HPE gets new UK boss as firm overhauls partner programme

HPE has appointed Marc Waters as its UK and Ireland managing director. He had been acting managing director following the promotion of Andy Isherwood to managing director for HPE EMEA.

Waters joined HP in 1999 and was made vice president for Enterprise Group in the UK&I in March 2013. He previously held positions at HP including Enterprise Services sales director for the UK Public Sector, Enterprise Group’s server country manager, chief of staff to the UK MD as well as a number of sales management roles.

The appointment comes after HPE moving its services division off to CSC and selling its software division to Micro Focus.

Kate Hannighan, research director at Tech Market View, said that Waters looks to be very well placed to manage the retained business, “which is, of course, focused around servers, storage, networking and the related services.”

“Waters is incredibly knowledgeable of the business and has lots of energy and ideas. Look out for more analysis on HPE’s strategy later in the year once we understand more about his plans,” she added.

HPE also announced a number of initiatives aimed at helping partners become more profitable. Its Partner Ready programmes will reward partners working in specific categories. It also introduces a set of channel competencies that certify partners based on clusters of certain HPE solutions.

The programme will sport 11 competencies, five have already been launched with the rest coming online over the next year. These include HPE Partner Ready for Networking Program; HPE Partner Ready for Service Providers Program; HPE Partner Ready for Technology Partners Program; HPE Partner Ready Marketing Tools; and HPE Partner Ready IT Investment Online Tools.