentioned running earlier, we had a 10K run for the first time that kind of came up as a thing. We had some Canadians join us. It became an international event. We had a South African that was there. We had a couple people from the UK. It just kind of organically grew, and it’s nice to see people really come together. That has been really nice. One other thing, you know, six months from now, the World Cup is ongoing right now. So just to call that out, it’s the first time I believe I don’t have the history that the rest of the world does with the World Cup. But just to see that happen and how that’s brought together, the fact that it’s in North America, and you can have some of those ancillary conversations and really frame some lasting bonds around some of that. You know, the tie for Spain or things along those lines. There have been things like that, and those common experiences that we have together are helping us build strong bonds from which we can grow the business.
Robert Dutt: Working for HP, are you contractually required to be a fan of the Argentine?
Jeremiah Jenson: I am not. I’m not contractually obligated. I personally, I love a good international competition, whether that’s the World Baseball Classic, the Olympics, the hockey, instead of doing the All-Star Game, you know, what they did with the Tournament of Four, this last. I love that sort of stuff. I’m not an Argent as much as Antonio might be upset about that. Nothing against Messi. I’m sure he’s a phenomenal player. At the end of the day, I’m an American. I’m going to cheer for the United States. But I also back the pack. So when it comes down to it, it’s going to be a, I’m going to cheer for the North America side of things, whoever that may be.
Robert Dutt: There you go. Last one for me. When we talk next, whether that’s at Discover Next Year, hopefully sometime ahead of that, what do you hope we’re talking about?
Jeremiah Jenson: I mean, I hope we talk about how we’re seeing compounded growth. We’re seeing acceleration in the business across the portfolio now. I hope we’re talking about how we compound that. How do we, you know, it’s, you know, growing at the pace that we’re growing to continue to that growth on a larger number would drive compounded growth. So I would love to see the pace, the percentage at which we’re growing be continued. I’d love to have that conversation next year. And we’re going to do that with partners.
Robert Dutt: Good answer. And I don’t know how many partners are going to turn their nose up at the idea of compounding growth. So I think who wouldn’t love that end there. Good. Awesome. I appreciate your taking the time once again, safe journeys home. And thanks for thanks for helping us out so much running the channel over the last, the last couple of weeks.
Jeremiah Jenson: You bet. Rob, thanks. Always good to talk to you.
Show outro:
There you have it, Jeremiah Jenson from HPE.
I’d like to thank Jeremiah for making the time at the end of what was a very long week in Las Vegas and the candor he brought to the conversation that could easily have stayed at the level of talking points.
A few things I’d like to take away from this one. First, the energy around networking isn’t just keynote rhetoric. Jenson is resetting targets higher for data center networking specifically, and he’s looking to the Canadian channel to lead part of that charge. Second, the 30-day quote validity landed because partners were loud about it, and Canadian partners were among the loudest. That matters. And third, the through line of this whole arc from HPE Discover is that the company is trying to shift from a base of the business story to a strategic front foot story. Networking, hybrid cloud and the VMware reset aren’t afterthoughts anymore. They’re the opening argument.
If you’re just catching up on the full series, you can find all of our coverage from HPE Discover 2026 waiting for you on the In The Channel feed, partner interviews, product deep dives and day-to-day dispatches on The Buzz.
Thanks for listening. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, most other podcast directories. If you like what you hear, a rating or review goes a long way to helping other Canadian IT professionals find this channel.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
Microsoft July 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 570 flaws, 3 zero-days: Microsoft released its July 2026 Patch Tuesday update addressing 570 vulnerabilities including 3 zero-days, according to BleepingComputer. The zero-day status means MSPs should prioritize these patches immediately for client environments. With 570 total fixes to stage, test, and deploy, Canadian partners managing regulated clients in healthcare, finance, and provincial government face a compressed vulnerability response window this week.Citrix Platform Flex opens a new services opportunity: Citrix is introducing Platform Flex, a persona-based pricing model that gives partners room to build consulting, workforce assessment, and migration services around how customers actually use the platform. According to ChannelE2E, the shift lets partners attach higher-margin services to each deployment by right-sizing workloads to user personas. The new model is particularly relevant in the Canadian mid-market, where virtual desktop and app delivery standardization has been strong but differentiation has been thin.AI compliance is becoming an operational blind spot for MSPs: AI compliance should not be treated as a policy exercise that happens once and then sits on a shelf. According to Terry Irons on ChannelE2E, the value for MSPs is operationalizing compliance around AI data handling, model access, and prompt logging. Canadian MSPs already navigating Law 25 and PIPEDA amendments will recognize the pattern: the regulation exists, but the recurring revenue opportunity lies in helping customers stay inside the lines as the technology changes.CMMC third-party audits paused but the opportunity isn’t: The Department of Defense has pressed pause on third-party audits for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, but the compliance requirements themselves remain in place for defense contractors. According to ChannelE2E, that gap creates an opening for MSPs and MSSPs to expand compliance services. Canadian partners serving cross-border contractors or aerospace supply chain clients should expect renewed advisory conversations.Progress confirms ShareFile zero-day behind Storage Zone shutdown: Progress confirmed a ShareFile zero-day flaw was behind the Storage Zone shutdown, BleepingComputer reports. Partners managing client file-sharing infrastructure should assess exposure and confirm whether affected Storage Zone configurations are in their environments.MSSP Alert Top 250 application opens for 2026: The MSSP Alert Top 250 MSSP list application process is open for 2026. ChannelE2E offers guidance on what judges look for and which mistakes could hurt a ranking.Changes in the Channel tracks leadership moves for July 6-10: ChannelE2E tracked leadership changes and shakeups across the channel for the week of July 6-10.Read Full TranscriptWelcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wednesday, July 15, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
Microsoft released its July 2026 Patch Tuesday update addressing 570 vulnerabilities across the portfolio, including 3 zero-days. According to BleepingComputer, the zero-day patches should be prioritized immediately for client environments. The scale of the release means MSPs need to stage patch deployment carefully. With 570 fixes to validate and deploy, technicians are managing a large surface area without disrupting business operations. Canadian partners managing regulated clients in healthcare, finance, and provincial government should expect compressed vulnerability response windows this week. Law 25, PIPEDA, and sector-specific frameworks all embed expectations around timely critical patch management, and a July drop of this magnitude tests those service level commitments. Microsoft is positioning the release as part of its regular cycle, but the zero-day status means this is not a routine Tuesday. Partners should be communicating with clients now about maintenance windows and priority sequencing for on-premises and hybrid infrastructure.
Citrix is introducing Platform Flex, a persona-based pricing model that moves away from one-size-fits-all licensing and gives partners room to build consulting, workforce assessment, and migration services around how customers actually use the platform. According to ChannelE2E, the shift lets partners attach higher-margin services to each deployment by right-sizing workloads to user personas rather than simply renewing seat counts. The new model is particularly relevant in the Canadian mid-market, where virtual desktop and app delivery standardization has been strong but differentiation has been thin. Platform Flex creates a natural entry point for partners to conduct usage assessments, recommend persona transitions, and bundle ongoing optimization services. It also gives partners a way to defend margins against pure license resale by making the consulting layer part of the renewal conversation. Citrix is positioning Platform Flex as a way to reduce customer shelfware, but the partner angle is that it turns every renewal cycle into a services engagement.
AI compliance should not be treated as a policy exercise that happens once and then sits on a shelf. According to Terry Irons on ChannelE2E, the value for MSPs is operationalizing compliance around AI data handling, model access, and prompt logging. As customers deploy more AI tools, the governance gap between experimentation and controlled scale is widening, and MSPs that treat AI governance as a document creation exercise risk missing the continuous monitoring requirement. Canadian MSPs already navigating Law 25 and PIPEDA amendments will recognize the pattern: the regulation exists, but the recurring revenue opportunity lies in helping customers stay inside the lines as the technology changes. The piece suggests that MSPs who build AI compliance into their existing security operations center workflows, rather than treating it as a separate consulting project, will capture more of that spend. The shift from one-time policy to ongoing operational control is the same transition the channel has already made with security, and AI is now following that path.
In Brief – CMMC third-party audits are paused but the channel opportunity isn’t. Progress confirms a ShareFile zero-day flaw behind the Storage Zone shutdown. MSSP Alert Top 250 application opens for 2026 ranking. Changes in the Channel tracks leadership moves for the week of July 6-10. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post.
Later today on In The Channel, we close out our HPE Discover 2026 coverage with vice president of North America channel and partner ecosystem Jeremiah Jenson, talking about the 30-day quote validity, Canadian partner influence, and the push for data center networking growth.
And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s episode featured Curtis Dery from Xerox IT Solutions on HPE financing, GreenLake wins, and why AI is a digital goldmine for the channel.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Curtis Dery, executive vice president at Xerox IT Solutions Canada
Curtis Dery, executive vice president at Xerox IT Solutions Canada (doing business as Powerland), has been living the HPE GreenLake story since before most Canadian partners knew what as-a-service infrastructure meant. At HPE Discover 2026, he joined In The Channel to talk about what this week’s announcements look like from the practitioner’s desk.
Dery’s team won HPE’s Canada GreenLake Partner of the Year in 2022 and has kept the streak going, but he’s clear that the barrier to adoption was never the technology. “Customers are facing constraints financially,” he says, citing tariffs and geopolitical pressure. That’s why he sees the 90/9 financing offer and 150% credit line expansion as genuine deal-closing tools. “It helps open more doors and close deals even sooner.”
He also sees the channel-only expansion of Private Cloud and Zerto as a deliberate strategy his team was ready for, thanks to deep ties with HPE’s advisory councils. The real differentiator, he says, is operationalizing customer processes so they can move from 20-30 projects a year to 50-70.
Where Dery gets animated is AI. He calls the current moment “the most exciting time in any of our careers” and describes AI as a “digital goldmine.” His team runs internal hackathons to build reps with large language models, work that has already helped Powerland close four of the largest infrastructure deals in the world – all out of Winnipeg. But he’s also blunt about tokenomics: “The burn is real.”
On sovereignty, Dery points to the Anthropic government oversight incident as validation for private AI. “If I’m a customer and I’m all in on that model, what would happen?” He sees HPE’s network optimization and Private Cloud AI stack as the hedge.
Read Full TranscriptRobert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. We’ve been on a bit of an unscheduled hiatus, but we’re back. We’re going to get back into the swing of things right now, and we’re going to start that off by finishing our coverage of this year’s HPE Discover 2026.
Today’s guest is Curtis Dery, executive vice president at Xerox IT Solutions Canada, which most of the channel still knows as Powerland. Curtis is based in Winnipeg. His team covers the country. He’s been living the HPE GreenLake story since before most Canadian partners knew what as-a-service infrastructure meant. His team won HPE Canada’s GreenLake Partner of the Year back in 2022 and has kept that streak alive. They were the first partner to sell a GreenLake deal in Canada, the first to sell VM Essentials, and the first to sell a cyber vault. But Curtis isn’t just a sales exec. He’s genuinely hands-on with emerging technology, running internal AI hackathons with his team, and has a perspective on the announcements from Discover that come from actually closing the deals, not just reading the press releases. He joined me on site at Discover to talk about what the new financing tools, the channel-only expansion, and the AI story mean for partners on the ground.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Curtis Dery.
Robert Dutt: Curtis, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Curtis Dery: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Robert Dutt: Before we get into this week, I have to acknowledge – just having been in this industry a while, you’ve got Xerox and what is formerly HP at a conference here. Slightly unexpected combination on the surface. Most people’s mental model of Xerox is still copiers, but you were running Powerland as one of the leading HPE infrastructure providers in Canada long before that. What does the Xerox relationship mean in practice for the IT business? Has it changed how you go to market with HPE, or does Powerland essentially operate in its own lane?
Curtis Dery: You know what, that’s a great question. The way the market’s changing, the industry is changing, businesses are needing to change. That was the reason why Xerox looked at acquiring us – to help go through the realignment and the changes that they’re making as a business. Obviously, from a print perspective, looking at the industry challenges it was going through through COVID and post-COVID and just the market shift around that, having a focus around infrastructure and technology and driving those outcomes with our customers helped them amplify the customer base that they have across North America.
Robert Dutt: You were doing GreenLake before a lot of Canadian partners knew what it was. You won the Canadian GreenLake Partner of the Year back in ’22, closing deals in the as-a-service model when it was still a pretty hard sell to customers used to buying it outright. Now HPE’s on stage talking about 90/9 financing and offering 150% expansion of credit lines. For someone who’s been engineering these deals since the beginning, what do these tools mean specifically? Do they change what’s possible for you, or are you already doing – you already have your system set up and ready to go?
Curtis Dery: Yeah, I mean, being fortunate to be a little bit on the front edge of GreenLake, we’re fortunate to be Partner of the Year four years in a row, and from a North American perspective, Partner of the Year to make it five. What that created was just validation that how we’re going to market and how we’re executing it is a little bit more uniquely than others, and how we’re prepared to understand the customer, the outcomes that they want, and wrap that around operationalizing it through a GreenLake model. Having flexibility in some of these announcements helps with the challenges that we’re all entering – some of it unknown, some of it shortages, all these changes, and then you wrap that around obviously the disruption of AI. So having these flexibilities of what they want to do around credit is definitely needed because customers are facing constraints financially – just with the cost of, from a geopolitical impact perspective, tariffs, all these things are real. So HP coming to the table with new offerings helps open more doors and close deals even sooner than expected sometimes. So we’re always looking at making sure, yes, we have a foundational core that we can execute on with a rinse and repeat with a proven track record, but always making sure we’re aligned with the changes that they’re making and making sure we’re enhancing our offering with them, a walk and step together.
Robert Dutt: It feels like they’re acknowledging that one of the barriers to GreenLake adoption isn’t the technology, the concept, or anything like that. It’s the customer’s budget cycles. And it sounds like you’re saying that’s the right diagnosis from what you’re seeing in the Western Canada market.
Curtis Dery: Yeah, and I think also people sometimes think it has to be OpEx. There’s a balance that you can still capitalize GreenLake as well too, and then do a term top-up depending on the utilization they have, but also operationalizing it from a financial [perspective]. So that flexibility is still there. I just think sometimes that message isn’t out there at the street level. So that’s where our value comes in as a partner, right? To understand where that noise and friction is and remove the friction.
Robert Dutt: Three products went to channel-only at Partner Growth Summit this week: Private Cloud, PC 3000, PC 1000, and Zerto. Last year it was VM Essentials. It seems like it’s clearly a deliberate expansion of that strategy. From where you sit with that infrastructure-heavy book of business, is channel-only a meaningful strategic signal for you, or is it about filling the gaps for customers who need DR and private cloud but haven’t had a clean vehicle to buy it through you?
Curtis Dery: That’s a great question. I think, fortunate to have a strategic partnership with HP, we sold the first cyber vault in the country. And so same with VME, we sold the first in the country, and same with GreenLake. So there’s a theme there, right? Being so strategically aligned with them from executive level down to technical level, I’m on their advisory council from a GreenLake perspective. My pre-sales engineer is the ambassador on the GreenLake program. Because of that exposure, we get line of sight a little bit earlier. So then we’re already preparing on how we’re going to market to augment some of these announcements that they’re doing, and then wrapping around our own little secret sauce to that to be able to expedite the sales and making sure that we’re taking down the logos together.
Robert Dutt: What is that secret sauce, in whatever depth you wish to share in this forum?
Curtis Dery: Well, I think sometimes getting down to the nitty-gritty of what GreenLake really does, and that’s operationalizing the customer’s process to be able to allow them to be more agile within their own business. So instead of going to a traditional market and doing a traditional way of getting quotes, going to an RFP process, all those things take time, money, and energy. And when you do that, you then don’t have time to focus on the business to drive the outcomes you can do. Now, with our customers from a GreenLake perspective, that agility of being able to streamline that process – we have our customers that are able to go from 20 to 30 projects a year to now 50 to 70 projects a year. So then they get to see the benefits of how fast we can make their business move, get the outcomes that they want so they can start to accelerate further.
Robert Dutt: You heard the partner branded services announcement this week. Curious what you thought of that and how it kind of maps with what you do in terms of, are you already running that services-led model, or are you looking for opportunities to have HP back you up but still go under your brand? Just curious how it hit.
Curtis Dery: For us, it definitely hit. But yes, we also do it as well that way. But again, it’s the right tool at the right place at the right time. And sometimes we may need them, they may need us, or it’s an augmentation of both. And that’s the beauty that I love about HP is the investment to the channel, always staying aligned at the street level and making sure it’s very predictable on how you can make bets jointly with them. So it’s a flexibility thing.
Robert Dutt: A hundred percent. Curious what’s driving the HP business for you right now. What’s kind of hitting, what are customers talking to you about, what’s driving it forward? I have to imagine AI is part of that.
Curtis Dery: Yeah. And I think AI was a little bit of paralysis in the market, right? People were frozen of like, “What do I do? Where do I start? What type of technology? Do I go to a public LLM?” Or you hear this word, “sovereign,” and what does that mean? And I think the perfect storm is brewing. But the beauty is that HP has made the right investments, right? Acquisitions to now truly be ready for what the market is going to be hitting with right now. Which is, you look at the announcement of what happened with Anthropic last week. Government oversight, they said shut down that model. Well, if I’m a customer and I’m all in on that model, what would happen? And so this created that validation of why private sovereign AI with HP wrapping around customers’ data and giving them real hardened AI outcomes within their environment, and then choosing if they need to go into the public LLM. And so getting ready for that market condition is what’s going to drive success and velocity with HP in the market.
Robert Dutt: Along with the idea of tokenomics, that idea of AI projects getting stuck in, and maybe hand-in-hand with tokenomics in fact, that idea of AI projects getting stalled out in the implementation or the proof-of-concept phase and not getting to full implementation is a theme that we’re hearing from HP and from just about any vendor who’s playing in the space this year. It seems to be one of the big catches. I’m curious how you’re seeing that reflected in your customer base, if they’re kind of getting to a point of doing POCs and then starting to discover, “Well, wait a second, this could get real expensive, real fast.”
Curtis Dery: I’m 1000% [there]. Right? The burn is real. We have customers that knew that they have to start getting their battle scars and learning from the AI and understanding how does it work, how do we integrate it, how do we make sure there’s no hallucinating, how do we trust it, how do we do all these different things? My analogy I like to use is, at the end of the day, we all need refrigerators. But a lot of people probably don’t remember who invented the refrigerator. They just know they needed one, right? That’s the same with the public LLMs, right? You need the refrigerator when you need to go into it. What we do with our customers is show them how to take a Coke can and put it in the fridge and bring it out of the fridge. And so we help them navigate it so then tokenomics is not exposed as much, right? They can manage their cost, manage their environment, and choose where they want to put their data. I think the tokenomics is definitely a real thing and I think we’re going to find out significantly what that means in the next 120 days. Why? Because these companies are going IPO and you now know where the math is mathing, right? And so that’s going to show us a lot on what the true tokenomics looks like.
Robert Dutt: You touched a little bit on the importance of sovereignty in customer discussions, but can you tell me a little bit more about how that’s showing up in terms of what customers are asking about and how you see that trending and evolving as an interest and a care about, both on the geopolitical front and, as you say, on an issue like Anthropic suddenly having to pull access to the latest model?
Curtis Dery: Yeah, a thousand percent. I think when you hear the word sovereign, I always ask people, “What does that mean to you?” Because when you look at the World Economic Forum, for example, in February, what did they announce as the next pandemic, the cyber pandemic? Why? You’ve got scale of agents running everywhere. People don’t know what is a good agent or a bad agent, right? And if you look at the internet bandwidth since December till now, it’s increased over 12x of volume. Do you know how much traffic is now coming down? So now people are going to need to get prepared about how do you control your network, your data, your access, and sovereign that so that you’re secure so that if a bad day occurs, you don’t have the public exposure. And that’s why you hear from Antonio Neri and the focus around the network. How do you optimize that network? How do you secure that traffic and have the access to where you need to go and ensure that it can handle the scale? So that’s why this storm is brewing in front of all of us right now.
Robert Dutt: Looking at your background, it’s clear that you’re not just selling infrastructure. You’re genuinely interested in AI and emerging technology. And it seems like you like to get pretty hands-on. As you’re at an event like this and you’re hearing the announcements and seeing what’s coming and what they’re talking about, what are you really excited to get your hands on and play with, and beyond that to actually get in front of your customers either now or down the road as it becomes more concrete?
Curtis Dery: You know, I tell people this is probably the most exciting time in any of our careers because it’s the first time in any of our careers that it’s a level playing field, where it’s up to you to grab the baton of AI and understand how do you use it, apply it, and get the outcomes and innovation that you want to do with people. The tagline I like to use with my team internally is, we’re not underpinned by anyone anymore. We have the opportunity to dream, to build, and execute, and we can use AI technology to do that. And so I call it the digital goldmine. We get to go inside these LLMs and mine what we want out of that and be able to take advantage of what we can do with our customers. And that’s the one thing I enjoy the most is understanding, okay, what tools can I use, whether it’s from PCAI and apply our own private AI strategy around that. I’ve worked with a lot of advisory around a lot of the latest LLMs that are out there, but also some of these private ones like [Mistral AI] and understanding how it’s a puppet master to the public AI and how to optimize white space within a customer’s environment to show them where they have inefficiencies, profitability, when they can take the market in a different way. And that’s what AI does – allow customers to be agile, at edge, on time, and be able to really disrupt if they choose to.
And I think it sounds a lot daunting for a lot of people, right, to understand how do I get proactive now with AI and not get disrupted by it, because you don’t know if you can wake up and all of a sudden your competitor is something that you didn’t expect. And so I think being able to just dive in and learn. A lot of people say, “Well, I don’t know much about AI.” None of us do. This is all the latest technology. So I tell people to speak to it, learn from it, and just start understanding how it works. So then at the end of the day, you can now augment it because it ain’t going away. If you think about from a generational perspective, we have kids that are going to be born in AI. They don’t even understand what that means. So it’s exciting times. And I tell people embrace it, because like I said, it’s the first time in history that nobody’s really walking in a room saying, “I got 10 years in AI.” Everyone’s like, “Hey, I’ve been working with it for six months. Cool.” Just like all of us. It’s how many people are putting in the reps with it.
Robert Dutt: What are you pulling out of that goldmine so far at Powerland? What are you doing in terms of both – how’s AI changing both what you’re doing customer-facing, and internally your own operations and how you think about AI within the org?
Curtis Dery: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we were fortunate being ahead of it from an AI perspective and understanding our domain strengths, using AI to be better prepared for our customers and think through strategies with them. And with that, we were able to build out blueprints where we were fortunate to close out four of the largest deals in the world with four different vendors out of a city called Winnipeg. And a lot of people came to me and said, “Curt, I don’t get it. We’re not doing this in New York, Toronto. You were doing this in Winnipeg. How are you doing this?” And I’m like, using AI to get better prepared to understand how do we simulate an environment to say, “This is the customer. What can we do to drive out these types of outcomes? And what does this look like from a strategy?” We get the blueprint and now we go and see the customer and go, “Does this make sense?” And they go, “Yes. Well, let’s go execute that with AI.” And so that’s the advantage that we get to do.
And then from an internal perspective, I love having our own internal roundtable hackathons. What’s something we want to do? Throw it on the whiteboard. Everybody has their AI account and go, “Okay, how would you approach that?” So then our team is learning how to put those reps in to say, “Well, I would approach it this way.” And it’s a cool exercise to see how everyone thinks differently. And that’s the beauty about AI. We’re all going to prompt it differently. We’re all going to work with it differently and then take those unified approach of everyone’s pieces, put it together and go, “Okay, now we solve the puzzle together.” So I really enjoy the ability to be able to scale so rapidly with it. It’s an exciting time. I feel like we’re built for this era.
Robert Dutt: And I’d imagine a lot of those ideas that are coming out in the internal hackathons are eventually going to find their way into what you’re doing with customers as well. So that’s a nice plus.
Curtis Dery: Yeah, absolutely.
Robert Dutt: As you point out, you’re in Winnipeg, presence across Western Canada. I’ve talked to a couple of other Canadian partners this week, and I’m getting this consistent theme that Canadian customers right now are in their moment – between sovereignty, between AI infrastructure refresh, between really starting to get AI in play rather than playing with AI. Does that map with what you’re hearing from your customers in the prairies and the West? And where do you see HPE fitting into that story for the balance of the year and beyond?
Curtis Dery: Yeah, I think we touched on it lightly, right? The changes that happened with the government oversight last week, I think opened people’s eyes on what their approach is to public LLMs. And then also understanding costs, constraints, all these things that have been hitting our markets and hitting customers’ budgets and challenges. It’s a difficult time to be a CIO right now. When you’re sitting there and you have to protect them from a cybersecurity perspective, you have to have a future of understanding where AI fits into this, and never mind constraints around cost and all that stuff. It’s a tough time to be an executive for a business right now and understand how you can be profitable, scale all these things while you’re facing all these challenges in the market. So being prepared in Canada of how we’re going to our customers is understanding how to package what HP has done effectively well on the overall strategy around GreenLake and saying, “How do we now enter the customer and say, ‘You can now do on-demand AI in your environment predictably, cost-effectively, compliance and govern, and now you can choose how you want to scale that rapidly?'” I think finally, we’re starting to see that curve get around the corner where customers are jumping into wanting to do it this way.
It’s just such a learning dynamic exercise right now, right? Because at first it was ChatGPT and then it was Grok and then it was Claude and it just kept going and going. People are not talking about the disruption that happened out of China too with their LLMs. So if you look at DeepSeek, Kimi and all these models, they’re doing exactly what Claude and these others can do at 75% cheaper. So when people start to realize, “Well, I can run that SDK natively inside my environment way cheaper than going to a public API Claude license,” people are going to look at that and go, “Oh, what makes sense now? Because the math ain’t math.”
Robert Dutt: That theme is coming up in a lot of different places, isn’t it? Last one for me, whether it’s something we’ve already covered off or something else, what’s the one thing that’s really caught your attention here at Discover this week, the thing that you’re going to take back to the team and on Friday or Monday or whenever you’re first in there saying, “By the way, this is what I heard. This is what we got to get ready for.”
Curtis Dery: Well, a few things. One is truly being prepared on the foundation of the network and understanding what does that mean to have an optimized AI network both internally and externally for the customer. I think there’s a high, high value in that. I learned that on the journey with cloud. Everybody wanted to go to cloud. Love the destination. Nobody talked about the highway to the cloud. Nobody talked about the cloud tax of egress coming out of there. So there’s a lot of lessons and best practices that came from the cloud journey that we can now reapply to the AI journey. So focusing on that is huge.
And then understanding the intelligence layer and understanding [NVIDIA] Morpheus is an extremely powerful tool and understanding how does that fit into the entire reference architectural stack with PCAI and understanding how do we build on top of that. And that’s some of our secret sauce of what we’re doing, being able to do our own private SDK on top of PCAI so customers can truly control their own AI platform. And so that’s the focus that we’re going to do. And we’re super excited to get velocity going into Q4 with HP so that in 2027, I expect a big year.
Robert Dutt: All right. Well, good luck on bringing that back to the team next week and good luck on that big year. And thanks again for taking the time on what I’m sure has been a very busy week.
Curtis Dery: Absolutely. And I welcome the time and being able to share this conversation with you. So we look forward to doing it again.
Robert Dutt: There you have it. Curtis Dery from Xerox IT Solutions Canada. I’d like to thank Curtis for his time. If you’re finding value in these interviews, I’d appreciate if you’d follow or subscribe to the show. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most major podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always welcome.
A few things that stood out for me from this conversation. One is Curtis’s framing that the real barrier to GreenLake adoption has never been the technology, it’s the customer’s budget cycle. The 90/9 financing and expanded credit lines aren’t abstract partner program benefits. They’re deal-closing tools for partners who are already in the room with constrained CIOs. Another is his digital goldmine metaphor for AI. The idea that for the first time in our careers, the playing field is level and what matters is who’s putting in the reps. But he’s also refreshingly blunt about the burn on tokenomics and the need for partners to help customers manage costs as AI moves from proof-of-concept to production. I appreciated his point about sovereignty not being theoretical anymore. The Anthropic incident gave customers a concrete reason to ask hard questions about public LLM dependence. Finally, it’s worth noting that the company is closing some of the largest infrastructure deals in the world out of Winnipeg. The Canadian channel is not a Toronto-only story, and this is a reminder of that.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
Barracuda acquires Evo Security: Barracuda is integrating Evo Security’s IAM and PAM tools into BarracudaONE, giving MSPs more ways to build identity security services beyond MFA. ChannelE2E reports that the move unifies email, network, and identity protection under one stack, which matters for Canadian technicians already managing multiple dashboards. The deal size was not disclosed.Rewst rebuilds its platform around MCP and AI agents: Rewst is rebuilding its automation engine around the Model Context Protocol so technicians can describe a business process and have an AI agent custom-build it, even without deep scripting skills. ChannelE2E says the update turns automation from an internal efficiency play into a billable managed service. The rollout is expected through the third quarter.Microsoft opens its July 2026 partner playbook: Microsoft released July partner announcements covering FY27 planning resources, updated Azure IP co-sell incentives, and refreshed Microsoft 365 Copilot specialization requirements. The company is positioning the Copilot specialization as a prerequisite for AI deployment referrals, raising the bar from general cloud competency to specific AI delivery capability. A new End of Sale Software pricelist is also live in Partner Center as of July 1.CompassMSP acquires Logic Group: ChannelE2E reports the acquisition adds to CompassMSP’s portfolio as the consolidator continues its North American expansion.The 20 MSP acquires Sundance Networks, reaching 49 acquisitions: The rollup hits another milestone with the Sundance Networks deal, according to ChannelE2E.ManageEngine launches marketplace for partner-built IT extensions and AI agents: ChannelE2E says Zoho’s IT management arm is opening a marketplace where partners can build and sell extensions.Dell partners remain optimistic amid supply chain concerns: ChannelE2E reports that Dell is working to keep supply chains flowing for partners as data center growth puts pressure on memory supplies.Guardz adds agentic reporting for MSP client reviews: ChannelE2E says the new feature turns blocked threats and security activity into reports that SMB customers can understand.Read Full TranscriptWelcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Tuesday, July 14, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
Barracuda is buying Evo Security to expand its identity security capabilities for MSPs. In a deal announced last week, Barracuda said it will integrate Evo Security’s IAM and PAM tools into BarracudaONE, giving partners more ways to build identity security services beyond MFA. The move comes as identity attacks continue to outpace traditional perimeter defenses and MSPs are being asked to manage privileged access for customers with limited security staff. Barracuda is positioning the acquisition as a way to unify email, network, and identity protection under one stack. Canadian partners who have already standardized on BarracudaONE will see the new tools appear as integrated modules rather than a separate console, which matters for technicians who are already managing multiple dashboards. The channel has been waiting for Barracuda to deepen its identity story after years of speculation, and this appears to be the answer. Identity and access management has become one of the fastest-growing service lines for Canadian MSPs, but many have cobbled together solutions from multiple vendors. Barracuda’s bet is that MSPs will pay for a unified platform rather than stitching together point products. The deal size was not disclosed.
Rewst is rebuilding its automation platform from the ground up around MCP and AI agents, and the timing is notable. The company announced today that MSPs will be able to describe a business process they want to automate and have an AI agent custom-build the workflow, even if the technician lacks deep scripting expertise. Rewst is leaning on the Model Context Protocol to connect its automation engine to third-party tools in a standardized way, which reduces the integration maintenance that typically consumes MSP engineering hours. The rebuild is a direct response to the skills gap that has kept many mid-market providers from offering automation as a managed service. For Canadian MSPs struggling to hire and retain technicians who can write PowerShell or Python, this could lower the barrier to entry for workflow automation and make it a billable service rather than an internal efficiency play. Rewst says the new architecture will also allow partners to sell automation to their own customers as a white-label managed service, which turns a cost center into a revenue line. The platform update is expected to roll out to existing partners in phases through the third quarter.
Microsoft rolled out its July partner announcements on Thursday, and the bundle includes several items that will shape Canadian partner planning for the second half of the calendar year. The company opened FY27 planning resources, updated Azure IP co-sell incentives, and refreshed Microsoft 365 Copilot specialization requirements. A new End of Sale Software pricelist is also live in Partner Center as of July 1. Microsoft is positioning the Copilot specialization as a prerequisite for partners who want to be referred for AI deployment opportunities, which means the bar for entry is moving from general cloud competency to specific AI delivery capability. The FY27 planning materials emphasize recurring revenue and attached services, a message that aligns with what Canadian distributors have been telling partners for the last two quarters. Canadian CSPs will also want to note the pricing and packaging changes for Microsoft 365 Business plans that took effect July 1, which include additional mailbox storage and enhanced Copilot Chat experiences. The net effect is that Microsoft is tightening the link between partner program tiering and AI service delivery, something that will require training investments for smaller partners.
In Brief – CompassMSP acquires Logic Group. The 20 MSP acquires Sundance Networks, reaching 49 acquisitions. ManageEngine launches a marketplace for partner-built IT extensions and AI agents. Dell partners remain optimistic amid IT component supply chain concerns. Guardz adds agentic reporting to help MSPs turn security activity into client-ready reviews. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post.
And if you haven’t heard it yet, my conversation with Curtis Dery from Xerox IT Solutions on what HPE’s financing moves, the channel-only expansion of Private Cloud and Zerto, and why AI is a digital goldmine. That’s on In The Channel now.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Dave Frederickson, executive vice president of strategic alliances and business development at Long View Systems
There are not many people who can look at HPE Discover 2026 from the vantage point of someone who helped build it. Dave Frederickson spent over 24 years at HP, including leading the enterprise servers, storage, and networking business for HP Canada right around the time Discover was created as a unified event in 2011. He joined Long View Systems in June 2012 and is now executive vice president of strategic alliances and business development.
That backstory matters, because Dave comes to this week with something almost no one else on the show floor has: direct memory of the HP that lost its way, the acquisition misadventures, and what it looks like when a large technology company loses focus. His verdict on the HPE of 2026? It has its mojo back – and the Juniper integration is the piece that finally makes the networking-plus-compute-plus-storage story credible in a way it could not be before.
We also get into the real operational cost of the January quote-cycle crisis – the move to 7- and 14-day quote windows that Dave says created “an astronomical amount of overhead” for Long View’s operations teams – and what the return to 30-day quote validity actually signals coming out of the Partner Growth Summit.
On AI, Dave pushes back – respectfully – on Antonio Neri’s keynote framing that the network is the foundation. For Long View, the conversation still starts at the data and governance layer. And he flags tokenomics as the near-term friction point that is coming for a lot of organizations faster than they may realize, with cost predictability becoming the real barrier to AI ROI conversations.
For more from HPE Discover 2026, see our full coverage hub and our earlier preview episode with Jeremiah Jenson, VP of North America channel at HPE.
Read Full TranscriptROBERT DUTT: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. We’re here at HPE Discover in Las Vegas this week, and sometimes the best conversations happen by accident.
Dave Frederickson is executive vice president of Strategic Alliances and Business Development at Long View Systems, one of Canada’s leading IT solution providers. But what makes Dave’s take on this week uniquely worth hearing is what he did before he got to Long View. Many in the channel know Dave for his 24 years at HP. He led the channel for a long time, and he spent some time leading the enterprise server, storage, and networking business for HP Canada right around the time Discover was created as a unified event in 2011. He’s been on the partner side now for 14 years, and that gives him an interesting lens on HPE – where it has been, where it’s struggled, and where it is today – that very few people walking the show floor this week can match.
I happened to catch up with Dave at the airport in Vegas after we both arrived here, and he graciously agreed to sit down and share his thoughts on this week.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Dave Frederickson.
ROBERT DUTT: Dave, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
DAVE FREDERICKSON: My pleasure.
ROBERT DUTT: I have to ask you the obvious one first. If I’m thinking back correctly to your time at HP, you were actually leading ESSN around the time that HP Discover became a thing in 2011. And here you are 15 years later at HPE’s major show Discover, representing one of the major Canadian partners. Does it feel a little bit like old home week? And also, what’s it like to make the mental switch – I know it’s been a while now, obviously – to make the mental switch from the vendor side of the table to the partner side?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Well, I have to say, 14 years ago at the end of this month is when I left HP. And I will say that every time I come to Discover, there’s a certain nostalgia. But also, I definitely miss it. There’s certain parts of it. I miss the big show. I miss the IP. I don’t necessarily miss having to go to 8,000 meetings over the course of however many [X] days, although I still do quite a few. But yeah, no, there’s definitely – look, and I’m pretty excited about how things are right now. So yeah, it’s definitely – I miss the show a little bit, even on the partner side.
ROBERT DUTT: As I say, coming up on 14 years, how is your understanding of what HP is and what the relationship between HP and partners looks like evolved from what you knew when you were on the other side of the house? What did you not really fully appreciate about the HPE relationship until you were on the side of the table you’re on now?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Yeah, I think there’s a few things that kind of unpack that. One was just the ability on the partner side and the necessity for you to represent the client in a way that isn’t necessarily tied to a particular brand. And also the trust that, once earned, a client will put in you once you kind of make that shift over. And so I remember having a senior executive at one of the banks kind of say to me that, you know, “I never knew, you only had one flavor of Kool-Aid that you were drinking, so I know you were serving up to me every time.” Now, I appreciated the fact that I was coming in with maybe an unbiased, more of an unbiased view. So that’s probably the biggest one.
The other one would be profitability and understanding the impact and the requirements. I mean, it was always there, right? I always said if you wanted loyalty from a channel partner, buy a dog. But really, profitability is the key to be able to continue sustainable relationships and partnerships.
ROBERT DUTT: The Juniper acquisition closed less than a year ago. Clearly, it’s the structural story underneath everything we’re talking about here. The network is the foundation of AI, the Power of One, the unification of Aruba, Juniper, and the HPE compute and storage side of things. From Long View’s perspective, what has the acquisition changed in the conversation that you’re having with customers and the conversation that you’re having internally about the HPE relationship with Long View?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Yeah. So I mean, first off, it’s an interesting challenge it poses because we also have to have a very big, strong relationship with another strong networking organization. And I think that this has really opened, at least my eyes, and I get a whole new sense of kind of energy that’s also coming forward with it. And I think that HPE and Antonio has put together a set of pieces in this puzzle, if you want to call it, that he’s executing on. And with Juniper now, it’s a pretty powerful message. So I think there’s still a lot that we need to unpack and to understand a little bit more, but it’s an exciting time. And I think this positions them in a way that they couldn’t do it before. So yeah, it’s really, really interesting to see how the next number of months pan out.
ROBERT DUTT: You were at the Partner Growth Summit yesterday. Real package of operational changes. That keynote, between 30-day quote validity finally, expanded credit lines, different financing options, new channel-only products in Private Cloud and Zerto. Is there anything in what was announced at Growth Summit that kind of really hit hard or made you say, finally, or this changes something for us specifically? What, among what was announced at Growth Summit, kind of hit most meaningful from where you are at Long View?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Yeah. So first off, I think the quote cycle that happened in January-ish timeframe, I’ve never seen anything like it in our industry. And I’ve told many clients this, like going to 7 or 14 days quote cycle, I mean, it’s unheard of. So to get back to a 30-day is pretty substantial. And by the way, the amount of rework that is required internally on us – so to me, that was probably a pain point to our operations teams because the amount of extra work that was required, the amount of times they had to do multiple quotes for the same piece of business or the same request for a client. I mean, it adds an astronomical amount of overhead. So to me, that was the one that said, OK, good.
I don’t know if that’s signaling that there’s a correction that’s coming relative to the problems that we had. I suspect they’re still going to see escalating costs because I don’t think the work for data centres anywhere is anywhere near finished, by any stretch of the imagination. But yeah, I’d say that that was the big one.
And look, the other financing options, we were exploring and educating customers because it did actually provide an ease, at least for those that could take advantage of it. Those that could do that. There was another angle – if they didn’t have the budget, they got a different shock all of a sudden, something escalated. Because it was an unheard of increase in prices. And it was across the industry. Hopefully, as you say, we don’t know for sure. But it seems like with HPE being willing to make that move, there’s at least some sense that, yes, things are probably going to rise, but in a more manageable, more predictable kind of fashion, so at least they can stand behind their pricing for a month.
ROBERT DUTT: Yeah, I mean, annual budget cycles is really the reality of almost every IT organization.
DAVE FREDERICKSON: So how do you deal with that? I hope so.
ROBERT DUTT: On the partner branded services, it sounds like it’s basically HPE infrastructure support that you can deliver under your own brand. Seems like a big one for partners moving towards a services-led model. Something that you guys are thinking about. Is it something that you’re already planning? Is it something that meshes with how you look at services?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Yeah. So look, we’ve got a huge services business, right? Services make up pretty much half of our overall business. And managed services, professional services. So we will use and leverage the manufacturer branded where and when it makes sense. And there’s some cases where there’s clients that actually want that for whatever comfort level. But yeah, and being able to actually have us execute our own – I mean, our whole thing is about creating healthy lives and prosperous careers for our employees. That means we want to grow our employee base. So that means we want more services people, right? And we want more services to deliver. So anything that can help us by increasing and improving our utilization of our own people and the things we do, that’s good news.
ROBERT DUTT: Antonio’s keynote theme was “architecting AI starts with your network.” Pretty deliberate position – not just “AI is everywhere,” but it’s a viewpoint specifically saying that the network is the thing that determines whether AI works or stays proof of concept. Does that match with what you’re seeing with customers right now? Where are you finding your customers are at in that journey, both in terms of the network as AI element and AI at large?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: So I think that was – my guess would be that that was intentional to really emphasize the strategic importance of the Juniper and the integration of that into the overall strategy for HPE. I actually see it a little differently from a client perspective. It starts with data, right? So for us, our whole approach has been to focus around what’s that data state look like? What’s the maturation? And then from there, you start talking about governance, start talking about security. And so the elements of the network, at least that hasn’t been our core approach or play. As we learn more about HPE and the abilities now that they’re going to have, that will be interesting to see how that might shift. But I don’t think fundamentally it will, because I think it will still connect the dots down to security especially and then governance. But at the end of the day, you can only do great things with AI if you have a really good handle on your overall data state.
ROBERT DUTT: I had a chance to chat with Jeremiah Jenson, lead of North America channel, the other day. And we were talking about Canadian partners and the Canadian market. And I used the term “conservative” to describe how Canadian businesses tend to approach technology. He used “intentional,” particularly around partners. You guys have always served enterprise mid-market customers who tend to want proven, production-ready solutions. How are you thinking about AI infrastructure conversations? Are you leaning into the HPE stack specifically as a foundation, or what’s the lead there?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: So the AI conversation initially started around cloud with us, 100 percent. And again, I go back to because that also was the data story. And whether that be – for us, it’s primarily Azure. But then it’s also things like Databricks and that data architecture, and being able to kind of get that established first. So yeah, I think that from that perspective, it’s really more coming back on the data side.
ROBERT DUTT: When you’re talking to customers, is the concept of tokenomics hitting?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Yeah, so right now, this is huge. We’re actually – and [Sarah Amalco – transcription likely garbled], who works for me as SVP here, and the team are putting together a whole education series and approach and an offering capability around FinOps and tokenization. This is actually going to be a potential slowdown or stall for many organizations, because all of a sudden, if there were other reasons why organizations were concerned about AI, i.e. governance and so forth, however escalating costs have always been – that’s something that comes up time and time again. And now the tokenization of that, and it’s all about predictability. And so it’s this cross between being able to measure ROI and getting the right level of ROI out for that, and then now can I predictably determine what the costs are going to be so I can determine whether or not that ROI matches, right? So I think that that’s going to – look, our first step will be building out and making sure that clients understand and are educated about it.
It’s coming out fast. In a session with HPE and Microsoft just now, Azure Local, it’s an interesting value proposition around that because the fact is, OK, you’re not going to be tied to a tokenization situation. So that might be an interesting opportunity for organizations to take a look at as an option to be able to have more predictability around that. But yeah, it’s going to be big, especially in the next number of months.
ROBERT DUTT: Stepping back to the bigger picture for a second, you’ve got the unusual vantage point we were talking about at the top of the episode for an event like this. Having been there at HP during the Compaq integration era when Discover was created, you’ve now watched the HP split into HP Inc. and HPE, you’ve seen the Juniper deal, the whole arc. What does the HPE of 2026 look like compared to where things were when you were on the vendor side? I guess I’m just kidding. Do you think that HPE has found its own identity at this point?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Yeah, I do. I think I use the term “mojo.” So pretty pleased. And look, it’s kind of gotten back to its core. When you look at the number of acquisitions that it’s made, even around compute with the Cray, for example, earlier with the Compaq side of it, nonstop – like there’s a deep, deep, deep legacy of compute capabilities and technology and experience that they’ve got. So that’s awesome. I think a lot of energy and effort around the storage side of that. And now with the networking front, it’s pretty powerful. So I would say that if I go back in time, when I was at HPE, it had the enterprise services, which was trying to play in a game that was a major global outsource play, which… and then there’s all kinds of different things that kind of happened. Autonomy – there’s a few beauties that would cause me to pause. But if I take a look at – if I go back in time to HPE, what’s core is, you think about HP Labs, core innovation. And so there were different times when, unfortunately, decisions were made that I think stripped away some of the investment opportunity that HP needed and was really deeply rooted in. And so it’s great to see that kind of come back.
And then I think the acquisitions that it’s also made have now proven themselves out, whether it be with Aruba. Look, that’s been a successful – if you look at the profitability of HPE as an organization, it’s pretty telling, right, in terms of percentage of the profits that roll up from that. So look, Antonio, smart man for sure, 100 percent. I think he’s had the vision. And I think it’s the pieces of the investment so now starting to come together.
ROBERT DUTT: Last one for me. What does Long View want to walk away from a week like this having accomplished? Whether it’s a conversation, a relationship, a strategy session – what does a successful Discover look like to you?
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Well, I don’t hit the table, so I’ll ignore the gambling. But no, I think, look, we’ve reignited. We’ve had a really strong relationship with HPE for a number of years now. But I’d say that I think the better years are ahead of us to come. And so I think just kind of getting reconnected, it’s good to see there’s still a number of people that I know and love very closely in the organization. And so I think if nothing else, it’s one: to take back some of the key things to make sure that our organization understands strategically where they’re going to play and why and how it would fit our next number of years in terms of alignment. So that’s going to be an important one for me to bring back to the rest of the executive team, and then to make sure from my role in alliances, to make sure that we understand how that underpins our strategy and go-to-market with our core offerings.
ROBERT DUTT: That’s it. All right, Dave, I appreciate you taking the time once again. Great catching up.
DAVE FREDERICKSON: Always good, Robert. Thank you.
ROBERT DUTT: There you have it, Dave Frederickson from Long View Systems. I’d like to thank Dave for his time on this one. Running into him at the airport at the start of the week turned out to be a very happy accident. And thanks for listening and following along with our Discover coverage. Full slate at ChannelBuzz.ca. You can find our HPE Discover 2026 news hub right in the top nav bar.
A few things worth taking away from that conversation. The return to 30-day quote validity out of the Partner Growth Summit is a bigger deal than it might look on paper. Dave gave us a real window into what short quote cycles actually cost partner ops teams – the rework, the multiple quotes for the same piece of business, the overhead. Now that HPE is stepping back from that, it signals something.
And keep an eye on tokenomics. Dave flagged it as the friction point that’s coming fast for customers trying to build a real AI business case. The cost predictability problem is real, and Long View is already standing up education programs around it. The Azure Local angle that he flagged at the end around predictability versus consumption-based billing is worth watching as that conversation develops.
And the data-first framing on AI is worth noting. Long View is having those conversations at the data and governance layer first. The network’s part of the picture, but it’s not the starting point from where Dave sits.
If you’re enjoying the show, please do follow us or subscribe in whatever app you use. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, most of the major directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Stéphan Wener, chief customer officer at Compugen
Recorded on-site at HPE Discover in Las Vegas, this episode of In The Channel features Stéphan Wener, chief customer officer at Compugen, one of Canada’s most established HPE partners.
It was a big week for Compugen at Discover. The company achieved Triple Platinum Plus status under HPE’s Partner Ready Vantage program — the highest tier available, reflecting deep investment across compute, networking, storage, and security — and was named HPE Canada Solution Provider of the Year at the Partner Growth Summit on Monday.
Wener credits the recognition to consistent, long-term investment in the full HPE portfolio and what he describes as genuine “exec-to-field” engagement with the HPE Canada team. But the conversation moves quickly from celebrating to analyzing — and that’s where it gets useful for Canadian partners.
His take on HPE’s evolution is direct: “It’s not anymore a compute-led company. I think it’s an AI technology-led company, but with a big focus on networking.” He sees the Aruba acquisition as having already delivered strong returns for both sides, and the Juniper integration as filling the data centre gap to create what he calls a genuine “powerhouse” networking portfolio — a view that aligns with what Antonio Neri laid out in Tuesday’s keynote but carries different weight coming from the partner side.
On the Canadian market, Wener flags two converging trends: data sovereignty concerns continuing to push customers — especially in the public sector and regulated industries — toward on-premises and edge deployments, and the economics of cloud-based AI creating a second wave of on-prem investment as the cost of tokens at scale starts to sting.
The “Power of One” program consolidation? Compugen has been asking for it for a couple of years and welcomes it — with the candid observation that the compute and networking sales motions are still distinct, and that closing that gap in practice will take ongoing work.
And on self-driving networks and the automation question: Wener is a believer — but as an Air Canada Super Elite, he has some pointed thoughts about where the human layer still matters.
Read Full TranscriptROBERT DUTT: This episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event on ChannelBuzz.ca. You’ll find our HPE Discover 2026 news hub in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.
We’re recording this one on-site at HPE Discover in Las Vegas, and if you’ve been following our coverage from the event, you know it’s been a full one. Big keynote from Antonio Neri on Tuesday, a lot of networking announcements from Rami Rahim and the HPE networking team, the Partner Growth Summit on Monday, where HPE laid out some significant program changes, most notably the coming unification of the Juniper Partner Program under Partner Ready Vantage by November 1.
My guest for this episode is Stéphan Wener, chief customer officer at Compugen. Compugen is one of Canada’s largest and most prominent HPE partners. They just achieved Triple Platinum Plus status under the Partner Ready Vantage program, which is the highest tier available under HPE’s partner program, reflecting deep investment across compute, networking, storage and security. And at the Partner Growth Summit earlier this week, they were named HPE Canada Solution Provider of the Year. So yeah, it’s been a pretty good week to be Compugen in Las Vegas.
I sat down with Stéphan to talk about the story behind that recognition, how Compugen sees the evolution of the HPE portfolio, especially now that it includes both Aruba and Juniper, and what’s actually resonating in the Canadian market right now around AI infrastructure, data sovereignty, and the economics of running AI workloads in the cloud versus at the edge. There’s also a moment in here about self-driving networks that any Air Canada Super Elite will relate to.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Stéphan Wener.
ROBERT DUTT: Stéphan, thank you for taking the time.
STÉPHAN WENER: [It’s my] pleasure.
ROBERT DUTT: Big week for Compugen here at Discover. You were named HPE Canada Solution Provider of the Year. Separately, just announced Triple Platinum Plus status under Partner Ready Vantage. That’s the highest tier, as if the name didn’t give that away, right? Tell me the Compugen-HPE story that led here. When you think about why you’ve ended up at this point, what do you credit it to?
STÉPHAN WENER: I would say it’s a long-term engagement. We’ve been really connected. It’s important, if you want to succeed with the OEM, it’s all about connection from the execs to the field. I think our sales resources are really well-engaged with HPE’s sales resources. It’s really a teamwork. The results are all around this collaboration. It’s all about also bringing common value to the customer. We’re working very closely, making sure that we are doing the right thing and growing the business.
Being Partner of the Year was actually a surprise, but one element is we’re really engaged in the entire portfolio of HPE. HPE is a different company right now. We were dealing with Aruba in the past and HPE and all this, now being one portfolio. The fact that we are engaged with all lines of business really helps us out, taking it to another level. Having this recognition is great. It’s great for us. It’s great for our teams because there’s a lot of people trained on the technology. There’s a lot of investment we’re making internally, both on the technical side but also on the sales side. We have BDR motions. We have a lot of engagement commonly with HPE. I think it’s really the combination of all these actions that made us successful.
We have to thank the HPE team in Canada as well because we don’t win this award by ourselves. It’s really by working very closely with them. The Triple Platinum is a commitment to HPE. We believe that Compugen with HPE can provide great solutions to the market and we want to bring this engagement to another level. We’re also very proud. It was a lot of work on the technical side to be able to ramp up to this level, both on the compute, same thing on the networking side, security. So it’s the entire portfolio.
ROBERT DUTT: To that point, the entire portfolio — some listeners may still think of HPE primarily as a server company, a server and storage company with networking kind of on the side. Can you walk me through what the HPE relationship actually looks like at Compugen today in terms of how you work with each part of that business, and how’s that picture changed over the last couple of years?
STÉPHAN WENER: I would say HPE is a different company because they kept for a very long time Aruba and the compute side and the networking side separately. You can really feel now that it’s more one company. I actually feel, and Antonio said it today, the networking piece with AI is a big, big part of the strategy right now. So the fact that now networking and compute and storage, all the technology is really evolving in one big channel. It’s really changing what HPE is. It’s not anymore a compute-led company. I think it’s an AI technology-led [company], but a big focus on networking, especially in an AI world. Networking is key for all organizations.
And I think specifically, Aruba was already a great company. That was a great acquisition. For all of us — I’m a shareholder of HPE — I can say that for the shareholders, the acquisition of Aruba was amazing, very profitable. But adding Juniper to the mix, it fills the gap. Data centre, DC — it was more campus and branch with Aruba. Now it’s really, really a powerhouse. So networking is definitely… you don’t make these type of investments as a company if you don’t believe that networking is a big part of your future. And already the Aruba part was one of the most profitable pieces of the business. In the years where compute was struggling a little bit more on the profit side, now, okay, HPE is having a great year with all AI and the shortage and all this. It’s great. But I think now HPE [has] a complete portfolio of technology, and that’s what makes it very appealing to the market right now, in my opinion.
ROBERT DUTT: On that profitability point, what is having that unified networking story doing for you guys in terms of margin opportunity and that sort of thing?
STÉPHAN WENER: I would say HPE would love us to leverage both sides of the portfolio. It’s still two different sales motion[s], let’s call it out. The compute and storage is one element, the network is on the other [end]. I think profit comes with investment. Compugen is a service-led company. So a lot of our sales motion is based on leading with our services, our managed services, our professional services. So we can have great margin when we are leading with our services. So technology with services, it’s the best. We even deliver — we do partner-branded support on the behalf of HPE, so really engage as one company. This is where we maximize our profitability.
Again, I know because I’ve been hearing it and hearing it from the leaders, that we would like to lead more with the entire portfolio now. I think it makes a lot of sense as a strategy. Let’s see how we can accomplish and deliver on this because I still see that it’s two different business needs. The networking and security is one element and the compute and storage and all the tools around it are another motion technology-wise.
ROBERT DUTT: Well, a big step towards that I suppose was announced yesterday at the Partner Growth Summit. The big theme being “Power of One” — one portfolio, one partner program, one integrated partner experience, a whole bunch of stuff changing as of November 1. From where you sit, is that message landing with you as a partner? What does consolidating under one program actually mean for how you go to market and how you work with HPE?
STÉPHAN WENER: I should add my colleague, Lorene, to the discussion. She deals with them. But to be honest with you, we’ve been waiting for this moment for a while. It was a question we asked them for a couple of years actually, saying, “Listen, we see these two programs. We took the best of both programs because we were having large volume with both sides of the business.” But I think having something unified, that makes a lot of sense, and it’s going to bring more opportunity. It’s also going to reward partners that are invested with HPE. That’s what we like about this program: with this Platinum, Triple Platinum Plus certification, we’re rewarded for the investment we’re making, which is I think something that really resonates for some of us partners.
The other element, to be honest, the go-to-market is going to be evolving with time. AI is transforming everything that is happening. So having one program, I think it’s putting HPE in a position that we can leverage all the success we can have on the market.
No, I think it’s great news. We’ve been seeing it coming. Now it’s there. It’s still two teams because we’re still interacting with people on compute. We still have two PBMs. We’re still on a service, partner-branded support discussion around the table a little earlier. Now they’re coming with a program that’s going to be one partner-branded support. Juniper had one, Aruba had one, and now all of a sudden HPE wants to have their own. So on the compute side, they’re going to come with one program, which makes it better because it’s going to allow us to have a better ROI on our investment moving forward.
ROBERT DUTT: Today was Antonio Neri.
STÉPHAN WENER: Yes.
ROBERT DUTT: Keynote. “Architecting AI starts with the network.” Pretty deliberate framing. From where you’re sitting and when you’re talking to Canadian organizations day to day, does the premise ring true? Are customers coming to you and saying that the network is the constraint, or is the conversation starting somewhere else? And maybe you discover along the way, “By the way, if you want to get the most out of this, you’re probably going to have to do something with the state of your network.”
STÉPHAN WENER: I would say, yes, customers are looking at the network. I think it’s something that I think HPE but other OEM[s] are wishing, that AI transform[s] the network because it’s a good way to kind of, let’s say, let’s refresh these networks. Let’s make sure to create opportunity.
I would say, on top of network, I’m really attracted by the security side of it, which means with AI — I was with a customer at lunch today because also we have multiple hats, we meet customers while we’re here — and he was sharing with me that the challenge they live with security, with this AI motion that we see right now, with this new AI world where now it’s not about traditional security. You know, you can get attacked from all over the place. So I think this is going to change the way customers see their network and they’re going to make sure to secure it, but also integrate performance, security, evolution for AI. Because again, you’re building something now. You don’t know what AI is going to be in a year and a half. That’s like — I was actually talking to some customers and we were saying, you know, you have to revise your AI strategy every quarter, every month, because you’re starting somewhere and then, oh, you’re figuring out that there’s another business need that needs to go quicker. So there’s a lot of unknown where it’s going to take us.
I think [Antonio] making the right decisions on the network, it’s brilliant for Antonio. And again, when you do a $15 billion investment, okay, you’re going to say this to the market, but I mean, it’s a strength. It’s the strength of HP. If you look at competition, HP has a broader portfolio and being able to lead on the network security side and AI network and all that is brilliant. Now let’s see how the market takes it.
I think the AI discussion is not exactly the same depending on where the customer is in his journey. Some of them are more focused on “where do I put my compute?” What we really see now is that it’s not only cloud only anymore. The move back to on-prem is for real now. And we’ve been saying it, we’ve been dreaming it for a while, you know, because it allows us to have more opportunity to… like, to put AI not only on-prem, but also at the edge. We see that coming more and more. So I think the discussion is broader because again, if you go at the edge, it’s all different architecture for networking. You need to protect multiple sites, you know, so… there’s a lot of moving pieces, but I think HP has everything to cover that very well.
ROBERT DUTT: When you’re talking to customers today in Canada, what are the big drivers of that move towards the edge and that kind of thing? Just curious how you’re hearing customers weighing data sovereignty versus tokenomics, the big topic of the day.
STÉPHAN WENER: There’s two different discussion[s] there. The one part is that — because we do a lot of business in banking and retail and all of this — we have a lot of customers that are looking at the edge. And to be honest, what we were observing a couple of years ago was that they all thought that they didn’t need anything at the edge anymore. “Let’s centralize everything. Let’s go to the cloud. Let’s use VMware. Let’s not even [have] the server at the edge. Let’s just figure out other ways to manage it.” Now we see a total[ly] different direction. Now, customers are realizing that you need to perform a lot of stuff at the edge. So it’s forcing a lot of organization[s] to revisit their plan. So that’s… disruptive when you have… when you had a plan two years ago or five years ago and now you have to revisit it to do it a bit differently. But I mean, I think everyone realizes that you need to run a lot of stuff at the edge right now. AI is one thing, but there’s so many other application[s] that are not really [running] really well in the cloud, you know, security cameras and all of that. So we see a big shift towards having more compute at the edge. But also you need networking to back this up because if you start breaking up, so it creates a lot of opportunities.
When you have customers looking [at this], also the explosion of cost of AI. Because if you run all your models in the cloud, it’s highly expensive. So some customers are realizing that for some specific business outcome or business needs, they better run it at the edge because it becomes more economical.
I think that was ramping up pretty heavily and it’s really exploded since that [news of the] $500 million [monthly] tokens [bill] came public.
And it’s funny, we hear because we have a lot of our people involved in AI, talking with different OEM[s], and I don’t know what’s going to be the end of the future model. You know, these tokens are one element, but there’s going to be competition there, too. You know, it’s never, at the end of the day, they’re all playing in one field where there’s going to have to [be] competition and not… it’s not going to be unlimited token[s] and paying that forever because of the cost. It’s the same thing with the cloud, you know, running AI in the cloud for some large organization[s]. It’s costly. So they have no choice [but] to look at alternatives because, yes, you have business value when you run an AI model that addresses a business need, but at which cost? It’s always the question. You know, where all these customers are running businesses. So they need to make decisions accordingly.
ROBERT DUTT: In this moment, for whatever reasons, it may be regulation, general interest in data sovereignty. How do you find data sovereignty is weighing amongst [your customers]?
STÉPHAN WENER: It’s big in Canada, especially. Let’s call it out. You know, we’re a Canadian business partner. It’s a big, big subject, sovereignty, both in provincial jurisdiction and also in the country. There’s multiple ways. We all have different options of sovereign [cloud], but also some customers are also rethinking what kind of data do we want to keep to ourselves? This is why there’s a bit [of] turning around to co-location or having on-premise, just because [of] you want to control some of your data.
It’s always… there’s always a cautious side to which extent do I think that everything in the cloud is going to be in sovereign cloud in Canada one day? I don’t think so because I think… Azure, all the cloud providers are now having data center[s] in the country. So they found ways to kind of say[ing] that their cloud is also sovereign in a certain way because it’s located in Canada. So they found ways because they don’t want to lose all this market. So they had to have no choice but to go with the flow and figure out a way to address this element. But yeah, it’s definitely a big [topic]. No one wants to send data anywhere in the cloud without controlling where it resides. That’s a very important [consideration], even more in public sector and regulated [industries] in Canada. In Canada, public sector is a big, big part of the business and they are regulated and they have no choice but to follow this very closely. And I think it’s the same in the U.S. as well. We have a lot of discussion with U.S. peers and there’s also this tendency even from state to state, you know, and that there’s like… you never know, you know, there’s all these stories you hear about where’s your data going. You know, the value your data has. A lot of value. These organization[s] know that now. It’s all start[ing] there because you cannot have AI without having the right data.
ROBERT DUTT: Today’s presentation from Rami Rahim was mostly about self-driving networks, AI-native, agentic, experience-driven operations, a whole new way of thinking about running the network. It’s a compelling vision. Where’s that at when you’re selling to, say, a 500-person mid-market company?
STÉPHAN WENER: It’s great. I would say even enterprise. It’s just, in my opinion, it’s just the beginning. I think it’s great, and it’s really a great vision of HP with Juniper and all that to have that self-[driving capability]. We’ve been hearing about it for a couple of years, but now it’s really for real.
I [think], in my opinion, it’s just the beginning because they are going to accelerate that, they’re going to figure out ways to be even more proactive about the network and having more powerful tools. I think it has a lot to do, especially with the SMB and the smaller customers who have a hard time having technical resources to support them. So that’s a big [win]. But on the other side, I always say automation is great, but you always need human[s]. So it’s also a great opportunity for us partners that are delivering a lot of managed services because we’re able to leverage these tools to deliver, to add this little layer where they don’t want to just have a self-[driving] solution that nobody’s going to look at. You know, it’s like you have a dashboard. Somebody needs to keep an eye on the dashboard. So I think it’s also going to change the way we deliver services. So as a service organization, we’re really transforming, leveraging AI as customer zero. So I think it forces us business partners that deliver managed services to our customers to… adjust the way we deliver services to leverage these tools and just add that human layer that is needed.
I still believe in AI. We’re looking at it internally and we have a bunch of initiatives. It’s never going to replace totally human because at the end of the day, especially when you have a customer at the end, because the customer experience is very important. So you cannot just decide that you automate the way you answer the phone. See, I was telling [and] giving the example today: I’m [with] an airline that I’m a Super Elite with, Air Canada. I don’t want to call the 1-800 number and be asked 24 questions. I’m very happy because my nicest perk with Air Canada is, I think, a concierge line where I can call as a Super Elite member and somebody’s answering the phone and they’re changing my ticket in three minutes and I don’t have to press one and two and five and six. So in a way, I’m just giving you this example because I, as a user, there’s a frustration with AI. So I think it’s very important to leverage AI, but keep that human touch that you need to complete the CX at the end of the day.
ROBERT DUTT: So is that the pitch that lands then — the idea that we can take some cost out of operating the network by automating a lot, but we’re still going to have that trust. But we can…
STÉPHAN WENER: I think we can do more with less. I think it’s all about bringing even more value to our customer and leveraging these tools. It’s a must. You know, we see it all over the place in our service organization. We see it on the field services where we have to use this intelligence to be more effective. And I was… I can call it out, it’s like I was with an airline for lunch. That’s why it’s all in my head. And they’re using AI for maintenance because they said it’s so powerful because the data is amazing. All these manuals about the aircrafts and everything, so you can document this with also other tickets they had and they can give instruction to the maintenance team and they save them. They’re telling them it’s either A or B before they add ABCD and they were doing try and try out. So they’re way more effective.
So I’m just saying AI is helping us doing more with less, being better at what we do. But I mean, you still need to leverage it the right way. You need to have human intelligence behind and bring the value around it. That’s my [view], my opinion about AI.
And in the case of what Rami said and where Juniper is going, all these tools are amazing. But I think it’s important. Customers are going to leverage it. They’re going to be able to do more with less, too. But I think for the mid-market type of customers, it’s more important for us business partners to add these services to our portfolio and be able to complete the service offering of HP, HP, Juniper and Aruba, or whatever HP networking [is called] now. More services, always a win. That’s what to do.
ROBERT DUTT: We’ve covered a lot of territory. I’m curious. What else have you taken away from this week? When you’re going back and meeting with your teammates, what’s going to be the thing that goes, “Hey guys, did you think about or did you hear about…?”
STÉPHAN WENER: I would say it’s the broad portfolio that HP has to bring to the market right now. And the fact that, you know, it was amazing to see all these announcement[s] about HP [and] the new tools, the way they are, the evolution of Central, the evolution of Mist. I think HP now, after these big acquisition[s], [is] getting their act together. And I think they’re one of the best OEM[s] ready… to be ready for AI. They’re all saying it because all our team members are going to Cisco and all that, and they all have a message around AI. I think it’s a must in this industry right now. But I’m telling you, as an experienced [partner], as a technology ally that we are at Compugen, we see that HP has a real story and they’re really doing the right thing to be a key player in this AI transformation that we see right now.
So I think the value HP brings, all the tools around… there’s multiple examples to give. But I think the portfolio, the engineering, you know, Antonio is an engineer at the end of the day. And Antonio’s vision is about integrating the solution and doing the right thing so we can bring the right set of solution to the market. And I think we can feel it now that this is all getting together nicely, adding the building blocks that are missing to the offering. But HP is really [positioned] to be a strong partner for all customers in this AI journey. That’s what I see.
ROBERT DUTT: Last question. What should partners and customers of yours who aren’t here this week take away from what’s been announced, what’s been discussed here? If you’re updating a customer on what you’ve learned here, what’s the headline you’re going with?
STÉPHAN WENER: I would say one thing I was impressed [by]. I feel, and again, I’m on the partner advisory board of HP Networking. So I’m going to see tomorrow what they say. But I have a feeling that the transition of bringing HPE, Aruba and Juniper is going quicker than expected. I think they’re doing a very good job at it. And that’s going to create a very good motion. So I would say that’s a powerhouse now when you put Juniper and HPE Aruba together.
So I think for all customers, I see HP like a very strong dominant player in the future in that networking and security space. So the fact that this integration seems to go very smoothly and rapidly, I think is going to have a very positive impact on the market. That’s one element I see.
Again, I love what I see, all these announcements about compute and storage and all these AI-ready solution[s]. That’s also, again, what I would take back. It’s all [about]: if you need help in AI, HP has a solution for you. That’s pretty much what I would say to customers: wherever you need to invest because they’re not all investing at the same area. Some of them, it’s only the network and they decided to do it in the cloud and they’re going to do it in the cloud. Some others are looking at different models.
So that’s my biggest takeaway: where HP is as a portfolio right now and the role it can play on all customers’ AI journey. Considering the attention on AI, [it’s] pretty good, to be honest with you. But again, AI is also driving a lot of other transformation. It drives the way customers are looking at their IT services because again, I was talking to [another] customer yesterday. If you have to invest in AI, they’re not going to tell you, “Hire 20 more employees to do your AI.” They’re going to say, “Listen, figure out a way to do your AI with the staff you have.” So if I’m a CIO, the way I’m going to look at it, I’m going to say, “Listen, I’m going to need help elsewhere. If I’m able to allocate a certain number of my resources working on AI, I’m going to need business partners to perform some IT services on my behalf.”
So it creates an amazing opportunity for us business partners, not only the AI journey itself, but the fact that they have no choice but to kind of reinvent the way they’re providing their services, because nothing changes: you still have users, you still have infrastructure, you still have to keep the lights on and run your business. So this is something I see a lot: AI is transforming the way they look at where they’re going next. Because they’re not going to have an explosion of cost, especially now with what we are experiencing in supplies and the price increase. They still have to do the same with the same money a lot of time. So they need to reinvent themselves to figure out a way to meet their budgets and meet their business outcomes.
ROBERT DUTT: Good luck on helping many customers, man.
STÉPHAN WENER: We will do it. And our goal is to do it as a team with HPE. We got the title for 2025 and we want to do what’s best to make sure we do it for 2026 as well.
ROBERT DUTT: Good luck with that. And thank you again for taking the time.
STÉPHAN WENER: My pleasure.
ROBERT DUTT: There you have it. Stéphan Wener from Compugen. I’d like to thank Stéphan for his time on what was a very busy week at HPE Discover and a very successful one for Compugen. If you’ve been following the news from the event on the site, you now got a pretty complete picture of HPE Discover from a few different angles: the preview with Jeremiah Jenson, the partner program announcement deep dive on Tuesday, and now a partner’s-eye view from one of HPE’s top Canadian players.
The thing I keep coming back to from this conversation is something Stéphan said fairly early: that HPE is “a different company right now” — not compute-led anymore, but AI technology-led with networking increasingly at the center of gravity. That message was all over Neri’s keynote and Rahim’s session, but hearing it reflected back from a partner who’s been in the trenches with HPE for years and who had to make real investment decisions to get to Triple Platinum Plus — that carries a different kind of weight.
The data sovereignty and tokenomics point is one I’d flag for your own customer conversations if you’re an HPE partner, or really any partner in the infrastructure space. The cost of running AI at scale in the cloud is increasingly nudging customers, particularly in the Canadian public sector and regulated industries, back toward on-prem and edge deployments. That’s not a new idea, but it’s getting sharper, and it plays directly into the HPE portfolio story that was front and centre this week.
In The Channel is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. If you find value in what we’re doing here, a rating or review is always appreciated — it helps other people in the Canadian channel find us. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Brad Shapiro, senior vice president and chief sales officer of HPE Financial Services
HPE Financial Services is making a concerted push to be less of a “best-kept secret” and more of a deal-closing engine for partners.
At HPE Discover 2026, Brad Shapiro, senior vice president and chief sales officer of HPE Financial Services, walked In the Channel through several new partner-facing offers unveiled at Monday’s Partner Growth Summit.
The standout is the 90/9 Advantage structure: 90 days with no payments, followed by nine months at 1 per cent of the original equipment cost, before shifting to level payments. Shapiro said the program is designed to blunt the sting of recent price hikes by pushing costs into future budget cycles without requiring customers to find new money mid-year.
On the networking side, HPFS is stacking three offers to help HPE take share from competitors: 0 per cent financing on Mist or Aruba Central software, a “10 per cent better than cash” hardware financing rate, and a competitive takeout program that monetizes displaced gear.
The used equipment angle is particularly timely. Shapiro noted that memory shortages have driven up resale values for retiring gear, creating an offset against new hardware costs. “It’s the equivalent of the car market in the early COVID days,” he said.
HPFS also expanded its approved credit capacity by 150 per cent, a move Shapiro said was driven by partner frustration with re-approval cycles as component prices fluctuated.
The interview also touched on HPFS’s partner pledge – Shapiro said his team does not receive quota retirement until the partner gets paid – and the growing importance of IT asset disposition and chain of custody as Canadian customers navigate AI-driven infrastructure refreshes.
Read Full TranscriptRobert Dutt: This episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event on ChannelBuzz.ca. You’ll find our HPE Discover 2026 news hub on the menu bar at the top of the page.
Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.
Today, my guest is Brad Shapiro, Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer of HPE Financial Services, the captive financing arm of HPE. Brad is responsible for the global partner-facing financing strategy and programs that help resellers and MSPs close bigger deals and get paid faster. We sat down at HPE Discover last week to talk about the new partner portal enhancements HPEFS rolled out at Partner Growth Summit, the thinking behind the company’s aggressive credit expansion, and how IT asset disposition fits into the overall AI infrastructure refresh wave that’s starting to hit customer budgets.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Brad Shapiro.
Brad, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Brad Shapiro: Sure. Glad to be here, Rob.
Robert Dutt: You guys rolled out some meaningful enhancements to the HPEFS partner side on Monday: payment structures, promotional pricing, and competitive pricing tiered to the partner’s relationship level. Canada is on the first wave of that for July 1. I understand a bunch of Canadian partners are having a party for that. For a Canadian reseller or MSP who wasn’t here this week, what does it actually change in how they can put a deal together for their customers?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, sure. So as you said, lots of exciting announcements here for Discover. And I think first and foremost, what HPEFS has put together is really focused on helping the HPE partners sell more in a couple of key areas. So we’ve all seen, you know, with commodity prices going up and the price increases around products, we’ve got some really interesting offers that have gained a lot of traction in the market.
The 90/9 Advantage is one of the key ones. And that offering partners can offer to their customers is 90 days of no payments, nine months at 1% of the original equipment cost, and then it goes to level payments after. So while we can’t address that the product prices are increasing, what we are doing is providing help for customers who didn’t plan for this in the budget cycle, right? CFOs didn’t say, “Oh, here’s more money because prices are going up.” So it allows the end-user customer to kind of plan for this into the next budget cycle and beyond so they can get the compute power they need. So that’s a key one.
The other area, when we look at the networking space, right, we’re very excited about, you know, Aruba and Juniper coming together in the new HPE networking, and they’ve got some tremendous offerings out there. But to really help them and help customers avoid kind of a double payment, like we want to go take market share, we want to be aggressive.
So the first offer is 0% financing on the networking software, whether that’s Mist or Aruba Central. Then we have on the hardware side 10% better than cash as a financing offer. So that’s a really cool offer. And then we’ve added a really aggressive focus on IT asset disposition. So we want to go in, help customers by monetizing the competitor’s assets, taking those out, and then putting HPE networking assets in. So when you combine those three offers—0% on software, 10% better than cash on hardware, and a competitive takeout on the competitor’s products—we think we’re really helping partners go and address and partner up with HPE networking and be aggressive in the market to help HPE take share.
Robert Dutt: Going back to the 90/9 program, what areas is that covering?
Brad Shapiro: That covers all products. So it’s really a financial structure that can address the whole portfolio. And again, it’s a very attractive offer. We’ve seen it compared to any other financing offers we put out there. We’ve seen the pipeline ramp tremendously. It’s really addressing a need that’s out there in the marketplace.
Robert Dutt: Before getting into the details of some other programs, you touched on the supply chain situation that is on every partner’s mind right now. I’m curious over the last five months or so that this has been such a big factor. What have you been hearing from partners in terms of what they’re asking for from you, and where they’re looking for help here beyond obviously some clarity and whatever break they can get?
Brad Shapiro: I’ll talk from a financial services perspective. It’s really about how can we help the partner address some of the customer concerns. One of the big ones is budgeting. It’s always been the case that there’s more to do than you have budget for. This just puts another wrinkle in it that is unprecedented. I’ve been doing this quite a long time. I’ve really not seen the market dynamic as we have it today. But that’s where financial engineering and financial structuring comes into play.
Also, a lot of customers, while the new prices have gone up, when customers are retiring assets, what many don’t realize is the used equipment that’s coming off—the used equipment market has also increased in value. We’re able to give customers a lot more money for their used gear than they’re used to. That’s been helping offset some of the increases on the new product side.
Robert Dutt: It’s the equivalent of the car market in the early COVID days.
Brad Shapiro: Absolutely. Same type of scenario.
Robert Dutt: The announcement around a 150% increase on approved credit capacity—that’s a pretty striking number. Is that part of the response to that? What’s driving you guys to go aggressively there right now? A response to that uncertainty, a response to tariffs, a response to all the things we see going on?
Brad Shapiro: It’s a response to a few things. Yes, the price increases. For a while, the component pricing was so uncertain that there was a shorter validity period for quoting. The idea of increasing the credit line created enough room so that our partners didn’t have to keep going through the cycle. What we were hearing as feedback was, “Hey, we would go get a request from HPEFS, we get it approved, then if pricing went up, then we had to go through that process again.”
We wanted to give plenty of headroom and be aggressive to allow partners to quickly get their deals done and not have to go through a process twice. It was ease of doing business, speed, and really helping them close their deals.
Robert Dutt: Not a peculiar problem for HPE and HPEFS either. That’s something that we’re hearing across the industry front as a major partner issue—the idea of customer sales cycles and “validity” not matching up in any real way.
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, absolutely. We’re trying to do our part to help partners get deals done. The good news is HPE on the BU side, on the compute side, announced a longer price validity. I know that they announced that here at Discover and there was really good feedback at the Partner Growth Summit. I think overall HPE, we’re all trying to address and help partners get their deals done with customers.
Robert Dutt: The 0% software financing tied to VM migration is interesting when it feels like you’re trying to smooth that painful transition for folks who are on a platform and looking to move somewhere new. Is that the right way to think about it, or what else are you applying to that model?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so I think just in general, we’re trying to provide customers a way to engage and look at our CloudOps suite—Morpheus and Zerto and OpsRamp and the whole suite—and really focus on how can we make it easy for the customer to say, “Yeah, let me try this.”
So at the end of the day, it doesn’t have to be something where they’re coming in and wiping out one versus the other. The cost differential is so great and we believe that if they can just lower the number of licenses on VMware, we can help them reduce costs. So they may look to put in our CloudOps software in certain places and reduce those VM licenses. 0% financing makes it an easier decision: “Hey, I can pay over time and it’s the same as paying cash, no interest.” It’s just another option for customers who may not have it in this year’s budget.
Robert Dutt: I’m trying to track it because it’s something that you’re kind of ramping up on though in competitive areas.
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so what’s new from HPEFS, I would say this year versus maybe the past five or seven years, is a renewed focus on leveraging our financing capabilities to help partners sell more with HPE. We didn’t really have in the last five or seven years a lot of financing promotions. We’ve integrated with the BUs. We’ve listened to the partners. They want to see us come out with integrated offers that help drive more sales. And so we’ve been working closely with the BUs. We’ve been developing these offers over the past year. It started a little bit at last Discover, but we’re really hitting our stride now as an organization. And I think the partners are really going to benefit from that.
Robert Dutt: PGS also saw the debut of sustainability competencies for partners through HPEFS and through Partner Ready Vantage in combination there. What does earning that competency mean in practice? What does a partner get and why should they be pursuing it?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so from our perspective, when we think about sustainability, we think it’s a really important aspect of the overall business. We have a responsibility. And so from a partner perspective, by getting that accreditation, there’s incentives that they can get under the Partner Ready Vantage program.
And from an HPEFS perspective, we’ve created circular economy reports to help support partners and customers. And we’re proud that we’ve issued our 2,000th report to customers, and that keeps growing. So as sustainability continues to be an important part of this, I think partners have a role to play in helping their customers, but also can earn more from HPE.
Robert Dutt: What are you hearing from partners around the idea of sustainability as part of the quoting and solution offering process? It’s just something that I feel like I’m hearing more of from Canadian partners in particular because of a series of regulations and requirements, and in some public sector spaces, the way it’s being weighted.
Brad Shapiro: From my perspective, and I have a global role, so in certain geographies around the world, it’s very, very important. And it varies across geographies, but everywhere you look, it’s a growing trend in terms of importance, as you mentioned, in terms of government responses. We’re seeing more governments putting requirements in there. So my feeling is addressing sustainability is quickly becoming a must-have if you’re going to offer solutions. And so we’re right there with our partners in terms of helping them do that.
Robert Dutt: It also connects to—and this is something that we touched on a little bit earlier—the idea that every customer upgrading their network and compute stack to something that’s more capable of AI has that corresponding pile of displaced gear that they’ve got to do something with.
Brad Shapiro: Yeah.
Robert Dutt: I guess, how significant do you see the ITAD opportunity in this refresh wave in the near future, and how do you help partners get in front of that?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so again, I think there’s a significant opportunity, and I think HPE networking is really well positioned in that AI space. So from our perspective, in looking at the products that we can displace readily, there’s a pretty large install base. Some of our competitors have many customers out there, so the idea of putting those assets back into reuse somewhere is very real.
So we think we can do well to help that customer monetize the asset. We can also put that back into reuse, which is good for the environment, and at the same time, help customers really modernize their network, because that’s really a solid foundation you need. When you think about AI, everybody thinks about the compute side and GPUs, but the network is so critical to having that solid AI foundation, and we believe HPE networking is the right choice.
Robert Dutt: Across the board in your purview, is there a Canadian dimension here worth calling out? We’re hearing a lot more about data sovereignty driving decisions and that kind of thing about where workloads live. But does that also extend to how customers think about decommissioned hardware and where it goes?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, look, I think from a decommissioned hardware perspective, we are very careful about chain of custody and where that ends up. And I think that’s one thing that differentiates HPE when we’re thinking about decommissioning versus many others out there. We’re a large brand. It’s really important to us to decommission in the right way, following all the regulations that are out there. So if you’re a Canadian partner or a Canadian customer, knowing that the HPE brand… we are as focused on doing those things in the right way and following the rules and regulations. Our brand reputation is at stake, and we put a lot of thought and resource, time and energy into that.
Robert Dutt: What’s the single biggest piece of feedback or most common piece of feedback you’ve been getting from partners here at Discover this week? What are they talking to you about? What are they curious about in terms of what you guys can bring to bear for their customers?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so I think there’s been a lot of positive feedback on the offerings that we’ve come out with. As I mentioned before, we’re showing up differently now. We’re showing up coordinated with the different business units across HPE with these offers. That’s helpful.
The other thing we’re focused on is really about the partner experience. So it’s not just having the right offers. It’s making them easy to access, operationally making it a smooth process. We want to be fast. We want to be predictable. When we put lines of credit in place, we commit to funding. We want to fund our partners fast. So my whole team doesn’t get quota retirement in sales until the partner gets paid. So it’s really important that we align our metrics and the way we’re measuring ourselves with what’s going to delight the partner and create a better experience for them.
Robert Dutt: Has there been a notable increase in terms of acceleration there on partners getting paid?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, I would say it’s long been a focus of ours, but we’re really emphasizing it in coming out and being very deliberate about what we want to do in terms of turnaround times. We call it our partner pledge, but the idea is we want partners to know that we can be a reliable source of funding. Not only does financing help them close the deal and make the deals bigger, but then they can get paid faster as well. That really helps their metrics because most partners, most businesses, are looking at cash flow and free cash flow and all those kind of metrics. And financing with HPEFS really helps.
The other thing it does is when you think about a partner’s capacity to do business, if they’re financing through HPEFS, it’s HPEFS’s credit line that’s being used, creating more availability for the partner to sell other solutions. So it doesn’t go against their credit limits.
Robert Dutt: Not to get all “what have you done for me lately” with you, but what can partners expect from your business over the balance of 2026, as much as anyone has visibility into the near future?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, sure. I think what partners are going to see is, again, we talked about the offerings—us showing up with very competitive offerings, us showing up looking to help partners win, and again, helping partners. We want partners to think about, “Okay, there are these financing capabilities and I want to leverage those. How do we grow the HPE business?” The HPE business for our partners should be a growth engine for them—a profitable growth engine—and HPEFS is really here to help facilitate that.
Robert Dutt: One thing I hear from folks in similar seats to you all the time is the idea that they feel their capabilities are underused or under-understood by partners. Generally speaking, obviously there are some exceptions to any rule. Does that kind of map with how you feel, and what’s the one tool, offering, or program that you offer that you think more partners would benefit from getting to know and adding to their toolkit?
Brad Shapiro: Yeah, sure. I think Phil Mottram said it. He said, “HPEFS is one of our best-kept secrets.” So, yeah, I think generally we feel like we can do a better job, but I would say even coming to this Discover—and I’ve been to many, many, many Discovers—HPEFS is showing up because the marketing team has just done a fantastic job of integrating not only HPEFS, but kind of a whole value proposition focusing around IT economics. And I think that’s been a pivotal message here at Discover.
From a partner perspective, again, I go back to all of those special financing offers that you just can’t get generally in the marketplace. You know, 0% on CloudOps software, 0% financing on Mist and Aruba Central. We’ve got a very competitive financing offer on storage. We talked about earlier the networking offerings that we have. So, across the portfolio, there are these offerings that you can only get from HPE and HPEFS.
Robert Dutt: For an MSP or reseller who hasn’t thought much about asset disposition as part of their services offering, but is thinking, “Okay, well, maybe this is something I need to get into,” what’s the entry point? Is it something they engage you on directly, or do they kind of have to build their practice first and then bring you into the picture?
Brad Shapiro: Well, I think they can engage us. If there’s an opportunity… the way I think about it is most customers are focused on, “What am I going to get that’s new? I need new technology for a project.” A lot of customers don’t have the wherewithal or focus on the disposition side. We think many customers end up giving their product away. Maybe somebody takes it and goes, “I’ll take care of it for you free of charge.” And the customer thinks, “Oh, this is great,” but there’s money in those assets, particularly now with the memory shortage. Anything with memory is going to have value. So for a partner, you don’t need to be an expert; just understand what the customer has in their environment and what they might be getting rid of. And it’s really just contacting HPEFS and we’ll do the assessment of whether there’s market value or not for the partner.
Robert Dutt: That’s kind of where I wanted to go. Anything you want to throw out there in summation or in closing?
Brad Shapiro: No, I really appreciate you having me. And it was great to get an opportunity to showcase what HPEFS is bringing to the table. I’m really excited and proud of what we’re doing and the role we can play in helping the partners grow with HPE. That’s what being a captive financing company is all about. So, looking forward to winning and growing with the partners in Canada.
Robert Dutt: All right. Thank you for taking the time.
Brad Shapiro: Thank you.
Robert Dutt: There you have it. Brad Shapiro from HPE Financial Services. I’d like to thank Brad for his time, and I’d like to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you found the conversation useful, the best way to support the show is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating or review if you’re so inclined.
My takeaway from the conversation? HPEFS is making a deliberate shift away from being a passive financing option to an active weapon in the competitive arsenal. The 90/9 Advantage, the networking offer stack, and especially that partner pledge about quota retirement tied to partner payment speed—those are signals that HPE is serious about removing friction from channel economics. For Canadian partners, the July 1 portal rollout and the emphasis on chain of custody for ITAD are worth getting familiar with.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
HPE Discover 2026 wraps up in Las Vegas today, and if you’ve been following our coverage, you know we’ve had plenty to unpack this week. For the Friday edition of The Buzz, we doing something slightly different – a reporter’s notebook on what HPE’s channel leadership said when they were off the keynote stage.
The quote validity extension was the headline that drew the most relief, but the backstory is more interesting than the policy change itself. HPE extended standard quotes from 14 days to 30 days for compute, storage, and GreenLake, effective Monday. Simon Ewington, who leads HPE’s worldwide partner organisation, told press and partners Wednesday that the change was ‘pretty well kept secret’ – his own staff didn’t know about it either. The commodity volatility that had forced the two-week window had moderated enough that HPE could stand behind a 30-day price with confidence.
Behind the ‘Power of One’ marketing, there are mechanical changes that determine whether partners can actually make money. Juniper’s Elite Plus, Elite, and Select tiers will map to HPE Platinum, Gold, and Silver starting November 1. HPE introduced a 3x multiplier on software sales for Zerto, Morpheus, and OpsRamp, plus a 1.5x GreenLake multiplier, to help partners climb tiers faster. Smart Choice SKUs – pre-configured servers missing only drives – are a speed play for distributors.
The competitive storage take-out targets 14,000 customers under the VH Rail framing, with Alletra MP already outpacing market growth by 2x and 0% financing for three years.
Then there was candour. Ewington noted HPE is the vendor who ‘typically moves first… and then others polish.’ The distributor overlap between HPE and Juniper is only about 10%, so they’re ‘refining the landscape’ rather than forcing universal carry. Service provider growth is running 23% to 30% CAGR. And HPE’s sustainability insight dashboard gives partners a concrete tool to analyse customer environments and open carbon footprint conversations.
You can find every episode of The Buzz and In The Channel from HPE Discover on our HPE Discover news hub.
Read Full TranscriptThis epsisode of The Buzz is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event on ChannelBuzz.ca — you’ll find out HPE Discover 2026 News Hub in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Friday, June 19th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
I’m recording this a bit earl in Las Vegas, because I’m on a plane all day heading home from Discover.
If you’ve been following our coverage this week, you know we’ve had a lot to unpack – the Partner Growth Summit on Monday, the networking and AI infrastructure keynote on Tuesday, and a steady drumbeat of announcements through Wednesday. For this episode, I want to do something slightly different. Think of it as a reporter’s notebook – the details, the mechanics, and the candour that came out when HPE’s channel leadership sat down with press and partners on Wednesday morning, off the keynote stage.
Let’s start with the quote validity extension, because the backstory here is as interesting than the policy change itself. HPE extended standard quote validity from 14 days to 30 days for compute, storage, and GreenLake, effective Monday. You’ve heard that already.
What you probably haven‘t heard is how closely they guarded it. Simon Ewington, who runs HPE’s worldwide partner organisation, told us Wednesday that the change was a ‘pretty well kept secret.’
His own staff didn’t know about it either. They wanted zero leaks because the commodity and supply chain volatility that had forced the two-week window in the first place had finally moderated enough that HPE could stand behind a 30-day price with confidence. Keeping it quiet meant announcing it without hedging.
For partners who’ve been managing customer decision cycles that simply don’t fit a 14-day window, the relief was audible.
The Partner Growth Summit was dense enough that Ewington admitted partners told him it was ‘almost too much’ and they ‘needed an AI summary to recap everything.’ So let me pull out the operational details that actually affect how you navigate the program.
First, Juniper integration. We now have firm tier mapping: Juniper Elite Plus goes to HPE Platinum, Elite to Gold, Select to Silver, effective November 1. HPE is also launching a Routing competency – number 15 in the framework – to support that transition.
Second, multipliers. HPE introduced a 3x multiplier on software sales for Zerto, Morpheus, and OpsRamp, plus a 1.5x multiplier for GreenLake, to help partners hit higher membership tiers faster by weighting software more heavily than hardware.
Third, Smart Choice SKUs – pre-configured servers that ship missing only hard drives. It’s a speed and velocity play for distributors.
Fourth, the competitive storage take-out. HPE has identified 14,000 target customers for what they’re calling the VH Rail opportunity. Alletra MP is outpacing market growth by 2x, and they’re backing the migration with 0% financing for three years.
These aren’t marketing headlines. These are the details that determine whether you can actually make money on the portfolio.
Then there were the moments of genuine candour. Ewington’s line that HPE is the vendor who ‘typically moves first… and then others polish’ is either confidence or arrogance depending on your perspective, but it’s not ambiguous.
You may have seen recently that HP formally announced its two main global distributors as Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX. The distributor overlap reality is worth noting: only about 10% overlap between HPE and Juniper distributors. HPE is actively ‘refining the landscape’ rather than forcing every distributor to carry everything. That’s a concession that operational integration takes time and care.
On services, HPE is expanding partner-branded services so partners own the Level 1 and 2 support relationship while HPE stays in the background for Level 3 and 4. Ewington said this largely came about because there have been some large partners who have declined to get closer to HPE because of the company’s previous retisense to allow partners to lead on services around its gear.
For service providers specifically, leadership cited 23% to 30% CAGR growth rates, and they’re opening CloudOps software to CSPs to build new services around.
And on sustainability, which came up in the context of AI’s energy demands, HPE has built an insight dashboard that lets partners analyse customer environments and open conversations about carbon footprint and efficiency. It’s a practical tool rather than a vague pledge.
If there’s a through-line to the week, it’s that HPE is trying to make ‘Power of One’ mean something operationally, not just rhetorically. The quote validity change was a trust repair. The multiplier and tier mapping are structural incentives. The distributor and services refinements are admissions that integration is hard and takes time.
Whether it all lands as promised is what we’ll be watching through the second half of this year.
That’s it for this edition of The Buzz. You can find our full HPE Discover 2026 coverage on ChannelBuzz.ca – there’s a news hub in the menu bar at the top of the page. And we’ll also have more epsidoes of In The Channel from Discover next week here on the site, including more HPE executives, and more reactions from Canadian HPE partners.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines from HPE Discover. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Justin McGarry, vice president of product management for compute software at HPE
At HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas this week, In The Channel sat down with Justin McGarry, vice president of product management for compute software at HPE, to talk about where HPE’s server management story is headed – and what it means for MSPs in the Canadian channel.
The centrepiece of that story is Compute Ops Management (COM) – HPE’s cloud-native, subscription-based platform built on iLO telemetry embedded in every ProLiant server. McGarry’s pitch is direct: COM is not just a management tool, it’s a business growth platform for MSPs who lean into it.
His primary proof point is Nitec, an MSP that helped co-develop COM’s multi-tenant capability and now manages distributed customer environments at higher margins with fewer resources than previously required. Across a broader study of roughly 300 ProLiant customers, HPE found up to 75% less downtime and approximately $150,000 in travel and resource cost savings per customer.
For MSPs serving customers with ESG or sustainability reporting obligations – increasingly common in Canadian public sector and regulated industries – COM’s AI insights module adds a forecasting layer that projects future carbon emissions and energy costs using an open-source forecasting engine. That projection can anchor a practical business case for a server refresh, as illustrated by Booking.com, which is using COM on its path to net zero by 2030.
Two capabilities worth flagging for mixed-environment MSPs: third-party server monitoring (visibility into non-HPE OEM hardware from the same console) and Secure Gateway, a virtual appliance that aggregates iLO traffic into a single cloud egress point – solving the cloud-connectivity objection for customers in financial services, healthcare, and other regulated sectors.
On the agentic AI front, McGarry is candid that Compute Copilot is early. This week’s Discover announcement extends its reach into security advisories – surfacing recommendations and moving toward automated remediation. The fuller agentic vision is still taking shape.
McGarry’s takeaway for partners: there’s still significant runway to understand what COM can do for their businesses, and the MSPs who’ve made it a core capability are seeing it pay off.
Read Full TranscriptROBERT DUTT: This episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event at ChannelBuzz.ca. You’ll find our HPE Discover 2026 news hub in the menu bar right at the top of the page.
Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.
This week I’m at HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas, and over the course of the show I’ve been sitting down with HPE executives and partners for a series of conversations that I’ll be releasing over the next few days.
Today’s guest is Justin McGarry, vice president of product management for compute software at HPE. Now, when HPE says compute, they mean their server business anchored by the ProLiant line, but Justin’s specific domain is the software that wraps around that hardware. The centerpiece of that is Compute Ops Management, which is HPE’s cloud-native platform for securing, automating and managing ProLiant estates. It’s built on top of iLO, HPE’s embedded server intelligence technology, and over the past few years it’s evolved into something that Justin argues is less a management tool and more a business growth engine for MSPs.
Justin came to HPE a couple years ago from VMware, where he ran global services portfolio and the go-to-market strategy, so he brings an interesting outside perspective to where HPE’s story fits in the broader enterprise infrastructure picture.
We talked about the MSP opportunity, sustainability forecasting, where Compute Copilot, the conversational AI layer for server management, actually stands today, and where HPE thinks agentic capabilities take all of this.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Justin McGarry.
Justin, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, happy to be here, Rob. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to chat with you today. I’m sure it’s a busy week, this kind of show almost always is.
ROBERT DUTT: Absolutely. To start with, you guys have been calling the business unit Compute rather than servers for a while now. When you’re talking to partners, how do you describe what Compute is today versus maybe what it was five years ago, what it all kind of entails?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you my perspective. So I joined the company about two and a half years ago now. And when I think about what we do in Compute, the foundation of that is ProLiant. So from a hardware perspective, the servers that we ship day in and day out to our customers. The other piece, from my perspective, and maybe I’m being a little selfish here, is all the software and solutions that wrap around that. So from a software perspective, I own what we call Compute Ops Management. So that is our cloud-native management platform for securing and automating those ProLiant estates. We actually do third-party monitoring as well. So other server OEMs that you have in the environment, we’ll monitor that as well. And then we have our on-premise solution for air-gapped and sovereign environments. That’s OneView. We’ve had OneView out in the market for many years now. And then, of course, the foundation of everything we do from a software perspective is with iLO, integrated lights-out. That has been out in the market now for a few decades. We continue to innovate and evolve on that. And so all of that intelligence, the data, the telemetry, that’s all foundation to what we do in our management platforms with our subscription-based cloud-native Compute Ops Management, and our sovereign air-gapped solution with OneView.
ROBERT DUTT: Okay. A couple questions around things that you guys have announced recently. You guys just highlighted a 20% energy efficiency gain with the Gen 12 platform on Xeon. So for a reseller or MSP helping a mid-market customer justify the server refresh right now, how do you see energy efficiency playing in actually closing deals? Or is it still just sort of a nice-to-have thing on the spec sheet?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I think customers are still really focused on sustainability. Again, if I think back to what we do from a software perspective with Compute Ops Management, one of the key assets or capabilities that we have there is what we call AI insights. And with those AI insights, we can actually help customers from a sustainability perspective be able to predict and forecast future carbon emissions. So I was at Discover in Barcelona late last year. We had a customer Booking.com on stage and Booking.com has a massive distributed environment all ProLiant-based. How are they managing, securing, automating that? They’re using Compute Ops Management. One of their key goals at a company level is they want to be net-zero by 2030. How are they going to get there? They got to make sure that they’re running an efficient, sustainable operation, certainly from a data center perspective. ProLiant is in that picture. And then how they’re managing, monitoring that, predicting their future forecasts or their carbon emissions to help them derive when they’re going to go do their refreshes. They’re using Compute Ops Management for that. So sustainability is still very much top of mind. Globally, I would say even more important in EMEA with some of those board-level sustainability targets that customers have with their ESG board-level goals that they’ve got to go and achieve.
ROBERT DUTT: Do you see that catching up at all in the North American market?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: You know, I do. I mean, I’m hearing it more in customer conversations. If I think about when I was in Discover Barcelona, a lot of the discussion there was around sovereign and sustainability. Early into the week here at Discover, I haven’t had a lot of customer meetings yet, but I’m going to kind of predict that I think some of the sustainability pieces are going to come into play, especially when you think about AI, you think about inferencing in particular out at the edge. You think about all the energy required to go in and not just do the training, but now thinking about the inferencing and workloads and use cases around GenAI. I think that’s just going to continue to become more important. And so that’s why we prioritized it in our roadmap to continue to evolve on what we’re doing from a sustainability perspective.
ROBERT DUTT: Let’s get a little bit more into Compute Ops Management. You came from VMware, which has its own management tooling story. What does COM do that’s genuinely different and what does it mean for an MSP managing, say, 100 ProLiant servers across 20 customers or whatever that profile looks like?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, yeah. So I think what really differentiates HPE, I think, generally in the market is that we have the Compute Ops Management capability. So this was a build from the ground up, cloud-native subscription-based management tool that we brought to market a few years ago now. I think it has been very transformational in the customer conversations that we’ve been having because at the end of the day, it’s not just the hardware. It’s how you secure that, how you automate it. I think the unique differentiation that we have with Compute Ops Management is specifically with all the telemetry data and intelligence that we have at the iLO level. That is in every single ProLiant that we ship out the door. And because we have that chip in each of those ProLiants that goes out, it gives us a lot of capability to secure, automate, manage, orchestrate that environment for the customer. So I think that’s the unique value that we have in Compute Ops Management that may be a little bit different than what else you see out on the market and you reference VMware. Certainly a lot of great management capabilities there when it came to the workload level, the virtualization level. This is down at the hardware level, at the ProLiant level, helping customers manage and automate and secure that environment. When it comes to what’s in it for managed service providers, so we have a lot of success stories there that we’re continuing to build on where COM really enables multi-tenant compute management for those MSPs. They can do it from a single, secure, cloud console. They can proactively manage and monitor their customers’ environments. We have this MSP actually who will be on stage with me later today, Nitec, and the managing director there that runs that business. He started working with our team a few years ago now as we were starting to really kind of build some foundational capabilities into Compute Ops Management. He helped us with developing the concept around our MSP capability where we can manage different workspaces across an environment and have all of that visibility roll up to a single level. I think the key benefit for these partners, and of course there’s all the IT benefits and capabilities that they get. I think when I consider what Nitec has done and some of the other MSPs from a business perspective, what used to take a lot more resources for them to manage those customer environments, now they’re able to do that much more efficiently and effectively. They’re seeing a larger margin profile on these value-added services that they’re delivering to these customers as a result. And so, Compute Ops Management, you ask the folks at Nitec, that has been foundational to them being able to deliver these services effectively and at a much higher margin than they have been able to do in the past. So the story, Rob, honestly, is a very similar story to what customers achieve with using Compute Ops Management. We’ve got a study we did a little while back across about 300 ProLiant customers, up to 75% less downtime in their environment, a lot more, up to 150,000 or so in travel and resource costs saved. So just like we’re helping our customers effectively manage their environments with less resources and less cost at those distributed edge locations, we’re doing the same thing with our MSP partners. So we have a lot of opportunity there. It’s exciting to see, I would say, COM is not just a management tool, it’s a business growth platform for these MSPs who really lean into it and partner with us.
ROBERT DUTT: Obviously, you’ve got folks like Nitec who are well along the curve, it sounds like, maybe even leading the way in many ways. Where are you at in terms of reaching the long tail of the MSP channel and kind of getting that, how fully realized is the opportunity for COM in the community today?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: I think, Rob, we still have a ton of opportunity to get the message out there around Compute Ops Management. I find myself, when I am presenting to the various partner communities, there’s still a lot of opportunity to bring them up to speed on the capabilities that we have there, the benefits they can derive, and in particular, what’s in it for them. How can they go in and repeat what Nitec has done? I think if you ask Nitec, what is the one thing that they would recommend for partners to go do who are looking to scale their MSP businesses on top of a management capability like Compute Ops Management? It is getting a single kind of advocate champion in the organization to really understand what not only the product can provide to the end customer, but what are the benefits that the managed service provider can get out of using this type of capability in their environment to manage those end customers?
ROBERT DUTT: You guys just recently launched or added Copilot, an integrated conversational AI layer for server management in COM. Interesting concept. Where is that at today? Is it sort of in the “this is what the future might look like” kind of phase, or is there aspects that it’s kind of going to be genuinely useful to an MSP today?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I think it is very early stages with Compute Copilot. Today, it is very much a conversational AI assistant. So if I think about in my daily life how I’m using tools like Claude and my just kind of conversational interaction back and forth, Compute Copilot is very much that today. So hey, Compute Copilot, tell me about the servers I have in the environment and their health, or hey, Compute Copilot, tell me where I’m at on achieving, as I talked about the Booking.com story earlier, where am I at on my path to sustainability and meeting some of those targets? Those are some of the questions that you can ask of it today. If you asked Nitec, they would say, “Hey, all the manual effort and looking through all the manuals and documentation that HPE provides around the ProLiant infrastructure, we no longer have to go in, dig that all up and navigate our way through that.” We can ask the conversational assistant with Compute Copilot to do that. That’s the beginning. I think the future is really around agentic. So how can I interact with that Compute Copilot to say, “Hey, notice that this issue is happening in my environment. Provide me some recommendations on what I can do next.” It provides me those recommendations. And then I can say, “Hey, Compute Copilot, go and enact those recommendations.” And so I think about back to that study with those ProLiant customers and all that time and resource and effort saved, I just can’t imagine how much we can multiply that for our MSPs and for our customers once we start to get some of those agentic capabilities in place. What are the announcements we have this week, Rob, as we start to head down that agentic path is with security advisories. So security advisories, you think about the past, “Okay, I got to understand that there’s a security advisory out there. I then got to go and act on it and figure out what I need to go do in the environment to rectify that issue.” Now we’re heading down the path of, “Okay, I can get some intelligence to tell me, ‘Hey, this is happening in the environment. We can go and provide recommendations on where you need to go and implement this and then go and implement that.'” And so, yeah, I’m really excited about the opportunity that we have with agentic. I think back to your question, we’re just very much at the beginnings of where we can take capabilities like Compute Copilot.
ROBERT DUTT: Especially as that kind of stuff starts to fit into the mix, it strikes me that it’s even more important that, as you mentioned, it’s a multi-vendor kind of environment that I as an MSP, if I have customers or existing infrastructure that’s running someone else, it’s, you know, it can be covered under this as well.
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, yeah. So the third-party monitoring capability we have today is very much monitoring. So other OEM servers that you have in your environment, you can get visibility into those. And so we provide this capability today. I think we announced that about a year or so ago. I would say that is opening a lot more doors for our, certainly the conversations with the MSPs. You know, we can’t kid ourselves that at MSPs they only have one type of OEM in the environment. They might have multiple. It’s a hybrid environment. And the same can be said for our customers out there as well. And so having this third-party monitoring capability in place where I can go to that single console and not just have visibility into my ProLiant estate, but if an issue occurs, I want to be able to see that across the entire estate. The third-party monitoring capability gives us the ability to do that, Rob. And, you know, one other thing I’d add real quick, and this is something that a lot of our partners and even, I’d say, our customers, we still have some awareness-building to do around Secure Gateway. So one of the challenges that customers, when I first joined, time and time again, I have discussions with customers about cloud manageability. And the first question they say is, well, Justin, where is this all hosted? And, you know, do I really want my environment talking to the cloud? And one of the things that we developed over time is this capability called Secure Gateway. It’s a virtual appliance that can be deployed in the environment. And what that does is it actually aggregates all of the iLO traffic to that Secure Gateway. That’s then one egress connection out to the cloud instead of all of those iLOs connecting and talking to the cloud. Nine times out of ten in customer conversations I have, whether it’s financial, it’s some other regulated industry, healthcare, insurance, what have you, we are now able to overcome that hurdle with cloud management capability because we have the Secure Gateway virtual appliance that we can deploy for customers. So that’s another great capability. Combined with third-party monitoring, you deploy that virtual appliance and that’s how we’re able to have that visibility across the entire estate.
ROBERT DUTT: We touched a little bit on sustainability earlier. Back home in Canada, we have particular sensitivities around energy costs, carbon reporting, especially for public sector and anyone under provincial ESG oversight. What is the sustainability dashboard in COM? Does that move the needle here? Is it a checkbox feature? What can it kind of add to an MSP who’s trying to make sure that their customers are informed and in the right place?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I would say it’s a fundamental feature that we have in Compute Ops Management today. I think what really takes it to the next level is the AI insights that I mentioned. So we worked with an open-source forecasting engine model out there that we leverage to develop and engineer that capability. And what that allows you to do is be able to forecast out to the future. Hey, this is how we’ve been trending today. This is where we will end up in the future based on some of that intelligence that we have in the AI-driven insights capability. So I would say sustainability dashboard in Compute Ops Management is a very kind of foundational fundamental capability. How you take that to the next level is then being able to leverage the AI-driven insights that we have for sustainability, be able to predict what the future is going to look like from a carbon emissions, energy cost perspective, and then be able to proactively take some measures to make sure that you’re going to be able to meet or exceed those targets. And so some customers are actually looking at that and saying, okay, I’m not necessarily ready to refresh now, but based on how I’m predicting out to the future, yes, I need to make that next step from Gen 10 or even prior to that in my environment to the new Gen 12 and the cost associated with doing so. I can predict and forecast out into the future that based on my energy costs, I may be able to cover, I mean, not all of that expense to do the refresh, but certainly a part of it. And so that’s something else that I know we have had a lot of success with our customers here recently. Again, it comes back to not just having that fundamental sustainability dashboard in place, but also being able to look out into the future to a certain extent with that forecasting model that we have to predict where you’re going to go with carbon emissions, energy costs.
ROBERT DUTT: Last one for me. What do you think is the biggest untapped or under-realized opportunity in the compute software sphere for you guys right now? What’s basically the one thing that you’d want a Canadian reseller walking away from Discover this week understanding about this business that maybe they didn’t come in with?
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I think that back to what we talked about a little bit ago, there’s still, I think, an opportunity with partners. Partners have heard maybe a little bit about Compute Ops Management, but haven’t yet gotten to the place where they fully understand the capabilities that we have there, where we have delivered on some of the things like Secure Gateway, third-party monitoring, the sustainability, AI-driven insights and the forecasting model there, where we’re going with agentic. What’s in it for them at the end of the day? What are they going to benefit from getting their customers up to speed on Compute Ops Management, using it to manage, orchestrate, secure, automate those environments? I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there to continue to, and this is on me. It’s on our teams at HPE to continue to work with our partners to bring them up to speed there. And then I think back to looking at what Nitec and others have done: really get that champion within your organization to understand not just what the customer benefits are and the outcomes that can be derived, not just from an IT perspective, but with the Booking.com story, that real business-critical impact that this software is driving. I think that’s a unique differentiator that HPE has out in the market from a ProLiant perspective with Compute Ops Management. And then the other piece for MSPs is, hey, I can go in and deliver higher-margin value-added services just by leveraging this management tool in the environment and learning from Nitec and others on how they’re doing that. So I think I feel like it’s very early stages, Rob, with the partner ecosystem. I think we have a ton of opportunity there to help them understand that COM isn’t just a management tool. It is a business growth driver for them, and helping them understand that and realize that outcome is certainly where I’m focused and where the team is focused going forward.
ROBERT DUTT: Between that runway and I think the potential for agentic getting its hooks even deeper into this and making it increasingly actionable, I think you’re right. There’s a lot still to come.
JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s exciting. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity with the partner ecosystem and I think, genuinely, I think we’re just getting started.
ROBERT DUTT: All right. Look forward to seeing how it evolves. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time with me, Rob. Thank you. Thank you.
ROBERT DUTT: There you have it. Justin McGarry from HPE. I’d like to thank Justin for carving out some time during what is a genuinely hectic week here at Discover. I really appreciate it. And thank you for listening. If you’d like to follow or subscribe to the podcast, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, most podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated if you have a moment.
A few things I take away from this conversation. First, Compute Ops Management is a more interesting story than the name might suggest. When you’ve got an MSP like Nitec that helped co-develop the platform’s multi-tenant capability and is now managing distributed customer environments at significantly higher margins with fewer resources, that’s a real signal worth paying attention to. Justin’s framing of COM as a business growth platform rather than a management tool is the right way to think about it.
Second, the sustainability forecasting piece is genuinely differentiated for the Canadian market. The ability to project future carbon emissions and energy costs and use that forecast to build a board-level business case for a server refresh is practical and timely, especially for customers with ESG reporting obligations.
And third, Compute Copilot is early, and Justin was honest about that. The near-term step, moving from conversational Q&A to actual agentic action on security advisories, is the right direction. It’s worth revisiting this conversation in a year to see how far that’s come.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
HPE chief technology officer for cloud and AI Fidelma Russo used her Discover general session to introduce “tokenomics” – the argument that agentic AI economics are fundamentally infrastructure economics. She told the Las Vegas audience that continuous AI agents can cost $13,000 per agent per month in the public cloud, and revealed that HPE’s own MindStone AI support platform achieved a 30x cost reduction by moving from the public cloud to HPE Private Cloud AI on-prem – a saving of roughly $100,000 per month.Vultr announced it is buying HPE and NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra rack-scale systems – the GB300 NVL72 – with 800GbE Spectrum-X networking to build out next-generation global AI data centres. Vultr CEO J.J. Kardwell called out “decentralized, latency-sensitive workloads” as a driver. The announcement contained no channel component.HPE unveiled Morpheus 9, the latest version of its GreenLake virtualization platform, with a built-in MCP server for agent-driven operations. HPE claims up to 90 percent cost reduction versus traditional virtualization, and says more than 2,000 customers and one million cores are already on VM Essentials. A platform migration program offers the first year of Morpheus and VM Essentials at no cost. Zerto’s recovery tools are positioned as an “undo” button for when autonomous AI agents make unintended infrastructure changes.Read Full TranscriptThis epsisode of The Buzz is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event on ChannelBuzz.ca — you’ll find out HPE Discover 2026 News Hub in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Thursday, June 18th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
Today, day three of HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas, and the story is the economics of the agentic enterprise. Let’s get to it.
HPE’s chief technology officer for cloud and AI, Fidelma Russo, took the main stage yesterday morning with a message that will resonate with anyone who has watched a client’s cloud AI bill spiral: continuous agentic AI is wildly expensive in the public cloud. Russo cited a figure of $13,000 per month, per agent, for continuous reasoning operations in the public cloud. That is not a pilot. That is production infrastructure.
Her answer is HPE’s take on “tokenomics” – the idea that AI economics are fundamentally infrastructure economics. It comes down to utilization, efficiency, and scale. And HPE has proof. Russo revealed that HPE built its own AI support platform, MindStone, and moved it from the public cloud to HPE Private Cloud AI on-prem. The result: a 30-fold cost reduction, saving roughly $100,000 per month.
That is the argument for why production AI is coming to the data centre. Not because it is fashionable, but because the math stops working anywhere else.
The alternative hyperscaler announced it is buying HPE and NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra rack-scale systems – specifically the GB300 NVL72 – along with 800-gigabit Ethernet Spectrum-X networking, to build out its next generation of global AI data centres. This is a procurement deal, not a partnership, but it is serious hardware at serious scale. Vultr CEO J.J. Kardwell framed it around “decentralized, latency-sensitive workloads across Vultr’s extensive global network.”
Now clearly, this isn’t a channel story unto itself at this moment. This is pure enterprise infrastructure. But it does signal that someone is actually buying the big AI factory gear HPE has been talking about all week.
The GreenLake platform now has a built-in MCP server for agent-driven operations, and HPE says Morpheus 9 delivers up to 90 percent cost reduction compared to traditional virtualization. There are more than 2,000 customers and a million cores already running on VM Essentials. To ease the migration pain, HPE is offering the first year of Morpheus and VM Essentials at no cost through a platform migration program.
There is a caveat: Zerto’s instant recovery and migration support is Morpheus-only for now. No KVM, no Kubernetes natively. But Zerto gets an interesting new job in this agentic world. Russo positioned it as the undo button for when autonomous AI agents make unintended changes to infrastructure – roll back to a known good state instantly.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a reporter’s notebook from the channel leadership breakfast panel at Discover, as we wrap up our coverage of the event this week.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines from HPE Discover. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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en Fallon, vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales
At HPE Discover Las Vegas this week, HPE pushed its networking story to the centre of the event – from autonomous AIOps capabilities to a unified SASE platform – and the channel is central to how it plans to execute on some ambitious market share targets.
ChannelBuzz.ca sat down on-site with Ben Fallon, vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales, to talk about what the announcements mean in practice for Canadian partners.
On the self-driving network vision – a major theme in the general sessions this week – Fallon pointed to HPE Aruba Mist as the concrete proof point: autonomous remediation that partners can toggle on in the dashboard for known network problems, no human click required. “Autonomous networking, with that human deciding where they want that to take place, is already real,” he said.
On the Aruba and Juniper Networks platform integration – a frequent question from partners navigating two management platforms – Fallon described a “build once, deploy twice” philosophy built on microservices architecture, keeping both platforms differentiated by use case while accelerating innovation through cross-pollination rather than forced convergence.
The SASE and security opportunity produced one of the clearest channel statements of the conversation: “Pretty much 100% of our security sales go through partners. There is no other path.” With HPE publicly targeting a $1 billion security business, Fallon said the partner base is nowhere near saturated – and that competency-based incentives within the Partner Ready Vantage program are in place to bring more networking-pedigreed partners into that conversation.
A formal partner program unification is on track for November, with a stated focus on simplifying certification, deal registration, and rebates – and new incentives aimed squarely at winning net-new networking customers away from competing vendors.
Read Full TranscriptRobert Dutt: Today’s episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Discover runs June 15-18 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Discover what’s next at hpe.com/discover.
Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.
We’re coming to you this week from HPE Discover Las Vegas, where HPE has been rolling out a significant set of announcements across networking, cloud, and AI infrastructure. The embargoes are lifted, and the Partner Growth Summit is in the books, so we can actually get into the substance of things.
My guest is Ben Fallon, vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales at HPE. Ben came to this role via the Juniper side of the house. He was running global partner and commercial sales for Juniper Networks when the acquisition closed, and moved into leading the combined networking channel earlier this year.
His session at Discover this week was called “Betting on HPE Networking,” which turned out to be a pretty useful frame for a conversation. We got into what self-driving networks actually mean for a partner having a Monday morning conversation with a customer, the Aruba and Mist integration story, the SASE and security opportunity, and what partners can expect when the unified program formally launches in November.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Ben Fallon.
Ben, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I know it’s a busy week on site here, I’m sure.
Ben Fallon: It is. It’s a fun week. We’ve got thousands of partners here, but it’s great to be here with you.
Robert Dutt: For listeners who don’t know you or your role, can you give me a quick rundown on what you do here and how you came to be leading networking channels for HPE?
Ben Fallon: Yeah, so like you said, I lead the global networking channel for HPE. I’ve spent the last 25-odd years in the industry, have led channels for a number of the significant vendors in the market. I was part of the Juniper acquisition, most recently running one of the global sales segments, and in January moved over to lead the channel. We’ve got a fantastic opportunity in front of us.
Robert Dutt: I like that you frame it as you’re part of the Juniper acquisition. You’re not taking entire credit for them acquiring Juniper to get your talent.
Ben Fallon: Absolutely not, no. It was a bonus.
Robert Dutt: Absolutely. Your session this week is called “Betting on HPE Networking.” It’s a pretty confident way of looking at it, and obvious given the milieu. Walk me through what the bet looks like from where you sit. What are you asking partners to bet on, and why now?
Ben Fallon: Yeah, so for me, it’s like when you look at a bet, you’ve got to make sure it’s a good one. No one wants to be playing the lottery. That’s got the worst chance of winning. The more strategy that you actually bring into a game, along with some execution, increases your chance of winning. So for us, what increases the chance of winning with HPE Networking is cross-selling. The more you’re selling across the portfolio, the more you’re going to engage with our account teams, the more problems you’re going to solve for our customers. And also, that’s where you can earn the most amount of rebates, and where the program is really geared towards. So if you make a bet on us, we’re making a bet on you, and you’ll get that back in profitability and customer satisfaction.
Robert Dutt: Cross-selling within networking, across the HPE portfolio, or…
Ben Fallon: All of the above. So you can absolutely cross-sell within the portfolio, whether you’re selling campus and branch, or you want to move into selling more security solutions. Or if you’re selling the hybrid cloud solution portfolio from HPE, you need to start getting involved in networking, because it’s going to expand your opportunity, and we know the network is at the heart of all of these AI workloads.
Robert Dutt: One of the big presentations here is about taking the idea of self-driving networks from vision to reality. For a lot of partners, though, the question is always, “What do I take to my customer?” On Monday morning, how do partners translate that message around self-driving networks to a concrete conversation with staff at a customer, and make it map with their care-abouts?
Ben Fallon: Yeah, sure. Well, look, complexity is only increasing. We know there are talent shortages. We know that it’s almost an impossible task to keep up with all the vulnerabilities that are created through AI. And so you have to have AI as part of your defense. So what’s real? Let’s take something like HPE Mist, where that has autonomous actions now built into the dashboard. So we know for certain problems that come up on the network, we know how to remediate them. We don’t need a person to go and click a button. You can literally switch on a toggle, and off it goes. So autonomous networking, with that human deciding where they want that to take place, is already real.
Robert Dutt: You touch on Mist. One thing I do hear from partners sometimes is with the Aruba and Juniper integration, the two platforms you’ve got with Aruba Central and Mist, moving toward common capabilities, but it sounds like the vision is not to merge. What do you tell the partner who’s been selling one side of that equation or the other? And now that we’ve kind of got one HPE networking, what does it mean in practice, basically?
Ben Fallon: Yeah, well, you touched on self-driving. That’s a unified vision across the entire portfolio. And then we’ve got this strategy of cross-pollination. I think if you look at a lot of acquisitions over the years, they’ve spent so long arguing over maybe not a feature, but how do you actually get to that feature to be capable? And innovation dies when that happens. If you want innovation to actually accelerate, which is what we’re seeing, you take the best from each platform, and because they’re built with a microservices architecture, you can build once, deploy twice, and it becomes this incredible boon of innovation on the platform. So I’d say that is real, because customers are voting with their wallet. So there’s a decent amount of cross-pollination, but each kind of remains aimed towards its focus.
Robert Dutt: That’s it.
Ben Fallon: And really what I see with partners is they see this as a growth play in the same way that we do. This is about finding new opportunity. So they may have served some SMB customers with some on-prem part of the Aruba portfolio. Now they’re wanting to get into some mid-sized lower enterprise, and they’re seeing that Mist has some capability that helps get them there. So it’s a growth play for us, and it’s a growth play for the partner.
Robert Dutt: One of the things that caught my attention in the announcements this week was the unified SASE story – bringing SD-WAN and SSE under one management pane. You guys have talked about a billion-dollar security ambition. Pretty big number. What’s the channel’s role in getting to that? And for a partner who hasn’t historically led with networking security, what’s kind of the on-ramp or the easiest first step?
Ben Fallon: Yeah. So first of all, obviously, we’ve got this universal zero-trust network architecture, which we’re really leaning into. And it’s about bringing together the different parts of the security portfolios from across HPE. And obviously with the Juniper acquisition, that brought an even richer portfolio. For partners, pretty much 100% of our security sales go through partners, so there is no other path. And what we’re really looking for is – we have some very, very capable, specialized partners on security – I think there’s a bigger opportunity for more partners to be selling HPE networking and security solutions. We’re just getting started. We’re already posting some great numbers. We had some incredible growth just last quarter, and there’s still more partners can do. We are not saturated from the partner landscape selling our security portfolio, so lots of opportunity there.
Robert Dutt: Those additional partners in that space – do you see them being primarily folks who come in from other parts of the HPE network, existing specialists in security who maybe haven’t worked with you in the past, a little bit of both? What’s kind of the…
Ben Fallon: It’s a bit of a combination, but you always have to focus. You can’t go everywhere. And where we’re focusing is on partners that have a pedigree in networking with us, because we’re increasingly seeing that there’s a great attach opportunity, and the convergence of the network and security we think is only going to accelerate.
Robert Dutt: Are we at the point of having a formal program, that kind of thing, to bring those partners on board, or to enable and encourage the partners who are in the HPE sphere, but not yet?
Ben Fallon: Yeah, we do. We have, as part of our Partner Ready Vantage program, our broad certifications that are part of that, and that’s how you get to platinum, gold, silver, etc. But then we have competencies, and we have a number of security competencies that partners can build up that capability. They can pick different parts of the portfolio. They could be brand new to networking, but build up competency in security, and that will bring technical competence and capability, but also incremental profitability for them as well.
Robert Dutt: A lot of talk this week, obviously, about the disruption around VMware – customers reconsidering virtualization strategies and how that drives the refresh cycles within the data center on some of the compute and storage hardware, all that kind of good stuff. Does that also create a network refresh opportunity?
Ben Fallon: So there can be opportunities that do arise. I don’t know if that’s the biggest piece that’s driving growth in data center networking right now. I think the AI boom is doing a significant job there, and probably dwarfs anything else. But what you’ll see is announcements this week around how we’re, really from a technology perspective, bringing more parts of the portfolio together from across the hybrid cloud portfolio and networking. Because really, that’s what customers want. They want integrated technology that solves their problems, and that’s what we’re focused on.
Robert Dutt: From a Canadian channel perspective, where do you see the biggest networking opportunities today? I’m going to guess your answer to the last question strongly informs the answer to this one. But what are the biggest opportunities in the back half of the year? And what’s your ask of Canadian partners who are listening to this?
Ben Fallon: Yeah. Well, there are two things I think are the biggest opportunity. One is cross-selling. If you’re selling part of the HPE portfolio today, look at how you can integrate across the stack – whether that’s the full HPE stack, or whether it’s specific to networking. There’s a huge opportunity there, and we’re seeing that partners that have adopted that are growing faster than anyone else. Second, new logos – going after new customers. We’re here to win. We’re here to be number one, and we’ll do that first in wireless networking. And to do that, we need new customers. And you’ll see new incentives and new programs come out in November that will put even more wood behind the arrow – that’s going to make it an incredible opportunity for partners to go and solve the networking crimes of other vendors and bring them into the light of a self-driving network.
Robert Dutt: You guys are obviously deep into the process of integrating programs between legacy HPE and legacy Juniper. We have the November 1 date, I believe, as the formalized launch date for that becoming one. What can partners expect coming out of that at a programmatic level on the networking side?
Ben Fallon: Yeah. So what we’re doing is, first of all, looking at the experience partners have – everything from how they get certified, trying to simplify that and make sure that they’re not having to do multiple layers and duplicative actions. We’re working on the experience when it comes to things like registering a deal, getting rebates, keeping it simple. I think other vendors I’ve seen, you need a bit of a rocket science degree to figure out how all of these different programs and rebates come together. We’re focusing on keeping it simple, we’re focused on driving action, and most of all – which I think is often missed – we’re making sure that our sales teams know how to engage with partners really well and go and win deals together.
Robert Dutt: Good luck on a big week here at Discover, and thanks for taking the time once again.
Ben Fallon: Appreciated. And we love working with our Canadian partners, and just a big thank you to all of them that are on board already.
Robert Dutt: There you have it, Ben Fallon from HPE.
I’d like to thank Ben for his time. We were literally recording between sessions at Discover, and I appreciate him making it work.
And thank you for listening as well. A few things that stuck with me from this one.
The self-driving network story has been fairly abstract for a while, but his Mist example – autonomous remediation actions you can toggle on in the dashboard, no human in the loop for known problem types – it’s the most concrete I’ve heard it get. That’s actually something you can put in front of a customer.
The other thing worth sitting with: “pretty much 100% of our security sales go through partners. There is no other path.” That’s what Ben said. If you’re an HPE networking partner who hasn’t yet built a security practice, and HPE is out there talking about a billion-dollar security ambition, someone is going to capture that opportunity. Make sure it’s you.
And for partners who may have walked away from the Juniper side of the portfolio at acquisition time and have been watching from the sidelines, November is shaping up to be the moment to take another look. Simplified programs, new incentives, a unified experience. It’s worth paying attention to.
If you found the episode useful, we’d love to have you subscribe to the podcast. You’ll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most of the major podcast directories. If you have a moment to leave a rating or a review, it always helps.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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HPE used keynote day at HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas to make a clear argument: networking is the foundation of the AI era.
In the afternoon general session, Rami Rahim, HPE’s EVP and GM of Networking, led what was arguably the most channel-actionable session of the week. Using a “Millennium Tower” analogy to frame the risk of building AI on a networking foundation that wasn’t designed for it, Rahim announced four items worth flagging for Canadian partners.
First, Marvis AI cross-pollination: Mist’s Marvis AI engine is coming to the Aruba Central platform, with explicit confirmation that neither platform is being sunset. Second, a unified SASE orchestrator combining SD-WAN and Secure Service Edge under a single console and consistent zero trust policy layer – including a new AI Firewall capability that classifies GenAI application usage as sanctioned, unsanctioned, or tolerated with guardrails like prompt filtering and upload controls. Third, the QFX 5140, a new inference switch purpose-built for distributed AI at the edge, announced this week. And fourth, the HPE Network Migration Program: zero percent financing through HPE Financial Services plus asset trade-in for legacy gear – a deal closer for stalled network refresh conversations.
In the morning keynote, HPE president and CEO Antonio Neri framed the company’s direction around the “agentic enterprise” – autonomous AI agents that act without user input – and warned of the “shadow cost” of agents deployed at scale without IT governance. His GreenLake Intelligence example made it concrete: a system that sees a major all-hands meeting on the calendar and proactively prioritizes video traffic before the strain hits, based on historical telemetry.
In the press Q&A, Neri put a five-month timeline on the Juniper integration – from deal close to fully integrated data centre switching, routing, and campus portfolios – and said HPE is “better than Cisco in many ways, whether it’s campus and branch.”
For Canadian partners, data sovereignty is adding a uniquely local dimension to the private cloud AI and self-driving networks story. More on that in an upcoming In The Channel episode from the show.
Read Full TranscriptThis epsisode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event on ChannelBuzz.ca — you’ll find out HPE Discover 2026 News Hub in the menu bar at the top of the page.
This episode of The Buzz is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. HPE Discover runs June 15 to 18 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Discover what’s next at hpe.com/discover.
Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wedneday, June 17th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
We covered news elsewhere in an earlier episode of the Buzz, go check that out if you haven’t already. For this one, we’re drilling down on Tuesday’s news from HPE Discover 2026.
We’re right in the middle of the week here, and I want to bring you the highlights from Tuesday – keynote day, the day HPE makes its biggest arguments. And the argument on Tuesday was pretty clear: the network – not the GPU, not the server – is the foundation of the AI era. They had product announcements to back it up. Here’s what went down.
Let’s start with the afternoon, because honestly, the networking general session led by Rami Rahim – who heads up HPE’s networking business as EVP and GM following the Juniper acquisition – was the meatiest part of the day for the channel.
The headline is what HPE is calling self-driving networks. The idea is that AI-driven networking should be able to sense, learn, optimize, and heal itself in real time, without requiring a human to manually troubleshoot every issue.
Rami opened with an analogy I thought landed pretty well. He talked about the Millennium Tower in San Francisco – the luxury condo building that started sinking after construction because the foundation wasn’t built for the environmental load it was sitting on. His point: companies that are building AI on top of networking infrastructure that wasn’t designed for it are making the same mistake. “AI innovation can only move as fast as the network allows” was the line. It’s a good one.
So what did they actually announce? Four things worth flagging.
First: Marvis AI cross-pollination. Mist’s Marvis AI engine is coming to the Aruba Central platform, and Aruba capabilities are moving the other way too. Both platforms get stronger. And the important subtext for the channel: neither platform is being sunset. HPE has been clear about that, and it’s worth saying out loud, because there’s been plenty of speculation since the Juniper deal closed.
Second: a unified SASE orchestrator. HPE is combining its SD-WAN and Secure Service Edge capabilities into a single console with a consistent zero trust policy layer across the enterprise. But the most interesting piece is what they’re calling the AI Firewall – the ability to classify your users’ GenAI applications as sanctioned, unsanctioned and blocked, or tolerated with guardrails like prompt filtering and data upload controls. They demoed it blocking a data exfiltration attempt through a GenAI app in real time. If you’re an MSP and your customers are asking you how they let people use AI tools without losing control of sensitive data, this is a concrete answer to that question.
Third: the QFX 5140. This is a new inference switch – new this week, not a prior announcement – purpose-built for distributed AI workloads at the edge. AI-optimized load balancing and congestion control, designed to connect GPUs at distributed locations. The edge inference angle is where this gets interesting for partners who are thinking about AI at branch or remote sites.
And fourth – and I want to make sure this doesn’t get buried – the HPE Network Migration Program. Zero percent financing through HPE Financial Services, plus asset trade-in for legacy non-self-driving gear. If you’ve got a customer sitting on aging campus or branch infrastructure and the refresh conversation has stalled, this is the conversation starter to go back with.
On proof points: Rami said that over 80 percent of network incidents are now either fully self-remediating or instantly identified with a resolution ready – up from around 50 percent just a few years ago. He had big customers on stage: Ohio State University, the Royal Bank of Canada, Sentara Health. The RBC quote was notable – security is now “job number one” and it has to be managed at the network layer for what they called immutable evidence. That framing works particularly well in regulated industries, which is a big part of the Canadian market.
In the press Q&A afterward, Rami was direct about where the security and networking story goes: “When we say network and security are coming together, it’s not a tagline – it’s an investment strategy.” He also acknowledged that getting customers to trust full network autonomy is an adoption curve – most start with what they call trusted actions, where the system recommends and the human approves, before moving to full automation. I actually think that’s a reassuring thing to say rather than a weakness – it matches how enterprise IT actually works.
Now let’s go back to the morning. CEO Antonio Neri’s keynote set the strategic context for everything Rami built on in the afternoon.
Neri’s frame for the whole show is what he’s calling the agentic enterprise – the shift from applications that respond to user inputs, to autonomous agents that reason across your data and take action. And his point is that infrastructure has to be built to handle that, because agents deployed at scale without IT governance become the new shadow IT problem. He used the phrase “shadow cost” – the risk of an AI-heavy workforce operating outside IT’s visibility and control. That’s a real and near-term problem for your customers, and MSPs are typically the ones who get called when it goes sideways.
The most concrete illustration he gave was GreenLake Intelligence. The example: a major internal announcement gets added to the corporate calendar. The system sees it, anticipates that a large portion of the workforce is about to jump on a video call simultaneously, and proactively prioritizes video traffic before the strain hits – based on historical telemetry, no human in the loop. It’s a small example but it makes the concept real in a way that “agentic infrastructure” as a term doesn’t always do.
In the press Q&A after the keynote, Neri was notably direct on a couple of things. On the Juniper integration, he put a specific number on it: from close of the deal on July 2nd last year, to fully integrated data centre switching, routing, and campus portfolios – five months. That’s a credible timeline, and it matters for partners who’ve been watching to see whether the deal delivers or whether it turns into the kind of slow-moving integration that disrupts customer relationships for years.
And on competitive positioning, he was unusually blunt. Asked about HPE’s networking vision going forward, he said HPE is – direct quote – “better than Cisco in many ways, whether it’s campus and branch.” That’s not something you hear a CEO say casually at a press Q&A.
Now, for the Canadian channel specifically, there’s a layer here that tends to get underplayed in the broader coverage of a show like this.
The conversation in Canada right now isn’t just “upgrade your network because AI needs faster pipes.” It’s “bring AI workloads back on-prem or to Canadian colocation, because you can’t let that data live in a US-based cloud under current conditions.” Data sovereignty is a genuine buying driver right now in a way it hasn’t been before. And HPE’s self-driving networks story, and the broader private cloud AI play, maps onto that buying driver in a way that’s worth having a direct conversation with your customers about.
I’ll have more on the Canadian channel perspective in an upcoming In The Channel episode coming later this week from HPE Discover. But the framing I’d leave you with is this: self-driving networks don’t eliminate the managed services partner – they change what that partner does. The network takes on more of the routine work, but someone still needs to watch the dashboard, make strategic decisions, and bring the human layer. That’s still your business, and if anything it’s a higher-value version of it.
One more thing before we go – and this one’s a little off the beaten path. Someone asked Antonio Neri in the press Q&A who he’s picking for the World Cup. Being Argentine, he said he’d love to see Argentina win again – but acknowledged it’s tougher with an extra game in the format this time around. His final four: England, France, Argentina, and Spain. No bias there whatsoever.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines from HPE Discover. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers, aside from HPE Discover:
OpenAI launches official partner program and investment fund: OpenAI has officially introduced its new partner program alongside a $150 million investment fund aimed at expanding its enterprise ecosystem. The partner program is designed to help service providers, system integrators, and consultancies build, deploy, and manage custom AI solutions leveraging OpenAI’s models. According to the company, the initiative will provide partners with dedicated technical support, go-to-market resources, and early access to new product features. The accompanying $150 million fund will focus on investing in early-stage startups that are developing applications on top of the platform.GTIA names two Canadian Innovate Awards finalists: GTIA announced the six finalists for its inaugural Innovate Awards today, with two Canadian companies among them: GoWest.ai (Toronto, customer-facing AI category, for its CFP Service Desk and Field Technician Assistant) and Nucleus Networks (Vancouver, internal AI category). Winners receive a $20,000 USD cash prize, announced at ChannelCon 2026 on August 5 in San Diego. For more on the awards and what GTIA is looking for, check out our In The Channel conversation with Carolyn April from April 27. And to hear Jennifer Roy of Nucleus on how they’re thinking about AI, that episode is here.Cisco research highlights Canadian AI network risks: A new study from Cisco underscores an infrastructure cliff for Canadian organizations. The research found that 71 percent of Canadian respondents expect their current network capacity to hit its limits within 36 months due to AI workloads, while 91 percent cited budget constraints as the primary barrier to the required modernization. The data provides a critical conversation point for MSPs: any serious AI strategy must now be preceded by a serious network upgrade strategy.Okta integrates with Google Cloud AI: Okta has announced it is adding a dedicated identity security layer to Google Cloud AI, while its Auth0 platform is now directly integrating with Gemini for AI agent deployment. According to the company, these integrations are designed to bring enterprise-grade identity governance into the fast-moving AI ecosystem. For Canadian solution providers helping customers experiment with AI tools, this integration provides a mechanism to secure these environments and non-human identities without slowing down developer velocity.CrowdStrike open AI gateway: CrowdStrike has announced an open gateway ecosystem making Falcon AI’s control plane available across AI infrastructure, with native integrations spanning Databricks, Google Cloud, Azure API Management, and others. Simultaneously, Grant Thornton Advisors announced it is standardizing its managed security service operations on Falcon Complete, replacing legacy MDR with what CrowdStrike is positioning as agentic MDR.Acumatica channel appointment: Acumatica has appointed Roman Bukary as senior vice president of partner strategy and programs, effective immediately. Bukary brings prior experience in SaaS channel leadership and will be responsible for the strategy and ongoing evolution of Acumatica’s partner ecosystem.Coro Global Lean IT Day: Coro has launched Global Lean IT Day as an annual observance on June 16, recognizing IT professionals who manage enterprise-level cybersecurity complexity with limited team size and resources. The announcement is tied to ISC2 data showing 59 percent of organizations report critical or significant cybersecurity skills shortages, and Coro says it will release full survey findings ahead of Black Hat USA 2026.Leaseweb Canada leadership: Leaseweb Canada has named Estelle Azemard as its new chief executive officer. Azemard, who will be based in Montreal, brings more than 16 years of cloud industry experience and will lead the company’s continued growth and strategic expansion in Canada, where data sovereignty and hybrid cloud demand are both rising.Read Full TranscriptWelcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wednesday, June 17th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
We’ll have a full roundup of everything going down at HPE Discover this week in your feed in about an hour from now, but in the meantime, there’s plenty going on aside from all the news at Discover. Here’s what we think is worth keeping an eye on.
OpenAI has officially introduced its new partner program alongside a $150 million investment fund aimed at expanding its enterprise ecosystem. The partner program is designed to help service providers, system integrators, and consultancies build, deploy, and manage custom AI solutions leveraging OpenAI’s models. According to the company, the initiative will provide partners with dedicated technical support, go-to-market resources, and early access to new product features. The accompanying $150 million fund will focus on investing in early-stage startups that are developing applications on top of the platform. As enterprise demand for generative AI moves from the proof-of-concept phase to production deployment, solution providers are increasingly being asked to navigate the integration complexities of building AI agents and customized models. The launch represents a significant maturation of OpenAI’s channel strategy, moving beyond direct enterprise sales to embrace the third-party ecosystem. Formalizing a channel structure gives Canadian IT providers a clearer framework to monetize AI advisory and implementation services, allowing them to capture more margin as customer demand scales up.
The Global Technology Industry Association – GTIA – has announced the six finalists for its inaugural Innovate Awards, and Canadians have a strong showing. Two of the six companies are Canadian: GoWest.ai, the Toronto-based AI consultancy founded by West McDonald, is a finalist for its CFP Service Desk and Field Technician Assistant in the customer-facing category, while Nucleus Networks, the Vancouver-based MSP that now operates across five Canadian cities, is a finalist in the internal AI solutions category. The remaining four finalists – J&M Solutions, Sentry Technology Solutions, Framework IT, and Thrive – are all US-based. Winners in each category receive a twenty-thousand-dollar cash prize, announced live at the ChannelCon 2026 final keynote on August 5th in San Diego. One-third of the inaugural finalist class being Canadian is significant for a channel community that too often looks south of the border for proof points on what real AI deployment looks like. If you want more context on what GTIA was building toward with these awards, and what “deployed and in production” actually means in practice, we covered exactly that earlier this year on In The Channel with Carolyn April, GTIA’s vice president of research and market intelligence. And to hear how Nucleus thinks about AI inside their own MSP operations, Jennifer Roy joined us on the show in late April. Links to both episodes are in the show notes.
A new study from Cisco underscores a looming infrastructure cliff for Canadian organizations chasing AI ambitions. The research found that 71 percent of Canadian respondents expect their current network capacity to hit its limits within 36 months due to the demands of AI workloads. Even more pressing, 91 percent cited budget constraints as the primary barrier to the required modernization. This data suggests an impending reckoning where artificial intelligence software aspirations simply outpace the physical network capabilities required to move massive data sets. The strain on existing infrastructure will likely manifest in latency issues and stalled proof-of-concept projects. This presents a critical conversation point for Canadian MSPs and infrastructure partners to bring to their customers: any serious AI strategy must now be preceded by a serious network upgrade strategy. It creates a massive opportunity for the channel to re-engage clients on foundational infrastructure, turning a software conversation into a broader hardware and services engagement.
In Brief:
Okta announces dedicated identity secrity layer for Google Cloud
CrowdStrike announced open AI gateway ecosystem.
Acumatica appoints Roman Bukary as its new senior vice president of partner strategy and programs.
Coro launches the first-ever Global Lean IT Day to recognize IT professionals managing enterprise-level cybersecurity with limited resources.
Leaseweb Canada names Estelle Azemard as its new chief executive officer.
Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post.
Remember that we’ll have all The Buzz from HPE Discover in your inbox in about an hour, and shortly after that, be sure to check out today’s In The Channel, where we’ll talk to HPE’s Ben Fallon about the company’s self-driving networks strategy.
And if you haven‘t heard it yet, yesterday on The Buzz we took you through all the news from HPE Partner Growth Summit at Discover 2026, and then we followed that up Tuesday with HPE North American channel chief Jeremiah Jenson, going deep on The Power of One, the announcements from the show, and his big reqquest for solution providers. Be sure you check it out if you’re working with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North Amiercan channels at HPE
This episode is the second half of a two-part conversation with Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North America Channel and Partner Ecosystem at HPE, recorded ahead of HPE Discover 2026.
Part one – the Discover preview and HPE’s AI infrastructure themes – is Monday’s episode. This half focuses on the announcements made at the HPE Partner Growth Summit on Monday, June 16.
The centrepiece is what HPE is calling the “power of one” – one portfolio, one partner program, one integrated experience. It’s partly organizational messaging, but there’s real substance underneath: HPE spent the past 18 months merging three separate channel organizations (HPE, Aruba, and Juniper) into a single team, and the work of translating that into a coherent partner experience is now coming due.
Concretely, that means Juniper partners integrating into Partner Ready Vantage on November 1 – with tier mapping already defined – along with Zerto, Private Cloud 3000, and Private Cloud 1000 shifting to channel-only routes to market. HPE is also extending free three-year Morpheus software licenses to approximately 600 partners for internal deployment, as much about building hands-on expertise as it is about the virtualization savings.
The piece with the most direct relevance for Canadian MSPs is the new partner-branded services model: partners lead with their own brand, own the customer relationship, and HPE backs them as the invisible infrastructure layer for on-site break-fix and parts logistics.
Jenson specifically calls out Canadian partners’ customer intimacy and regional compliance knowledge as a natural fit for that services-forward model. The “one more mile” close is worth hearing directly.
Tuesday’s episode of The Buzz has the headline news breakdown – check that first if you want the full context.
Read Full Transcript[Robert Dutt]: This episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026, and we’ll be bringing you full event coverage all week right here on ChannelBuzz.ca. Don’t miss it!
Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.
Quick note before we dive into this one – if you haven‘t already listened to Tuesday’s episode of The Buzz, I’d really encourage you to go find that in your feed first. On The Buzz, we’ve got the headline rundown on HPE’s Partner Growth Summit announcements – what was announced, what moved, what the numbers are. What we’re doing here is going a level deeper with the person who actually owns this for North America.
Jeremiah Jenson is the vice president of North America Channel and Partner Ecosystem at HPE. He returned to the company about a year ago, after a previous decade-plus that included the Aruba acquisition, a stint at AWS in between, and enough perspective on how the IT channel actually works to fill several episodes on their own. This is part two of a conversation we recorded just ahead of Discover. Part one, the Discover preview and the big AI infrastructure themes, is on the feed Monday if you want the full picture.
This half is about the Partner Growth Summit announcements – what HPE is calling the power of one. One portfolio, one program, one partner experience. And specifically, what it means if you’re a Canadian reseller or MSP trying to figure out where HPE fits into your business right now and into the second half of 2026.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Jeremiah Jenson.
Jeremiah, good to be chatting with you again.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Yeah, good to talk to you, Rob. Thanks.
[Robert Dutt]: Let’s get into some of the stuff that was announced at Partner Growth Summit. And I guess let’s start here. You’ve now had about 18 months since the single channel org stood up, and now you’ve got the Juniper integration happening on top of that. From your seat, what did that single organization feel like to execute on? And what’s the one thing that turned out to be harder than expected?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: One, it feels very good. So a little bit of my history – I was here when the Aruba acquisition happened some 10 years ago, and then I was with a different company for a period of time, and I’ve been back for about a year and a half now. And I will say it’s been fantastic to unify the channel in a lot of ways – making it more simple and easier and more profitable for partners to understand and to do business with, but also to take advantage of the power of the portfolio. So what’s it like? Simple answer. It’s great because we have a tremendous amount of channel history and momentum and power from that piece of the business, combined with a tremendous amount of channel history, momentum, and power on the hybrid IT side, and bringing all that together in a unified way. It’s fantastic. Now, the hardest part about that is you’re dealing with big businesses and the devil being in the details. And that’s where we just spend a lot of time working on. While the big themes are unification, ease of doing business, and simplifying things along those lines, the hard part is in the detail. Like, how do we actually want to help accomplish this? And so from that, we’ve had to get a lot of very big voices in the room and get through some very meaningful things on behalf of our customers and our partners.
[Robert Dutt]: I guess, to your point on your history and the long history of HPE in this acquisition space, at least to some degree, you’ve got the muscle memory of doing the Aruba side of things and getting that integrated into the programs. And now it’s sort of doing that at a different timeline, at a different scale with Juniper.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: It’s true. We have the muscle memory of acquisitions and some history of that. I think the one thing that is really just awesome to see is how people have come together with customer and partner being front and center, and how are we iterating and innovating on their behalf, and just a unified goal of how do we move really fast? Because the opportunity in that market is too big for us to miss. And so there’s really this motivation to move very, very fast and very quickly. And that’s why we’re ahead of our integration targets. We’re very pleased with where we are in that business, unifying the channel, unifying a bunch of business processes. You’re seeing that in the programmatic announcements we made. So it’s nice to be able to take advantage of that muscle memory. We’ve done the training, now we’re doing it for real.
[Robert Dutt]: So the November 1 date is concrete, and the tier mapping for the Juniper roll into Partner Ready Vantage is clear – Elite Plus becomes Platinum, etc. But what about the Canadian partner today who’s a Juniper partner, but has never really sold HPE server or storage? What does that reality look like in practice? Is there a runway and enablement in place to help bring those folks on board? And obviously, I assume you want as many of them transacting as far across the portfolio as possible – what does it look like as the two truly become one?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Absolutely. So one, we want them participating across the full portfolio. One program gives partners a very clear, unified path across networking, cloud, and AI. And this move that we’ve made, it’s a major simplification that gives partners a more consistent way in which they can engage across those three – whether that’s networking, cloud, or AI. And it also paints a very clear opportunity in terms of how they can take the broader portfolio to their customers to solve those business problems. I always want to keep that customer front and center, and that they have a unique opportunity to solve a broader set of customer challenges. And so the value there is that partners can work across more of the portfolio without navigating disconnected experiences. And I also want to say, we’re not forcing anybody to become something that they’re not. This is an opportunity for them, and we’ve made it simple for them to capture that opportunity and to grow their business with HPE.
[Robert Dutt]: It’s always a balancing act, right? You want to incentivize, but you don’t want to push too hard because that potentially breaks partner business models or creates challenges. But at the same time, it’s like – we’ve got all this stuff over here too. You want to sell it? That’d be cool.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Yeah, look, I’m not twisting anybody’s arm here. I think the opportunity speaks for itself. And I think our results in the market also speak for themselves. The opportunity is there, and that opportunity stands on its own. Whether you want to invest in an AI practice or whether you have an opportunity to help customers solve a problem with compute, we have the right enablement and want to come alongside that partner and take advantage of that opportunity and help that customer. But that opportunity is real and right there for them now. The value of the opportunity, the capability of our products, how that’s meeting the market with customers – that speaks for itself. So the opportunity is there, and I want to harness it. I want to take advantage of it with our mutual partners.
[Robert Dutt]: We seem to be getting a little bit of a drumbeat going in terms of HPE products being declared channel-only in terms of go-to-market. Last year with VME Essentials, this year it’s Zerto, PC 3000, PC 1000. There’s clearly a strategic logic here beyond just adding product to the list. What’s the underlying principle on what makes a product the right candidate to be channel-only? And what does it mean for a partner that these products will only come through them and their peers?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Well, I mean, there’s a couple of things there. Certainly we’re expanding areas where partners can lead, and that creates additional room for growth, both for them and for us. And it’s a clear signal that HPE is expanding in areas where – like I said – where partners can lead, but especially in areas that are core to the market, whether that’s private cloud or virtualization with this great VM reset that we’ve got going on, or whether that’s data protection with some of our Zerto solutions and ransomware protection, things along those lines. So this gives partners more ownership and opportunity while also creating more room for them to differentiate. I don’t want a homogeneous channel. Each partner has not made the same investments. And so each partner has a level of capability, a market that they serve, and has made investments to serve their customers in the right way. And so this partner-led opportunity with these products gives them not only ownership of the opportunity, but clear ways in which they can differentiate by investing in these product sets. So it’s an area of channel leadership. And then finally, it also speaks to our channel heritage. We trust the channel. We partner with them very closely, and we see an opportunity for us to grow our collective business by allowing them to lead.
[Robert Dutt]: To your point on the non-homogeneous nature of the channel, I think that’s represented well throughout the program and what you guys are talking about in terms of being open to embracing and facilitating multi-partner engagements when the customer needs support from different specialists in different areas to drive those outcomes.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think this helps partners build higher-value practices. I don’t need them just to sell another product. We have lots of products that are available for sale, but this helps them see and build a higher-value practice, whether that’s the services capability that they can bring in – because we all know customers need help transforming to new and more efficient ways of doing business in a hybrid IT environment. So it creates more ways for partners to move up that value chain, whether that’s through their services or deeper expertise that they want to build. And it matters because that creates long-term growth. As they become more valuable to the customer through their differentiated capabilities, differentiated services, or the distinct and unique value that they bring to their customers, it creates long-term growth. It helps build something that outlasts not only them, but us.
[Robert Dutt]: Part of the announcements is you’re giving up to 600 partners free Morpheus licenses to run their own environments. It’s interesting – it really sounds like it’s saying, sort of an opportunity to become your own reference customer, to drink your own champagne, to eat your own dog food, whatever your preferred analogy is there. What are the expectations around how partners use those capabilities? Is it about demos? Is it about building their own expertise? Is it about getting a chance to do some of that transformation and reinvention of their own infrastructure and tech stack so they can speak more clearly to customers about what’s possible?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Yeah, I mean, what is going on in the virtualization market is impacting everybody – the entire channel. And I don’t mean just how various companies are going to market. It’s impacting everybody, and that includes our partners who are customers of a lot of different companies. And there’s real power in our portfolio. We see a clear opportunity not only to invest in the channel with those partners who have invested in us, those partners who have invested in the virtualization competency – we want to invest back in them with the capability that our portfolio brings to them. So these VME licenses offer them an opportunity to reset their virtualization environment and set themselves up for continued modernization. And what better story to take to their customers than, “We know this works for you because we did it ourselves.” So drinking their own champagne is a very good analogy there. And that is our expectation – not only to help partners realize the true value of the portfolio, but also enable them to modernize and take that story to their customers. And there’s no better way than to say, “I’ve done it myself and here were the outcomes that we saw.”
[Robert Dutt]: Given the scale of the HPE channel, I’m guessing there are going to be a lot of hands going up for those 600 slots.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Well, look, what we see in VME, the Morpheus software suite, is nothing short of impressive. I’ve got a history of working with and working for companies that move very fast, that make decisions fast and execute very quickly. What I have seen in this Morpheus VME space is impressive – it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. The roadmap, our ability to execute against that roadmap, to produce enterprise-quality and just phenomenal products at pace and at scale is incredibly impressive. And so partners that are working with VME and Morpheus today are continuing to be blown away by the capability and the roadmap. And for those partners that haven’t taken advantage of that, please take a moment for yourself and look at what we’re doing here. It’s a fantastic product and a fantastic solution to help customers with what they need most – cost savings while setting the on-ramp to modernization.
[Robert Dutt]: Especially in a moment where perhaps acquiring new tech is not going to be as easy as it has been from a hardware point of view.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Exactly. In a moment where everybody is looking for ways to save dollars, you can cut virtualization costs by up to 90% with this product. It has very simple per-socket pricing. And so what better opportunity not only to help our partners, but to get that message out to their customers.
[Robert Dutt]: In terms of channel penetration, is this a fairly mature, realized market, or is there still a lot of greenfield out there on the channel side?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: I mean, there’s a massive opportunity. You think about the size of that virtualization market – the size of the VM reset, the virtual machine market – it’s huge. So there is a tremendous amount of headroom in this market. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity for all of us. And we have to turn that opportunity into reality. And that’s happening now.
[Robert Dutt]: Moving on to partner-branded services – this is one that really caught my interest, and I think is going to catch the interest of a lot of folks, especially those who are in the MSP mode. Can you walk me through what it actually looks like for a Canadian MSP? They’re putting their name on a support offering, HPE is the invisible backbone. What does it look like in terms of the customer call, billing, and what does HPE get out of participating in this model where it’s the partner and not HPE that’s the primary brand?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: First of all, a clear thing with partners is they have a level of customer understanding – or I often say they have a level of customer intimacy that I could never replace and don’t intend to. So partner-branded services really helps us service the customer faster with a very valuable piece of that equation, and that’s the partner. So allowing a partner to take first-call support, first-call services, and to be able to capitalize on that customer knowledge and that depth of history and customer intimacy that they have – what we have found is that just produces a better customer outcome. So E+ in North America is one of those first partners that has taken advantage of this, and we’re really just enthused and excited about what’s coming through at the customer level. That’s the piece that I want to put front and center – customers have a need for a faster answer, a faster path to resolution, and partners are part of that. And so this acceleration of this program is really helping.
From a Canadian standpoint, look, who knows more about the Canadian market than a Canadian partner serving a Canadian customer and understanding their requirements? I often say Canadians have forgotten more about Canada than I’ll ever know, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that. So the opportunity to deploy that knowledge front and center with a customer – no better opportunity. And it plays especially important, I think, in a market like Canada where there are so many differences regionally. In any large market there are regional differences, but there are real and meaningful differences here.
[Robert Dutt]: Yeah, I mean, let’s not pretend that the United States and Canada are identical, because they’re not. There are nuances, there are real and meaningful differences.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: And whether that’s compliance or any other kind of nuance, those differences are real at the customer level. And so the opportunity for partners to service customers with that level of knowledge – whether that’s compliance or regional nuance – that speaks to the power of the channel. And it’s phenomenal to see this announcement come to life and see partners taking advantage of it.
[Robert Dutt]: So how quickly do you anticipate it expanding to a broader number of potential service provider partners who are in that partner-branded services mode with you?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: I think it really is incumbent upon us to be very deliberate about what we build with our partners. I think in the past, sometimes partners get very focused on what can I sell today. And I think the opportunity with partner-branded services is how can we build something that outlasts all of us? How can we build a foundation of services? Because once you have that services capability and once you are effectively taking that first call and you are not only the provider but you are the solution – you are the solution for when things need to be fixed – that stickiness becomes very real. So we have to really think about what do we want to build? What is the services capability that we’re building together? And from that, that will create the pace at which we grow. But there are very large partners, very sizable MSPs, as well as what I would call MSPs who have very specialized capability that want to take advantage of this.
[Robert Dutt]: Moving on to storage – you’ve got the 15% front-end takeout rebate on top of existing rebates for competitive storage displacement. That’s a notable number. How should a Canadian reseller read that? I’ve heard that it runs at least through calendar year, but is this a period-based incentive or is it a signal that HPE is ready to play offense on storage for the long haul?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: It’s the latter. We are very much on the front foot when it comes to our storage portfolio. The product is fantastic. The storage portfolio specifically is in a place that I’ve never seen it before in decades of history. And that’s phenomenal. And the results we have seen over the past several quarters – it has been several quarters of really good growth and great success here in North America. And now is the time to pour gasoline on that fire. So this is a signal of not only our existing success, but how can we be even more on the front foot and take that to our partners who want to lean in with us. Now is the time to lean in with storage and our hybrid cloud offerings and really accelerate – how we go and acquire new customers and grow that base for the future. There’s a phenomenal opportunity with our product, but there’s a bigger opportunity in what customers are demanding, and we have the right product to meet it.
[Robert Dutt]: So November 1, one experience. That’s a big promise. We’ve got one portal, one deal registration system, one development fund. There’s a lot in there. For a partner who’s been managing different login credentials and different MDF processes, what’s actually noticeably different on November 2 in terms of their relationship and running their business with HPE?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Yeah. I mean, I say this a lot because it’s real – I spend an inordinate amount of my time thinking about how do we simplify? How do we make ourselves easier to do business with? And so one experience is really about making it easier for partners to engage, to move faster, and to grow at an accelerated rate. And it matters because partners want speed, but speed comes from consistency and getting rid of some of the administrative overhead that is in place. So this is all about reducing friction in the places where partners feel it the most. Having to log out of one website and into another – common tools, common onboarding processes, contracting, deal flow, deal registration, things along those lines. This is really all about making it easier for partners to engage and easier for us to do business together. It pains me and keeps me awake at night if they’ve got to log into multiple websites – it’s just time. It’s impacting the time in which we can get to customers and service customers. So that’s what they should expect: a common set of tools, common contracting, common deal flow, easier to engage, and moving faster with HPE.
[Robert Dutt]: We’ve heard that this is going to be AI-enabled in terms of the partner portal and partner tools and experiences. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means today, as well as – without giving away too much of the secret sauce – what you’re thinking about in terms of what AI-enabling the partner experience is going to look like for your partners in the long run?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Yeah, I mean, we’re a leader in the AI market and we have a long history of drinking our own champagne, as we talked about earlier. And so there’s an opportunity to deploy some of our AI tools in customer- and partner-facing experiences – whether that’s websites and things along those lines. As an example – and I don’t have a very explicit example in terms of this specific process – but one of the mental models that we have is: sometimes you’ve got to send an email to an email alias when it’s a repetitive process, things along those lines. Agentic AI and the AI tools and infrastructure that we produce for customers every day can help solve those questions immediately. So how do we put some of our AI tools into that workflow and solve at pace and do things much, much faster – so we’re not waiting on someone to type up a response from some anonymous alias. And while that’s a very basic example, you begin to think about other opportunities in terms of repetitive processes that drive partners crazy. How can we simplify and make things move faster?
[Robert Dutt]: Yeah, I was going to say – it may be a basic example, but you can imagine how that multiplies over time and over opportunities and over deals when it’s repeated again and again.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: It’s really about solving real problems. We can talk high and mighty and pie in the sky and AI this and AI that, but it’s really about what, at the end of the day, some human sitting in front of a desk is experiencing. It’s solving real-world problems with technology and capability. And it’s that real-world approach to the business that we’re taking.
[Robert Dutt]: On the distribution landscape – we heard recently you’ve named TD SYNNEX and Ingram Micro as the two globals with local augmentation. Obviously those two are very strong players in the Canadian market. But how does distribution look now in Canada, and how do you see it looking in terms of additional niche or boutique players to round out the strategy?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: So distribution is a core part of how we go to market and a core part of our overall channel strategy. The global announcement of Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX – of course they’re both headquartered here in North America and we do a lot of business with them, and we’re excited about the plans that we have together. Stay tuned. You’ll see additional announcements in terms of how we think about that landscape and how we’re accelerating with our other distribution partners. So more to come there in the very near term.
[Robert Dutt]: All right. A teaser. I love that. Last one for me. There’s a lot in these announcements and partners are going to be reading a lot of headlines, listening to a lot of stuff – probably have already, as they’re listening to this. But what’s the one big thing you would most want a Canadian partner – reseller, MSP, wherever they fit in the equation – to actually understand and act on from what HPE is announcing at Partner Growth Summit?
[Jeremiah Jenson]: I’ll answer it this way – just who I am as a person, just my personal hobby. I love long-distance trail running. I’m an ultramarathoner. And I always think about: can I run one more mile? And I’m not saying that everybody should go out there and sign up for a 50-mile or 100-mile race, but I do think about, can I run one more mile? And so to bring that back to what is my ask of whether you’re an MSP or partner or something along those lines – with a portfolio of our size, what’s one more thing that you can take to your customer? Is that data center networking? Is that moving from Juniper into the wireless space with some of our Aruba products? Is that compute? Is it that I’ve sold storage, but now I want to talk about data protection with Zerto – can I do one more? And so as we think about Discover and the announcements we’ve made this week and the momentum we have with our portfolio, that’s what I want to ask. Can you do one more? What is that one more thing that we might be able to do together that will help you grow your business, help your customer solve another business problem, and help us accomplish our mutual goals?
[Robert Dutt]: All right. I think that’s a reasonable ask. I appreciate you taking the time. Once again, thanks for walking us through some of the details of what was announced at Partner Growth Summit, and have a great rest of the week.
[Jeremiah Jenson]: Always good to talk to you, Rob. Thanks.
[Robert Dutt]: There you have it – Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North America Channel and Partner Ecosystem at HPE. I’d like to thank Jeremiah for his time and for a pretty candid look at how HPE is thinking about the partner community as these organizations – HPE and Juniper – settle into one.
Thank you for listening. There’s a lot to process in these announcements, but the thing I keep coming back to is the frame that Jeremiah closed with – the “one more mile” idea. He’s an ultramarathoner, and the ask he’s making of the Canadian channel isn’t to boil the ocean. It’s to ask yourself if there’s one more HPE product that belongs in front of your customers. Data center networking if you’re already doing compute. Zerto if you’re already doing virtualization. Partner-branded services if you’re an MSP looking to own more of the customer relationship. One more mile, compounded across a partner base, is how the power of one actually becomes real.
We’re going to have a lot more from HPE Discover through the rest of the week, including an on-site recap coming later. So keep an eye on your feed. You’ll find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most of the major podcast directories. And if you’re finding the show useful, a rating or a review genuinely helps other people in the Canadian channel find us.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
HPE’s Partner Growth Summit served as the channel keynote kickoff for HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas on Monday, organized around the company’s “Power of One” theme – the ongoing effort to unify its HPE, Aruba, and Juniper channel organizations under a single program, experience, and portfolio. The deeper programmatic story is covered in this week’s In The Channel with Jeremiah Jenson. But Monday’s keynote also delivered a package of near-term operational and commercial changes that matter to Canadian solution providers right now.
Quote validity extends to 30 days, effective June 16th. HPE is moving its standard quote validity from 14 to 30 days for compute, storage, and GreenLake. Partner operations lead Mark Bakker explained it plainly: extreme commodity cost volatility in the first half of fiscal 2026 forced the two-week window. That’s moderating enough now for HPE to stand behind pricing for a full month. HPE also introduced Smart Choice SKUs – competitively priced configurations aligned to best available supply – and Smart Models in OCA, workload-specific templates updated continuously against current inventory.
Two new financing tools. HPE Financial Services announced a 150% increase in approved partner credit lines to support larger deal proposals. The company also highlighted its 90/9 offer – no payments for 90 days, then 1% monthly payments for nine months – which has been in market since earlier this year and is particularly relevant now for customers whose budget cycle doesn’t align with their deployment timeline.
Channel-only territory expands significantly. Building on last year’s VM Essentials channel-only move – which HPE says generated 700+ new partners and 1,300+ certifications in twelve months – HPE is adding HPE Private Cloud PC 3000, HPE Private Cloud PC 1000, and HPE Zerto software to the channel-only list. Partners earning the private cloud virtualization competency can also apply for free three-year VME licenses to deploy internally, and a new migration assistance program defers VME license costs until customer workloads are actually running on HPE virtual machines, eliminating the “double bullet” cost of mid-migration transition.
Partner Branded Services: the managed services bridge. Simon Ewington, HPE’s senior vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem, used the keynote to formally highlight Partner Branded Services – a model enabling eligible partners to sell and deliver HPE infrastructure support under their own brand, with HPE providing break-fix, parts logistics, and engineering support invisibly in the background. Ewington called it “the bridge that many of you have been waiting for to managed services.” The program launched in April and is actively onboarding its first large partner.
Competitive storage incentives start July 1st. A new competitive storage takeout program offers 15% front-end margin on top of existing rebates for deals that displace a competitor’s storage product.
Partner Day One lands November 1st. HPE is branding its unified experience rollout “Partner Day One” – a single portal, digitized onboarding under three days, unified deal registration, and one MDF program, all effective November 1st. Mark Bakker’s operations team has already consolidated four quoting tools into one, cut support response times from 40 to 8 seconds, and improved payment accuracy from 84% to 98% – operational gains that will translate into the partner-facing portal experience later this year.
For the full conversation on Juniper integration, channel-only strategy, and what the unified program means for Canadian partners, listen to this week’s In The Channel with HPE’s Jeremiah Jenson.
Read Full TranscriptThis episode of The Buzz is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. HPE Discover runs June 15 to 18 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Discover what’s next at hpe.com/discover.
Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Tuesday, June 16th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
HPE’s Partner Growth Summit in Las Vegas wrapped yesterday as the channel kickoff for HPE Discover 2026, and there was enough ground covered in the keynote that I’m going to take a bit more time than usual today. If you work with HPE at all – compute, storage, networking, virtualization – there are several things in here that affect how you do business with them, and some of them take effect today.
HPE is extending its standard quote validity from 14 days to 30 days for compute, storage, and GreenLake, effective today.
The backstory matters here. HPE’s partner operations lead Mark Bakker was direct on stage about why quotes were shortened in the first place. Commodity costs went through a period of extreme volatility in the first half of this year – HPE literally couldn’t hold pricing for more than two weeks. That volatility has moderated enough now that HPE is willing to stand behind a full 30-day quote. For partners who’ve been managing customer decision timelines that rarely fit a two-week window – which is most of them – this means fewer expired quotes, less rework, and more actual selling time.
HPE also introduced two supply chain tools aimed at reducing the gap between what you quote and what actually ships: Smart Choice SKUs, which are competitively priced configurations built around best available inventory; and Smart Models in OCA, which are preconfigured workload-specific templates that update continuously against current supply.
On the financing side, HPE Financial Services had two items. The first is new: a 150% increase in approved credit lines for partners, giving you more headroom to propose and win larger configurations. The second is a tool that’s been available since earlier this year but is worth highlighting in this context: the 90/9 offer. No payments for 90 days, then 1% monthly payments for nine months after that. The pitch is straightforward – customers who are committed to buying but whose budget cycle doesn’t match their deployment timeline now have a bridge.
HPE continues to expand what it routes exclusively through the partner channel, and the additions this year are significant.
Some quick context: last year at Discover, HPE moved VM Essentials – its virtualization platform – to channel-only. The results they reported Monday: more than 700 additional partners are now selling VME software compared to twelve months ago, and over 1,300 partners have taken the associated certifications since November. HPE is treating those numbers as validation and doubling down.
This year’s channel-only additions: HPE Private Cloud PC 3000, HPE Private Cloud PC 1000, and HPE Zerto software. That’s a meaningful slice of HPE’s private cloud and disaster recovery portfolio now locked to the channel. If you’re in the business of helping customers modernize workloads and protect data – the territory most MSPs already play in – HPE is putting margin and exclusivity behind you in those conversations.
Two more items in this space. For partners who want to actually deploy VME inside their own IT environment before taking it to customers, HPE is offering free three-year software licenses – nominal support charge only – to approximately 600 partners who earn the private cloud virtualization competency this year. That’s HPE backing partners to practice what they preach. And for customers who are hesitating on VME because they’re still mid-migration from another hypervisor, there’s now a migration assistance program that defers VME software license costs until workloads are actually running on HPE virtual machines. It eliminates what one speaker described as the “double bullet” – paying for two platforms at the same time during a transition. That’s a real barrier removed.
This one will resonate most with MSPs – and with partners thinking seriously about becoming one.
HPE has launched Partner Branded Services. Eligible partners can now sell and deliver HPE infrastructure support entirely under their own brand. HPE stays invisible, providing on-site break-fix, parts logistics, and deeper engineering support through a channel-only backing arrangement. The partner is the customer’s first call. The partner manages the relationship. The partner books the recurring revenue.
Simon Ewington, HPE’s senior vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem, was explicit about the intent. He called it “the bridge that many of you have been waiting for to managed services.” That’s not spin – it’s HPE publicly acknowledging that its partners’ business models are shifting toward services-led, and building commercial infrastructure around that shift rather than working against it. The program launched quietly in April. HPE is onboarding its first large partner this week.
Starting July 1st, HPE is launching a competitive storage takeout program. Partners who displace a competitor’s storage product will receive 15% front-end margin on top of existing rebates. It’s targeted, it’s aggressive, and it’s designed specifically to push partners into competitive accounts rather than just protect existing HPE business.
Last item, a bit more forward-looking. HPE is calling its unified experience rollout “Partner Day One,” landing November 1st.
What that means in practice: a single partner portal covering the full HPE, Aruba, and Juniper portfolio. A fully digitized onboarding and contracting process, with enrollment time dropping from weeks to under three days. Unified deal registration. A single MDF program spanning the full portfolio.
Mark Bakker, who leads the operations team building all of this, shared some numbers that give you a concrete sense of where the backend is already heading. His team has consolidated four separate quoting and pricing tools into one. AI-assisted support response times have dropped from 40 seconds to 8 seconds. Partner compensation payment accuracy has improved from 84% to 98%. Those are internal numbers today – but they’re the foundation for what partners will start experiencing directly through the portal starting November 1st.
For the full picture on what HPE’s “Power of One” strategy actually means for your business – and there’s considerably more to it than what I’ve covered here – check out today’s In The Channel. It’s part two of my conversation with Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North America channel and partner ecosystem at HPE, recorded this week at Discover.
Jenson walks through the Juniper integration in detail: how partner tiers are mapping across programs when everything merges November 1st, what the unified compensation structure looks like, and which Juniper specializations convert to HPE competencies. He also gets into the philosophy behind the channel-only decisions and what HPE sees as the biggest cross-portfolio opportunity for partners heading into fiscal 2027. If you’re evaluating your HPE relationship heading into the second half of the year – whether you’re deep in compute, just starting to look at networking, or somewhere in between – that episode is worth your time.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines from HPE Discover. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North Amiercan channels at HPE
HPE Discover 2026 is underway in Las Vegas this week – June 15-18 at the Venetian Convention and Expo Center – and by Jeremiah Jenson’s account, it’s the biggest Discover yet. The event is oversubscribed, with partner demand he describes as unlike anything HPE has seen before.
Jenson is HPE’s vice president of North America channel, overseeing partner strategy across the United States and Canada. We sat down with him ahead of the show opening to preview the event for Canadian partners – whether they’re on the ground in Vegas or following along from home.
The headline theme of Discover 2026 is “architecting AI, starting with the network.” CEO Antonio Neri’s keynote frames that out on Tuesday morning, and it’s a deliberate positioning: the network isn’t the last thing you figure out when deploying AI, it’s the foundation that determines whether AI delivers real outcomes or stays a proof of concept. For channel partners, Jenson says that framing opens up more strategic conversations with customers around readiness, performance, and security.
On the partner side, the week kicks off with the Partner Growth Summit on Monday – a dedicated partner day before the main conference begins. This year’s theme is “The Power of One”: one portfolio, one program, one integrated experience through HPE’s Partner Ready Vantage. Jenson sees it as a signal of HPE’s direction on program simplification and consolidation.
Jenson’s advice to partners watching this week: don’t try to absorb everything. Pick one area – data center networking, cloud and hybrid cloud storage, or AI acceleration – and go deep on it.
A follow-up episode focused on the specific partner program announcements out of Discover is coming later this week.
Read Full TranscriptRobert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.
HPE Discover 2026 opens this morning in Las Vegas, running from June 15 to 18 at the Venetian Convention and Expo Center, and if you’re on the ground in Vegas today you’re probably settling in to the Partner Growth Summit as you’re listening to this.
The headline theme this year is “architecting AI, starting with the network.” HPE’s Antonio Neri takes the main stage tomorrow morning with that framing, and it’s a deliberate point of view. The network isn’t the last thing you figure out when you’re deploying AI – in HPE’s view, it’s the foundation. That’s worth unpacking.
Joining me today is Jeremiah Jenson, vice president of North America Channel at HPE, who oversees partner strategy across the United States and Canada. I chatted with Jeremiah ahead of the show, so nothing embargoed is in here – none of the announcements are really covered. We’ll get to those in future episodes. This one is about setting the stage: who’s there, what the big themes are, how the week flows, and what Canadian partners following along from home should be paying attention to.
Let’s get right into it – my chat with Jeremiah Jenson.
Jeremiah, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, thanks Robert.
Robert Dutt: So for listeners who may not know you, can you give us a quick rundown of your role at HPE, and especially what that means in the context of an event like Discover this week?
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, well, I lead HPE’s channel strategy across North America – both the United States and Canada – and that gives me a very close, direct view into what partners care about heading into Discover. My role is really to understand what partners care about and how to help them grow. I have responsibility across the full portfolio of Hewlett Packard Enterprise – compute, our hybrid IT business, all the associated software components, the networking business, and the services pieces as well. I really like to help connect our strategy to partners for ultimate delivery to customers.
Robert Dutt: Let’s start with the event itself. It’s your flagship event, and it’s a big one. What does the scale look like, and particularly from where you’re sitting and what you’re responsible for, what kind of partner presence are you expecting – both in general and on the Canadian side? Do you have a sense of what the Canadian contingent looks like, both on-site in Vegas and watching virtually?
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, I mean, it’s our flagship event and it’s always a major moment for the partner ecosystem across our portfolio, which includes networking, cloud, and AI. Massive event – and I would just say, first off, we’re oversubscribed. Demand for the event has been unlike anything we’ve ever seen. I have a fair bit of tenure with HPE and there is just a tremendous amount of interest, and I think that stems from the themes we’re bringing forward at Discover – helping not only our customers but partners shape and plan for the upcoming months. It’s a big moment for the HPE ecosystem.
Canadian partners play a huge role. They’re a huge part of North America, a huge part of the market. Canada is a differentiated market, and I think they’re paying quite a bit of attention to this event because it helps them shape where they want to focus next – where do they want to make that next investment, what is the next opportunity for them to help serve their customers.
Robert Dutt: I don’t want to get ahead of any of the announcements to come, but Antonio Neri’s keynote on Tuesday is publicly framed as “architecting AI starts with your network” – and that feels like a pretty deliberate point of view. It’s not just saying AI is everywhere, it’s saying the network is where AI actually gets built, actually runs, actually lives. What’s driving that framing from HPE’s perspective, and how does it translate into what channel partners are being asked to bring to their customers?
Jeremiah Jenson: AI is a huge opportunity – it’s part of every conversation, it’s part of everyday life at this point. And what we’re seeing is that customers need the right foundation in place to move from interest to real outcomes. Now is the time to build that underlying foundation, and AI success really depends on the quality, security, and intelligence of the underlying infrastructure – and in particular, the networking. Whether that’s networking for AI or AI for networking, for partners that creates a bigger opportunity to lead conversations around readiness, security, and performance.
Robert Dutt: How have you seen that conversation around AI with partners evolve since the last time HPE brought partners together for Discover?
Jeremiah Jenson: If anything, the AI opportunity has accelerated. In years past there may have been questions about where AI would ultimately land, what the impact would ultimately be. And I think the thing that has changed – or maybe the right word is accelerated – is that AI isn’t a future opportunity anymore, it is a current opportunity. It is happening now, and now is the time to talk to your customers about the business outcome they intend to drive with AI. And that has just accelerated, whether that’s in networking as we discussed, whether it’s in some of our storage capabilities that we’ve brought to market, or generalized compute or high-performance compute. The opportunity has done nothing but accelerate.
Robert Dutt: Partners are kicking off the week with the Partner Growth Summit today – later in the day on Monday – before the main conference even starts, and the general session theme is “The Power of One.” What’s the thinking behind having that dedicated partner day, and what does it mean in terms of how you’re trying to communicate with the channel right now?
Jeremiah Jenson: I love Partner Growth Summit because, first, it speaks to how sincere we are about partnerships – partners are part of our DNA, they’re part of who we are and how we go to market. The Power of One theme is really the emphasis on one portfolio, one program, and one integrated experience through Partner Ready Vantage. It’s a signal about where we’re going – with a portfolio of our size and a channel of our size, we’re on a constant quest for simplification. Partner Growth Summit is really a dedicated moment for partners to focus on what HPE’s strategy means to them, how they can implement that strategy within their business, and it’s about making HPE easier to work with, more profitable to grow with, and more efficient to operate within.
Robert Dutt: Certainly the idea of having a partner conference attached to a big customer-centric event like Discover is common practice across the industry. But it’s interesting that instead of “partner summit,” “partner conference,” or “partner day” – the names you see elsewhere – it seems quite intentional to have the word “growth” in Partner Growth Summit. Can you speak to that decision?
Jeremiah Jenson: Absolutely. Partners are powering our growth – they’re part and parcel to who we are, and how and where we’re growing. While dedicated partner days might in some cases be fairly standard, ours is very deliberate. We start with the partner strategy, from there into the broader company strategy, and then into deeper technical and customer conversations. From my standpoint, that growth element starts with the partner – painting the areas of strategic growth and strategic investment, where we are going together as one, in the markets that we want to help take advantage of.
Robert Dutt: Walk us through how the week actually plays out for someone on the ground here in Vegas. We start off Monday with the Partner Growth Summit, the main conference runs Tuesday through Thursday – what’s the rhythm and shape of the week, and what should people be watching for as it unfolds?
Jeremiah Jenson: So the week starts with Partner Growth Summit on Monday – that starts with the partner strategy, how we’re simplifying and consolidating our programs, driving efficiency, and presenting real growth opportunities, and that’s directly linked to the following days. That goes right into the broader company strategy: CEO keynote Tuesday, CTO general session Wednesday. Then the showcase and one-on-one meetings throughout. What you see is that move from partner strategy to broader company strategy and then into deeper technical and customer conversations with individual bespoke meetings throughout.
The other piece I’d highlight is that customers and partners have the opportunity to follow along remotely, so the key there is to focus on the themes, the keynotes, and the signals around where HPE is investing. And it all wraps up Wednesday night – for those who are at least in Vegas – at Allegiant Stadium. A big celebration night with our customers, our partners, and the broader HPE ecosystem, with Steve Aoki and Imagine Dragons headlining that evening. A big send-off for everyone.
Robert Dutt: Pulling back the lens to Canada specifically – you’re running North America Channel. What can you tell me about what the conversation with Canadian partners looks like heading into this show? Where is the Canadian partner community with HPE right now, and is there anything distinctive about what they should be watching for this week at Discover?
Jeremiah Jenson: It’s a great question, because the Canadian channel partner ecosystem is one that is distinct and unique, but also very deliberate and focused on customer outcomes. I always really appreciate that about that market.
Discover is both a strategy event – in terms of where are we investing, what are the strategic areas and customer opportunities – and a business event: where is demand moving, how are those themes translating into opportunity and profitability? Some of the areas I’d draw their attention to: certainly networking, and in particular data center networking – there’s a huge opportunity there with what’s happening around networking for AI. I’d also call their attention to our cloud offerings and sovereign cloud offerings, which are particularly important for a lot of Canadian businesses and Canadian partners. We’re seeing a tremendous amount of opportunity around sovereign cloud, whether that’s in the Canadian public sector or some of the other businesses we historically serve or are targeting in Canada. They’re very focused on the deliberate opportunity with their customers, and the real question is how do we translate those strategic areas into real business, real profitability, and real growth.
Robert Dutt: It’s interesting – it sounds like you’re describing the Canadian channel as sort of ahead of the curve, if anything, on selling on outcomes. That’s obviously been a focus for more than a year now. Sometimes I think the Canadian market writ large gets painted with a brush of being a little conservative in terms of adopting technology, and maybe that focus on outcomes is a way of managing that – getting through to customers who don’t necessarily want to be first out of the gate, but want something that’s proven and ready to go.
Jeremiah Jenson: Yeah, for me, I wouldn’t use the word “conservative.” I would use the word “intentional.” The Canadian partners I do business with are very exciting and forward-thinking, but intentional. They’re close with their customers – they have a level of customer intimacy that I’m often impressed with – and they’re very focused on where they can add value and help customers accomplish their business goals. So conservative is not a word I would use. They’re just very forward-thinking and intentional.
Robert Dutt: Last one – sort of a two-header, one from your perspective and one from a partner perspective. You’ve covered some of this, but just to narrow it down: if I’m a Canadian partner heading to Vegas or following along online, what’s the one thing you’d make sure you walk away from Discover this week understanding? And from your perspective, what does a successful week look like for you?
Jeremiah Jenson: If I’m a partner about to watch Discover – either in person or following along online – I would challenge yourself to personalize it: where’s the next growth opportunity for me? Hewlett Packard Enterprise offers such a huge portfolio, so the question is, what is the next opportunity I can take to my customer or customer base? I’ll point out a couple of very strategic areas: data center networking, and how we’re bringing that strong networking portfolio together; our cloud offerings, hybrid cloud software, and storage; and what we’re doing in AI, where we’re seeing massive acceleration. Pick one, and challenge yourself personally – where can I invest in myself that will help me produce a better customer outcome for the customers I serve? Pick one and be really deliberate about how you can understand that more deeply.
And for me – what does success look like coming away from this year? I want clarity of message to be impressed upon the entire North America Channel, and probably most importantly, the Canadian channel. How do we make this real for Canadian partners in their differentiated market? Clarity of message, and making sure we all walk away with the same mission, one goal, and one very clear definition of success.
Robert Dutt: Big goals for a big week. Good luck – I hope it’s a very successful Discover for you.
Jeremiah Jenson: Thanks so much for the opportunity. I’m looking forward to seeing everybody in Las Vegas.
Robert Dutt: There you have it – Jeremiah Jenson from HPE. I’d like to thank Jeremiah for his time.
Just a heads up – this is part one. We’ll be back later this week with another conversation, as Jeremiah and I are going to talk a little bit after the Partner Growth Summit’s main stage so we can get a look at the specific partner program announcements coming out of Discover. Keep an ear out for that, and of course we’ll have the news breakdown tomorrow morning on The Buzz as well.
Thanks as always for listening. A couple of things I want to leave you with from this conversation. First: the “networking for AI – or AI for the network” framing. The argument HPE is making is that the network is the enabling layer for everything your customers are trying to do with AI. That’s a positioning opportunity worth thinking about in your own customer conversations, wherever you sit in the stack. Second: Jeremiah’s challenge to partners watching or attending Discover this week – don’t try to absorb everything. Pick one area, whether that’s data center networking, cloud and hybrid cloud storage, or AI acceleration, and go deep on it. That’s how you turn a week of announcements into something you can actually bring back to your business. I thought that was good advice for following any big vendor event.
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please do subscribe or follow wherever you listen. We’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most of the usual places. And if you can leave a rating or review, those are always appreciated.
Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:
HPE Discover 2026 kicks off: HPE Discover 2026 opens today at The Venetian in Las Vegas with the Partner Growth Summit, the partner-exclusive day that precedes the main conference. The General Session – “The Power of One” – is led by HPE channel head Simon Ewington and focuses on HPE’s unified partner strategy under the HPE Partner Ready Vantage program, spanning networking, cloud, and AI. This is the first Partner Growth Summit since HPE’s $14 billion Juniper Networks acquisition closed, and HPE is presenting partners with a fully unified portfolio story for the first time. ChannelBuzz.ca is on the ground all week: Tuesday’s Buzz will feature a full Partner Growth Summit recap, and In The Channel this week features a multi-part series with Jeremiah Jenson, HPE’s vice president of North America channel and partner ecosystem, covering the Discover announcements in depth.Cato Networks launches integration hub: Cato Networks has launched a new Technology Partner Program and a Platform Integration Hub, debuting with more than 100 out-of-the-box integrations with third-party security, cloud, and networking solutions. The SASE provider says the program is designed to simplify how partners and customers connect Cato’s platform with existing enterprise technology stacks. The move is significant for Canadian MSPs and MSSPs: a robust integration catalog reduces the custom API work that often slows deployment and increases delivery costs, making it easier to position Cato alongside the broader tools in a customer’s security environment.Checkmarx flags CISO compliance pressures: A new 2026 Future of Application Security Report from Checkmarx, based on a survey of more than 2,000 developers and CISOs, found that 95 per cent of CISOs report being pressured to suppress or delay compliance-related security issues when business deadlines loom. The research also highlights how AI-generated code is expanding the attack surface faster than many security teams can manage. For Canadian MSSPs, the data reinforces the value of independent, third-party security oversight – and the case for structured application security as a managed service.Dataminr and TD SYNNEX partner on AI cyber defense: Dataminr has signed a strategic distribution agreement with TD SYNNEX, making Dataminr for Cyber Defense available to more than 35,000 North American resellers. The platform combines external risk signals with internal telemetry to help security teams prioritize threats in real time. For Canadian partners already working with TD SYNNEX, the deal adds an AI-driven threat intelligence offering to the distributor’s security portfolio at a time when customers are asking for earlier warning around cyber risk.inforcer launches Microsoft 365 TDR platform: inforcer has launched inforcer Threat Detection and Response, a new platform that gives MSPs a single environment to manage detection, incident response, and reporting across the full Microsoft 365 estate – including Entra, Defender, Purview, Teams, and SharePoint. According to the company, the platform’s advantage is its existing policy and configuration context for each tenant, which it says allows the detection engine to separate real threats from alert noise. The product launched in early access at Pax8 Beyond last week.ConnectSecure introduces Patch 360: ConnectSecure has launched Patch 360, a patch management solution designed specifically for MSPs. According to the company, the platform gives MSPs more control over patch prioritization, testing, and approval workflows, and is designed to reduce deployment risk while accelerating patching across operating systems and third-party applications.NetRise launches Discovery Partner Program: Software supply chain security firm NetRise has launched the Discovery Partner Program for VARs, MSSPs, distributors, and systems integrators. The program provides partners access to the NetRise Platform, which analyzes compiled software artifacts – including binaries, firmware, and containers – to identify components and risks that may not appear in source-code scans or vendor-provided SBOMs. NetRise is positioning the program as a way for partners to address growing customer demand for independent software supply chain verification.Read Full TranscriptThis episode of The Buzz is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. HPE Discover runs June 15 to 18 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Discover what’s next at hpe.com/discover.
Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Monday, June 15th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.
The biggest event on HPE’s calendar opens today at The Venetian Convention and Expo Center in Las Vegas, and ChannelBuzz.ca is on the ground for the full week. But before the main conference opens to the broader audience tomorrow, today belongs exclusively to the channel.
The HPE Partner Growth Summit – the partner-only day that kicks off Discover week – is underway as you’re hearing this. The centrepiece is the General Session called “The Power of One,” led by HPE channel head Simon Ewington alongside a lineup of HPE senior executives. The name captures the message HPE is sending its partner ecosystem heading into the back half of 2026: one comprehensive portfolio, one unified program under HPE Partner Ready Vantage, and one integrated experience across networking, cloud, and AI.
The afternoon breakout agenda is dense – covering GreenLake and hybrid cloud, Aruba networking with AI, monetizing accelerated compute and agentic workloads, and HPE’s evolving service provider story. It’s also worth noting the context: this is the first Partner Growth Summit since HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks cleared regulatory review and officially closed. Partners are getting their first look at a fully unified networking and compute story from a company that can now tell it cleanly.
We’re bringing you the announcements as they happen all week.
In just a couple of hours on In The Channel, I’ll help you get ready for Discover, as I preview the event with the help of none other than Jeremiah Jenson, HPE’s vice president of North American channel and partner ecosystem.
Tomorrow on The Buzz, we’ll have all the news from Partner Growth Summit, and tomorrow’s In The Channel will also feature Jenson, as we take a deeper dive into the HPE’s partner programs and where he sees the biggest opportunities for the channel right now.
Be sure to stick with us all week as we bring you full coverage from Vegas.
Cato Networks is expanding its ecosystem with the launch of a new Technology Partner Program and a Platform Integration Hub. The SASE provider says the hub debuts with more than 100 integrations out of the box, offering streamlined connectivity with third-party security, cloud, and networking solutions. According to Cato, the program is designed to simplify how partners and customers integrate its platform with existing enterprise technology stacks, reducing friction and speeding up deployments.
A vendor-led integration effort at this scale matters for the channel. As enterprise environments grow more layered and complex, MSPs rely on platforms that connect cleanly to an existing stack rather than requiring months of custom API work. Out-of-the-box integrations mean less time troubleshooting compatibility and more time delivering security outcomes to clients. It’s worth noting that Cato’s channel chief said earlier this year that seven out of ten deals the company closes are already partner-led. A stronger integration story could deepen that dependence on the channel by making it easier for MSPs and MSSPs to position Cato alongside the other tools in a customer’s security stack.
A report released last week by application security vendor Checkmarx is putting hard numbers on a dynamic that security-focused channel partners have likely been seeing for some time. The 2026 Future of Application Security Report, based on a survey of more than 2,000 developers and CISOs, found that 95 per cent of CISOs say they have been pressured to suppress or delay compliance-related security issues when business deadlines loom. Compounding the problem: the adoption of AI-generated code is accelerating, which Checkmarx says is multiplying the attack surface in production environments faster than many security teams can manage.
The business case for external, independent security oversight has rarely been clearer. When internal security leaders are being overruled on vulnerability management, an MSP or MSSP operating as a neutral third party – accountable to security outcomes rather than product launch timelines – steps into a genuine gap. The data also validates the case for application security as a structured managed service. As AI-generated code becomes standard in the development pipeline, organizations that can’t close that gap internally will need to find a partner who can.
In Brief – Dataminr and TD SYNNEX have signed a distribution agreement that makes Dataminr for Cyber Defense available to more than 35,000 North American resellers through TD SYNNEX’s channel network.
Security vendor inforcer has launched inforcer Threat Detection and Response, a new platform designed to give MSPs a single environment to manage detection, incident response, and reporting for Microsoft 365.
ConnectSecure has introduced Patch 360, a patch management solution built specifically for MSPs that the company says reduces deployment risk while accelerating patching across operating systems and third-party applications.
NetRise has launched the Discovery Partner Program, targeting VARs, MSSPs, distributors, and systems integrators with software supply chain security capabilities built around compiled binary analysis rather than source code or vendor-provided SBOMs.
Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post.
That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
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Josh Singh, sales director at Turning Point Technology Services
Josh Singh didn’t arrive at Dell Technologies World simply as a partner – he arrived as someone who spent nearly eight years on the vendor side, in Dell sales roles, before crossing over to Turning Point as the company’s sales lead.
That dual perspective shapes everything about how Turning Point operates. The Vancouver-based solution provider, founded in 2012, runs exclusively on Dell in the data center – a deliberate, all-in single-vendor bet that Josh frames not as a constraint but as a competitive advantage. Nearly half of the team is ex-Dell, which means when a customer needs an answer fast, Turning Point knows exactly who to call inside Dell’s notoriously complex internal matrix. That navigational fluency, Josh argues, is the kind of differentiation that doesn’t show up in a spec sheet but shows up every time there’s urgency.
Turning Point recently formalized that depth by opening what Dell designates as its first official solution center in Canada, in their Vancouver office, giving the team and their clients hands-on access to the full portfolio – including the GB10 for deskside AI development.
On AI, Josh’s read is that the “AI factory” framing was right directionally but too large a first step for most of the Canadian market. Dell’s move toward more modular, consumable AI infrastructure – starting at one or two servers, proving a use case, then scaling – is what actually unlocks adoption for SMB customers. Small wins first, then the appetite for something bigger.
On security and resilience, Josh drew a clear line: backup is the last line of defense, and if that last line gets hit – or gets frozen by a ransomware insurance claim – you’re rebuilding from scratch. Dell’s Data Domain and its proprietary DDBoost protocol forms the core of what Turning Point puts in front of customers who need to actually recover, not just theoretically recover.
And rounding it out: the supply chain disruption, compounded by Broadcom‘s reshaping of the virtualization market, is forcing Canadian organizations to plan differently – more external awareness, more budget flexibility, earlier commitment. That’s a challenge across the industry, Josh notes. But for partners who can guide customers through it, it’s also an opening.
Read Full TranscriptRobert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.
We’re continuing our series from Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. This week, we’re deep on the partner perspective. Today’s guest brings a point of view you don’t usually get. Nearly a decade inside Dell Technologies, followed by a move to the partner side – specifically to a partner that has made one of the most deliberate, all-in single-vendor bets you’ll find in the Canadian channel.
Josh Singh leads the sales team at Turning Point Technology Services, a Vancouver-based solution provider founded in 2012 that operates exclusively on Dell in the data center. Not mostly Dell, not primarily Dell – exclusively. In a channel where diversification is almost reflexively treated as risk management, Turning Point went the other way, and they did it right at the beginning of Dell’s channel investment cycle, which turned out to be good timing.
Josh brings to that an unusual lens. He spent almost eight years in Dell’s sales roles, where he learned early that the channel was the key to his success, and that knowing how to navigate Dell’s internal matrix is an advantage that translates directly into faster, better outcomes for customers. Roughly half of Turning Point’s team is ex-Dell. They recently opened what Dell designates as its first official solution center in Canada, right there in their Vancouver office.
We talked about what it actually means to make the single-vendor bet and why it’s holding up. How the AI adoption conversation is changing for SMB customers who weren’t ready for the Dell AI Factory, but might be ready for something smaller. The security and data resilience story, and why backup shouldn’t be confused with business continuity. And what the supply chain situation, plus Broadcom’s disruption of the market, is doing to how customers have to plan.
Let’s get right into it. My chat with Josh Singh.
Josh, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I’m sure it’s been a busy week.
Josh Singh: It has been a busy week, and thanks for having me.
Robert Dutt: I guess to open it up, I want to start with a question that frames the perspective that you have at an event like this. Turning Point made the explicit call to go all-in on Dell on the infrastructure side, as I understand. A lot of partners diversify, carry multiple vendors, pick and choose their spots. What’s the logic behind that bet? What does a week like this one – where Dell’s making a lot of big moves around AI and the direction of the partner program and all that – feel like for a shop that’s tied its future to the Dell story?
Josh Singh: Very good question. I’ve been asked this numerous times, and it’s clear you’ve done your research on us. As you said, Robert, we are 100% Dell-exclusive in the data center. We do have other technologies that are complementary to Dell to give our clients an end-to-end ecosystem of technology, but we have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on Dell in the data center.
Turning Point was formed in 2012. Three founders – Lee, Sean, and Lauren – they came from a value-added reseller that sold a multitude of technologies. What they found out at the time was Dell had a portfolio that covered the end-to-end, especially in the data center. They branched out, all three of them from [Seven Group – verify company name], and they formed Turning Point. They just realized that Dell was at the beginning of their partner program. You’ll see a legacy fabric still embedded in some aspects of Dell Technologies where they still are partial to selling direct, but they have put a large amount of emphasis and investment in the channel over the last fifteen years. Turning Point was formed at the very beginning of that cycle. Since then, we have had no regrets. Dell has really come to the table as a really solid partner for us, allowing us to offer our clients the end-to-end data center strategy with Dell Technologies.
Robert Dutt: Your lens is unique too in that you have some time at Dell EMC – a viewpoint that a lot of partners don’t have in terms of having seen both sides of that fence, especially around the same vendor. What does that vendor-side time teach you about what Dell actually needs and wants from partners, and the reality of what Dell values in a partner?
Josh Singh: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I spent almost eight years at Dell in various sales roles. I learned very quickly, and early on in my Dell sales career, that the channel was the key to my success. The core reason why is I’m one individual. I have a solutions engineer, I have some overlays, and we manage a pretty large territory. I found that if I could just introduce a channel partner into the mix, I could lob it over the fence, play quarterback a little bit, get enough updates from the channel partner so I can update my leadership – because that’s really important. But I was able to scale my business significantly when I started to work with the channel.
Actually, Turning Point was one of those channel partners that I worked very closely with. So it’s a bit of a full circle moment for me to come back and I lead the sales team at Turning Point.
Robert Dutt: I have to imagine the Dell team is happy to have you, because clearly you’ve got that lens for exactly what they are looking for from you as a partner.
Josh Singh: Yeah, you know, every vendor has their own methodology and go-to-market culture. And so it does help. Actually, almost half of Turning Point’s team is ex-Dell Technologies employees. So that really gives us a unique perspective on how Dell wants to sell, how to update Dell, what’s important to them – what’s important to each level in the organization, from the sales rep to the manager, to the director, to the senior director, to the president. So we understand what is important to Dell Technologies.
And also, for our customers, it’s really important to pick the right technologies. But as we all know, this world is moving so fast and our customers need answers, and they need us to be on their requests in a really time-sensitive way. And so, typically with most vendors, you know your account executive and that individual is the key to the organization. When you come from Dell, you all of a sudden know how to navigate the matrix of Dell. And so when a customer has a question, you know exactly who to call. You can pick up the phone and get that answer in a much more time-sensitive way than navigating the matrix of Dell, which can be large and daunting.
Robert Dutt: So the secret sauce is as simple as spending more than half a decade inside the company itself.
Josh Singh: Simple. Yeah, easy peasy.
Robert Dutt: Big week for AI infrastructure here, and the Dell AI thesis – in so much as they’ve for a while been pulling on the idea of running AI models on-prem and on their infrastructure – was really amplified this week. Between that, desktop agentic AI, and the whole server and storage announcements underneath that, how does what was announced here resonate with what you guys are doing now and what your customers are asking for in terms of technology and how it’s delivered?
Josh Singh: Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. So I’ve been at Dell Technologies World almost every year, and I’m finding a big difference in the talk tracks this year. AI was a concept, it was a lot of buzzwords, it was a lot of fluff, to be honest with you as well. Everyone’s trying to chase what AI means to them. But I think this year is the first year where I started to see concepts materialize into practicality, whether it comes to data locality or infrastructure, or really how to go to the next steps of adopting AI.
The Canadian market is more pragmatic in their approach to adoption of technology – a little laggard, but not in a negative way, just a bit more conservative. And so what Dell Technologies World enables me and us to do is learn from people actually deploying AI in a much more meaningful and scalable way, for us to then be able to go back to Canada and start to talk about potential use cases, potential outcomes – because it is a very daunting topic, AI, sometimes it can be very overwhelming. So Dell Technologies World allows us to take some key facts about AI, bring them back into our local market, and then help them through that journey. And also, we’re meeting a lot of experts here as well. So it’s not just that we take these concepts and go back to Canada and try to do it ourselves – we’re really supported by the Dell channel ecosystem as well, to help our clients evolve in their AI journey.
Robert Dutt: What are the ideas that you’re hearing that specifically are making you think, “All right, this is going to change something in how we do business internally, or this is something I have to take to customer X, customer Y, customer Z,” because it maps to what they’re thinking about or where they should be thinking?
Josh Singh: Yeah. I think Dell, when they first wanted to address AI, they came out with the Dell AI Factory, and that was the message. So for a lot of Canadian organizations – which are largely SMB – adoption of an AI Factory is not consumable. It’s too large. They need to prove the model out. And then as soon as they get some small wins and successes, then they can scale out, because the smallest AI Factory was large for them.
And this is what we noticed, actually, in the last twelve months. So what Dell is doing now is making it a bit more economical, a bit more consumable – in the AI data platform, starting at one server, maybe two servers, a little PowerScale, and then using that to prove out a use case. And then once we prove out a use case, our customers say, “Hey, there’s really something to this AI thing that everybody keeps talking about.” Now they can really start to invest in a much more scalable, larger way.
So I think what Dell has released – very small products with the GB10 all the way up to that massive AI Factory – I mean, you saw when Michael Dell came out with Jensen, and he came out on stage and showed the entire portfolio of AI with a small little itty-bitty – not quite Raspberry Pi size, but not too far from that.
Robert Dutt: Really, yeah.
Josh Singh: And then having Jensen talk about the next model and how much more powerful that next model is – 100x, 100x, 100x, all the way up to that big AI Factory. So I think it just allows us to be a bit more practical in AI adoption rather than, “Mr. Customer, you have to adopt an AI Factory and that’s how you’re going to achieve AI.” So yeah.
Robert Dutt: Has some of the stuff they’re talking about – deskside AI, and specifically deskside agents – when you talk about a GB10 and the lower end of that, and even for more casual users, they would make the case down to the AI-enabled PC – how does that kind of map with how your customers are approaching AI, given that they aren’t going to be going out and buying even a bottom-end, full-on AI Factory experience as a day-one thing?
Josh Singh: Yeah. So at Turning Point, we have our data center – it’s actually a solution center. Dell has multiple across the world. There was none in Canada. So actually, with Dell leadership, we opened up Dell’s first solution center in Vancouver in our office. There was a big unveiling with the president of Dell Canada, all Dell leadership came out, and we stood up our solution center in conjunction with Dell.
So in that solution center, we have every piece of technology that Dell has – from PowerStore to PowerScale to ObjectScale. And we recently adopted the GB10 so we’re able to actually learn it, use practical use cases that actually help Turning Point, and then we can actually know how to speak to our customers as an adopter ourselves of the GB10 and some of the use cases. So anything from OpenClaw to using different language models and trying to help business productivity in that manner.
We serve customers in almost every single vertical. So we are working with healthcare – we’re doing some work right now with healthcare and looking at different use cases when it comes to X-rays and things like that. And then we also work with legal, looking at contractual ways to actually pull out data from thousands or millions of contracts to find commonalities to help an organization improve their operational efficiency.
So we’ve got our system in our solution center and we’re actually going through those use cases ourselves so that we can better serve our customers.
Robert Dutt: Given that you’ve got that data center and you’ve got that – choose your own analogy, eat your own dog food, drink your own champagne – approach to things, how have you guys approached AI internally, and what have you learned from how you’ve done that over the last year or two?
Josh Singh: So it’s a good question. Admittedly, we are a little bit at the beginning of that journey as well. So at Turning Point, as well as many of our customers, we were a bit overwhelmed with what AI meant. And so we have a practice when it comes to consultation to navigate what AI means for them. We do specific workshops to get a client to understand what they want out of AI and to conceptualize what AI is capable of doing. Now we’re really getting into how product is going to help that. So this is the next iteration of our AI journey to help our customers – going over and beyond the consultative nature of how AI works and models and inferencing and all those buzzwords that customers understand but don’t really understand. And then we’ll take whatever is the output from that workshop, and now with our solution center, we’re looking to actually take the results of that and try to replicate it using product and technology and actual outcome.
Robert Dutt: How often do you find that the outcome of the workshop – “this is what AI would do best for you” – maps with what they came in thinking AI would do best for them?
Josh Singh: It’s fascinating to see, actually, because in a lot of SMB organizations, there is no AI data scientist, there is no AI leader. So it’s essentially decision by committee. And that committee could be a storage admin, a network admin, a compute admin, an application admin, all the way up to leadership, cybersecurity, of course, for governance and compliance.
So seeing the different perspectives in these AI committees is really interesting – to watch the customer look at each other and each individual have their own expertise and go, “Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, that’s interesting. Why did I know you viewed the world through the lens of this?” And so coming in with these workshops, it’s typically not one outcome. It’s actually allowing a conversation between these committees at our customer organizations to really help push what AI means for each of those individuals. And then they branch out, actually not with Turning Point but internally, to foster more discussion. And then we come back in and help prod and push in certain areas with our AI knowledge.
But really, it’s more contextual. It’s not really about language models and things like that. It’s more about blue sky – like, what do we want to do? And what’s success for you, and what’s success for you, and what’s success for you? You’ll notice that success for each of these individuals is very different. So it’s been fascinating for us to watch.
Robert Dutt: It’s funny how often some of these things do – for all the technology behind it – come down to breaking down internal silos.
Josh Singh: Yes, yes, yeah. It’s a big part of our job. We help bridge technology to business, to legal, to cybersecurity, all the way up to business goals. So it’s really – it’s an honor to work in this industry and see those conversations play out.
Robert Dutt: We saw some fairly significant changes to the partner program and the rollout of the Modern Partner Platform – in terms of the agentic AI stuff that’s rolling into the partner portal and the partner experience, deal registration improvements, a whole bunch of things – especially where you guys are at as a boutique, exclusively Dell-focused operation on the data center side. What did you see in there that really caught your interest – “okay, that’s going to make my life better”? And in a more art-of-the-possible mode, what do you think AI appearing in partner platforms is going to mean in the long run in terms of what you can do, and what you can get from the overall experience you have with key vendors like Dell?
Josh Singh: Yeah, good question. So they haven’t fully rolled out the One Dell Way platform yet – they’re chipping away at it. First is with CSG on the client side, and they’re starting that internally. So we haven’t actually seen the result of a lot of that change yet. But I do know theoretically what the plan is for that, and I think it’s going to be really advantageous for us.
We are seeing a little bit of the benefits right now where human intervention – as vendors start to consolidate a bit more in sales and back office – the role of the sales rep is changing. There are a lot of tasks that that sales rep now has to do. And so they can sometimes be the bottleneck of operational efficiency. Let’s talk about deal registration, for example: they will get an email, and if they’re busy in meetings, by the time they get to that email and press OK, it could be twenty-four, it could be forty-eight hours, it could be seventy-two hours if that person’s out of town. So then you have to chase – and with how fast IT is moving with our customers, we can’t afford to wait that long.
So we’re starting to see a bit more intelligence and automation in how deal registrations are approved. It is a bit of a complicated topic because the channel relies on Dell’s ability to recognize who our accounts are, who our loyal customers are. And so there have been some conflicts since then. But I do see that Dell is on it and they are working it out. And I do love the transparency and honesty from Dell in owning up where mistakes were made and correcting them in the field. So I am seeing some AI adoption when it comes to the partner program, but it’s not fully rolled out yet. So I am looking forward to seeing what they come out with.
Robert Dutt: In terms of future state – whether it’s stuff that they’re already discussing or stuff that’s just possible but not yet on the roadmap – what would be the most impactful for you and your organization to move to a more automated, more agentic motion with a key vendor like Dell?
Josh Singh: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard of Dell Sales Chat. It’s basically their version of GPT, but it references all of Dell’s information – presentations, documents, white papers, service briefs, and things like that. So the Dell rep just types in a query into Dell Sales Chat, and an answer comes out while referencing all Dell documentation. What I really want to see is Dell enabling that for the channel. And so I’ve talked to Dell leadership – specifically people that own this product – and that is the plan. And so I’m really, really excited for that, because especially when we respond to RFPs in public sector, it’s a very time-consuming endeavor. And so for us to be able to type in queries on very specific questions that public sector has about technology would be really valuable.
And I do know that there are compliance and governance issues as well. The labeling of documentation has to be accurate – otherwise, the channel would get access to potentially confidential data from Dell Sales Chat. But that’s the biggest thing that I’m waiting for Dell to offer the channel.
Robert Dutt: Cool. I wanted to talk a little bit about security and data resilience, because that was another theme here at the event – an area where you guys have a fair bit going on with vCISO and MDR, cyber recovery, all that kind of stuff. Basically, how does the Dell cyber resilience narrative from this week connect with what you’re already doing? Does it strengthen the story you’re telling clients? Does it give you new opportunities? How are you viewing the message here?
Josh Singh: Yeah. So I actually come from the security and resilience team at Dell – that’s my most recent role there. So it’s near and dear to me and my heart, and I am seeing a lot of product updates when it comes to security. That’s really exciting for me to see, actually.
So Dell has a security and data platform in Data Domain, and there are other partners in the ecosystem like Druva and others. There are some partnerships with CrowdStrike and other MDR companies. And that’s what I really appreciate about Dell – they did have Secureworks for a period of time, which got spun off, but I do appreciate Dell constantly looking at where their gaps are from a technology perspective and then partnering up with other vendors to complete the end-to-end strategy.
As I mentioned, each individual product in the technology portfolio – they are releasing a lot of security updates and functionality embedded in PowerStore, more in Data Domain when it comes to immutability and things like that, and PowerScale anomaly detection in each of the different products, end-to-end encryption with secure [HPAs – unclear; possibly “HBAs” or “APIs” – verify]. So there’s a lot of attention right now when it comes to security.
And to come back to AI – AI is really cool and it can create a lot of really cool outcomes. That’s if you’re wearing a white hat. If you’re wearing a black hat, it can be equally exciting for them as well. And so Dell has to keep up now with not just asking what are the positive outcomes that can drive more efficiency and unlock human progress, but what are the black hats going to be doing with AI, and how do we respond?
Robert Dutt: I was sharing a detail this week that backup infrastructure is kind of a primary target for attacks. Curious – does that kind of match with what you’re seeing? And how do you, especially with customers who are newer to you or just going through the process, help them reconcile what they think they’re protecting with their backup versus what they actually have in terms of protection?
Josh Singh: Yeah, this is – I mean, every backup vendor says the same thing. This becomes really difficult, actually, to undo a lot of the conditioning from a lot of the backup vendors. I joined DPS – which is now the SRP, the Security and Resiliency Platform, at Dell – for a very specific reason. I actually used to also work for Secureworks. And I realized that talking to people about managed security services was resonating at the time. But the answer was always, “Hey, we just go back to our backup target and we restore, we recover, we’re up and running within a couple of hours.” So I thought, I could spend the same amount of time with a different team and a different product and achieve much more success, because that’s what most organizations are relying on. So they really rely on backup.
Now, backup should not be confused with business continuity. Backup is the last line of defense – and it really is the last line of defense. So when you have a last line of defense, you need to make sure that that is locked down. If you don’t trust your last line of defense, it doesn’t really matter what you do on top of that. You can spend millions of dollars per year operationally on subscriptions and monitoring and things like that. But if you don’t trust your last line of defense, you are hooked.
And so Dell’s backup product, Data Domain, is the most secure, purpose-built backup appliance out there in the market – hands down. It’s not even a comparison, from my perspective – and it could be a biased perspective – against other competition and other vendors that also play in the same area. There are just so many features in Data Domain when it comes to immutability and governance and compliance and DDBoost, which is a proprietary protocol – it’s not CIFS, it’s not NFS. A bad actor can scan a CIFS or NFS directory so easily and then just encrypt it.
So while we do work very well with PPDM – which is Dell’s backup software – we also use Veeam as well. And so the Veeam-to-Data Domain story is very powerful, and it’s really good for the SMB market as well. So we’re constantly looking at the market and seeing what’s compatible, what plays well with Dell products, and we’re introducing that into our ecosystem as well.
Robert Dutt: All right. To wrap it up – sitting where you sit as a partner who’s made a pretty significant single-vendor bet on Dell, what’s the one thing from this week that you sit back and go, “Yeah, that validates the decision”? And also, was there anything that gives you pause – that makes you go, “Okay, I need to learn more about that before I’m sure that we’re aligned”?
Josh Singh: Yeah. I mean, I can’t deny that we haven’t been forced to think about more vendor adoption. And as every company needs to iterate and evolve and stay on top of industry trends, we need to constantly be surveying other technologies. And we do. We look at NetApp all the time. We look at Pure. We look at HPE constantly. And what we’ve noticed is we don’t need to take on a different vendor.
And especially – one thing I will say about Dell, and I’m not sure if this is an answer to your question, but I do have to mention this – Dell’s supply chain is second to none. So we’re in this world right now which is shifting aggressively to shortages and components and things like that. And that’s where Dell’s really shining right now – in their ability to go to different geographic areas and fast-track product from other areas. So that’s just one thing that I have to plug Dell for: very impressive about what they’re doing there.
But from a Dell perspective, they’re constantly innovating. All the thought leaders of the world – in different companies and different partners and vendors – they’re all here. And so if we have that big bet on Dell and they’re constantly innovating and adding new partnerships and are at the forefront of innovation, then that means we are too. And if we are, then we don’t need to look anywhere else – and we’re going to double down on the bet.
Robert Dutt: To go back to what you were saying about the supply chain situation – it’s no doubt wild times trying to get infrastructure for everyone on the planet right now. And we hear pretty clearly from Jeff Clarke the idea, the message to customers: put your hand up early – really early, if you can – because that’ll give you the best chances of getting what you want when you want it. If you’re thinking two years out or something, how are you approaching timelines and guidance to customers on – okay, so you want to be here at some point – speccing that out in light of the uncertainty of availability, the uncertainty of price, all the fun stuff that’s going on right now?
Josh Singh: We’re living in that world right now and it’s changing the way customers have to respond to their stakeholders in their organizations. Back in the day – and by back in the day, I mean six months ago – a customer needed compute and they would buy compute and they would get it within three weeks, likely two. Now we’re looking at two months, three months, sometimes six-month delays, depending on if they need very specific components. So it is a little bit like the COVID days, where there was a big push to remote connectivity. Now customers are looking at public cloud again in a bigger way because they need immediate resources.
So what we’re trying to do as an organization is say, “Yes, you could go to the cloud – that is an option. It always has been an option and always will be an option. But is that the right thing for your organization economically, from a security perspective, from a latency perspective?” There are so many more considerations, especially in the Canadian market with data sovereignty.
And so the shift of parts shortages – and this wouldn’t be a current interview unless we talked about Broadcom and the changes they’ve made in the market as well. These two very big changes in our market are now affecting the way that organizations have to respond to their stakeholders and the immediacy of resources. So planning now is critically important.
The way that customers are now trying to secure budget within their organizations is changing, because they need to be a bit more adaptable and flexible to what’s externally offered. Previously, it was internal operational methodologies on how they adopted technologies. Now they’re being affected by the external. So they have to be a bit more flexible and adaptable as to how they need to support their growing environment – by way of data, by way of compute resources, and especially AI. Now that I need GPUs and memory and CPUs, which are now in shortage, it is a very big challenge. But it’s not a Dell challenge, it’s a customer challenge. It’s happening across the entire industry. So that’s a good thing for us. If it was a Dell challenge, then we’d have a challenge ourselves and be in a bit of a corner.
But it’s a global challenge right now that we are constantly seeing changes to. And I suspect we’ll continue to see changes for the rest of the year.
Robert Dutt: It’s wild times when you hear folks who are very intelligent on these things saying this is going to be a multi-year kind of cycle. I guess AI giveth, AI taketh away.
Josh Singh: Yes, yes. And geopolitics – we’ve got some leaders in the world right now that are making decisions that are affecting our geopolitical climate as well, which is then downstream affecting IT. So it’s interesting times. Exciting times. And I think we’ll look back on today just like we looked back on COVID – we’ll get through it. We’re all in it together.
Robert Dutt: Here’s hoping the war stories end up good at the end of the day.
Josh Singh: That’s right.
Robert Dutt: Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Josh Singh: Thanks very much, Rob. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Robert Dutt: There you have it, Josh Singh from Turning Point Technology Services. I’d like to thank Josh for his time in Las Vegas.
The full-circle element of his story – spending years inside Dell, working alongside Turning Point as a channel partner, and then joining the company he was selling through – comes through clearly in how he talks about the business. And I think that perspective showed throughout the conversation.
A few things I’d like to take away from this one.
First, the single-vendor bet argument. A lot of partners hedge on vendor relationships as a form of risk management, but Turning Point went the other way. And the case Josh makes is essentially that depth beats breadth – that knowing how to navigate a large vendor’s internal matrix quickly is itself a competitive advantage for customers. When someone needs an answer today, knowing exactly who to call inside Dell and getting it done in hours instead of days is a real differentiator. Doesn’t show up in a product spec, but it does show up in the relationship.
Second, the AI adoption ladder. The AI Factory is the right concept, but maybe too large a bite for most of the Canadian market. What’s changing now – and what you heard Josh describe with the solution center and the GB10 pilots – is AI becoming consumable at the entry level. Small win, prove the model, scale it up. That’s how it actually gets adopted in the mid-market and SMB space, and the partners who figured out how to structure that journey are the ones who are going to win those accounts.
And third, backup is the last line of defense, not the first. Josh put it plainly: if you don’t trust your last line of defense, it doesn’t really matter what you spend on top of it. And if your backup infrastructure gets hit with a ransomware attack – which is increasingly the whole point of the attack – and you’ve filed an insurance claim on top of that, you can’t touch it until the insurance company is done with their analysis. You’re building from scratch. That air gap, clean recovery point is the whole game. Not a nice-to-have.
If you’re enjoying the show, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, the usual suspects. And if you have a moment to leave a rating or review, please do. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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