HP’s Amplify Program Accelerates Partner Growth and Paves the Way for the AI Era – Six Five On the Road

Patrick Moorhead: The Six Five is on the road here in Las Vegas at HP Amplify 2024 Premier Partner event. Dan, it’s been all about AI improvements we can make to hybrid work. It’s been all about partner programs and…

Daniel Newman: We’re driving experiences here. We’re driving experiences for partners. We’re driving experience into devices. We’re creating revenue streams through new services. Pat, it’s a solutions-driven show. It was a banger of a general session today. And from what I understand, there’s going to be a whole other day and more surprises. But, Pat, we had CEOs, Google, Microsoft. You had what? Intel.

Patrick Moorhead: That’s right.

Daniel Newman: Qualcomm.

Patrick Moorhead: That’s right.

Daniel Newman: I feel like I missed someone.

Patrick Moorhead: Well, Lisa is going to be on tomorrow.

Daniel Newman: Lisa Su. I heard there might be another fairly big AI related CEO here.

Patrick Moorhead: Possibly. We’ll see.

Daniel Newman: I don’t know. I don’t want to completely spoil the show. But, Pat, it’s been high energy. It’s been very exciting. And look, this year is shaping up to be something special and it’s going to be all about…

Patrick Moorhead: It really is. And I’ve been in and around HP. Compaq was an HP affiliated company and partner focused all the way. We heard up on stage. 85% of all HP’s revenue goes through partner. So let’s do the double click on partners. Kobi, welcome to The Six Five. Great to have you on.

Kobi Elbaz: Thank you for having me here.

Patrick Moorhead: Absolutely. This is going to be the easiest thing you’re going to do all week, man.

Kobi Elbaz: All right. Let’s see.

Patrick Moorhead: Everybody been the warmup back just waiting for this. This is your event.

Kobi Elbaz: Indeed. This is our partner event. It’s running the global channel, but it’s not mine. It’s the company overall event. Because as you heard from the CEO this morning, we are partner-driven company. So it’s mean that every person in the company have responsibility to their partner engagement.

Daniel Newman: Well, Enrique sat in that seat a little while ago, but Kobi, you were the star of this morning’s general session.

Patrick Moorhead: Kicked it off.

Daniel Newman: I got to say I’m feeling a little bit like I’m in the proximity of-

Patrick Moorhead: Greatness.

Daniel Newman: What’s a great Mo Salah? I know you’re a Liverpool fan. But you’re the Mo Salah of the channels. All right. See I got him smiling.

Kobi Elbaz: You got me smiling.

Patrick Moorhead: You got him smiling.

Daniel Newman: So we’ve hit it hard. Partners are a big deal. Let’s get the key takeaways. What are the takeaways that you’re going to want the partners when they watch this video after? What do you want them to come away from this with?

Kobi Elbaz: I would say, I think for me the takeaway for the partners is first of all our commitment to the partner community. And I think we demonstrated by the action we’re taking and we demonstrated by the result. I think the second elements I want the partner to take away is that we are listening to them. We are hearing them, we’re taking the feedback, and we have one objective to make it work for both of us because we want to win in the market and the only way we can be successful is if they are successful.

So I think the second takeaway. The third elements I will say I want them to see the evolvement of our Amplify program. And we announced many new announcements that really make sure that we and the channel partners capture the opportunities we are going to see in the market. So the way I will look at that, they will expect to continue from us to invest in the channel, listen in them, integrate the feedback and put in place what’s needed in order to capture the opportunity in the market.

Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. It’s interesting. A lot of the times in transitions, it’s the vendor imposing things on the channel, but I feel like the energy is the channel is asking HP for help because they see the opportunity. As I dial back the clock, I mean, other than internet, call it let’s say 1999, I think this is one of these moments with AI and they want to be part of it. And one of the other observations, again, I’m not a channel expert, you are, but I’ve been engaged with the channel and there are inflection points where you can see over the history where channel partners rocketed forward and those who didn’t embrace the next new thing were on the downfall. And with that, what were some of the programs, some of the announcements you made here? We heard it at your keynote, but maybe you could share that with the viewers here.

Kobi Elbaz: So first of all, I will say, great that you captured that about the engagement we have with the channel because historically and also today it’s a two-street dialogue. We see them as the extension of us and we always would like to get the feedback. Now, when we look about what we announced today, we announced few areas. First of all, before the new opportunities, a new era of innovation, there are existing opportunity that we want to make sure that we address with our channel partners. SMB is a great example. We introduced SmartBuy.

SmartBuy is a global framework that really aimed to focus on what we believe is the most important to SMB customer, having the right product at the right price always available. So we roll it at one of the 24 countries to have one global framework. But then we’d go into the new area of opportunity. We announced Growth Play. So Growth Play for us is really area that we believe is going to be a growth opportunity in the near future that require much stronger collaboration between us and the channel partners in terms of investment, joint business, planning, education.

So we announced for Growth Play and I will mention some of them. So digital services is one, active care services is the second, video collaboration is the third, and AI data science is the fourth one. So in each one of them we basically go into having capabilities depending on the capability of the partners and if they’re willing to invest, we go in to work with them together to capture this opportunity.

Now, on AI specifically, I think, there is an element about all of us collectively need to upskill our skills. I call it in there because it’s a fast moving technology. A lot of changes and it’s important that we work with the channel partners about how we train ourselves. So we introduce a set of AI masterclasses to really make sure that we in the channel and the channel, many get the right training. And there are some area that are more advanced like data science AI, that we partner with companies like NVIDIA to deliver channel training to our partners.

Patrick Moorhead: No, that’s great.

Daniel Newman: So it’s the AI era. This is all about AI. It’s generally pretty surprising to Patrick and I if we can get on a conversation like this for more than about two minutes without talking about it, but maybe rethinking it. We’ve talked about how AI is going to be infused in products, but what about the expectations of the channel? They’re trying to figure out, they’re very dependent. There’s an interdependence between you and the channel. They’re really dependent on what you build and how you build it and how you deliver it. What should the channel expect as it relates to AI from HP?

Kobi Elbaz: So I think the channel should expect a few things. First of all, I think we need to demonstrate the way we use AI. And as I said this morning, we will use AI throughout operation to better serve them. It’s going to be through pricing or marketing. So first of all, they’ll need to see how AI work for them to better serve them. The second element, when it comes to our product portfolio, we want really to look about how we improve productivity for employees.

And it’s not just about AI PC or AI notebook. We will look about it end to end. And this is why I think this hybrid, I think AI will enable us to accelerate this hybrid workplace. And you will see AI across our portfolio not only on the notebook itself for the PC, it will be in print and it’ll be in our video collaboration. So what the channel should look for us and what we are working with them is to help them to build a story for the customer with the use cases and having the end-to-end story that is not a device. I think the biggest mistake will be that we’ll talk about it as a device with speed and feeds, but we need to talk about use cases and benefits for the organization by using AI.

Patrick Moorhead: That’s right. And you put a nice little services layer on top of that and you really have something. I love that you are ending this conversation on that because it’s something that’s always been a challenge in this sector. I remember software and services were below the box or above the box, whatever the PowerPoint said. But truly as I really get the sense from HP that the experience, the solution, the hardware, software plus the services, that is the north star of HP.

Kobi Elbaz: And again, I agree with you about that. And I will say also when it comes to services and all the different capabilities, I say that on stage, our channel partners have different capabilities and different skills. And our job is to make sure that depending on where you are, we can complement each other in order to drive the best customer experience. Because in the end it’s all about how together we serve the customer better.

Daniel Newman: That’s right. Kobi, I want to thank you so much for joining us here on The Six Five.

Kobi Elbaz: Thank you very much for having me here.

Daniel Newman: You have a wonderful rest of the event and look forward to tracking and seeing all the progress. Let’s have you back again soon.

Kobi Elbaz: Good. Thank you very much. See you tomorrow.

Patrick Moorhead: Thank you for coming on.

Daniel Newman: All right, everybody hit that subscribe button and join Patrick and I for all of the coverage here at HP Amplify 2024. And of course tune into all of The Six Five videos. We post quite a few because we’ve got a lot to say. But for this episode, for this show here from HP Amplify, we got to say goodbye. See you all later.