As enterprises move from AI experimentation to deployment and operationalization, HPE executives and partners at HPE Discover 2026 said the company’s channel strategy is increasingly focused on helping MSPs and other channel partners capture new market opportunities while simplifying the way customers adopt emerging technologies.
AI adoption opens infrastructure opportunities for partners
Brandon Harris, VP of Partner Alliances and Marketing at Logicalis, told Channel Insider that AI adoption is creating opportunities for partners that can combine infrastructure expertise with services and business outcomes.
“Since we don’t make servers, we don’t make storage, we don’t make networking, we have to rely on partners like HPE to provide the technology that we can wrap with our services to deliver a solution to the client,” Harris said.
HPE, for its part, is encouraging partners to help customers build AI-ready environments while leveraging the broader HPE ecosystem, including GreenLake, networking, storage, compute, and partner-delivered services.
“They’ve always had the compute, and they’ve always had the storage. But I think the investments in networking have really expanded their capability to deliver a complete solution,” said Harris.
“Combine them with the software acquisitions they’ve made from OpsRamp, Zerto, and Morpheus so you can operationalize the management of that infrastructure,” he continued.
For 11:11 Systems’ Chief Strategy Officer Dante Orsini, the relationship between a provider and a vendor is a crucial component of successful client outcomes.
“I think as time has went on, we’ve built a really strong, deep partnership with them,” Orsini said. “When you’re going to jointly try to architect a solution that can operate in scale, that’s where the relationship really matters.”
Partners see demand shift from pilots to production
That approach is resonating with distribution partners such as TD SYNNEX, which sees many solution providers still progressing through various stages of AI adoption.
“There are a lot of partners that are in awareness space,” Vince Stemen, the company’s vendor management leader for the HPE business, said. “The pivoting point of adoption is really where I think it’s that understanding of, okay, where do you adopt, and actually can provide consultative support to it.”
He added that successful AI practices increasingly require partners to focus on business outcomes, proofs of concept, and industry expertise rather than on technology alone.
Harris agrees.
“We’re going to continue to sell network and storage and compute to our clients to support these AI initiatives, because a lot of them don’t want that data sitting in the cloud,” Harris said, noting that many customers he works with are emphasizing control in their infrastructure planning moving forward.
Ecosystem collaboration becomes a competitive advantage
Executives across the event repeatedly stressed that no single vendor can address every customer requirement in the AI era.
For partners, that reality is creating opportunities to serve as orchestrators of broader technology ecosystems, combining infrastructure, cloud services, security, networking, and AI capabilities into solutions tailored to customer needs.
“We don’t look at it as a product necessarily, but we look at it as an ecosystem, capabilities, changing the operating model,” said Scott Steele, COO of Thrive. “When we talked to HPE [even a few years ago], they fully understood where we were going.”
HPE partners position services around customer outcomes
As enterprises look for guidance on AI adoption, cyber resilience, and hybrid IT modernization, HPE is betting that partners who can connect those technologies with measurable business outcomes will be best positioned to capture the next wave of channel growth.
“While HPE has a strong, broad portfolio, there’s still things that they can’t do. And so, we’re in the best position as channel partners to fill in the gaps,” said Harris.
This aligns with a trend we’ve seen across the channel for the better part of the last decade, as demand for services has outpaced pure technology spend.
As customers grapple with increasingly complex technology, they need a trusted advisor to work with them on change management and take a more holistic approach to understanding how tech investments drive success.
Now, as always, it’s up to partners to take the steps necessary to achieve that shift and deliver those outcomes.