Ok, so an announcement: for the rest of this FY the Juniper and HPE networking partner programs will continue to operate as two separate programs, but from 1 November 2026 they will be unified into a single stream under HPE Partner Ready Vantage.
Juniper partners will be onboarded at the level they're currently on, which gets a round of applause from the audience – sure there are probably some relieved delegates to hear that officially confirmed.
That's it from Mottram, Ewington is back on stage to wrap-up (I think)
A spokesperson from Myriad360 is syaing that an opportunity for partners is that "network is becoming strategic again".
"Network... is foundational in any AI competition," he says, "but the interesting thing is it's not alone: so is infrastructure, so is data security ... and many, many more."
Rahim is also talking about AI as an opportunity for partners, that embracing AI and getting it right it's a new route to increase profitability for partners.
Asked how it's going, Rahim says: "It's a lot of work, I'm not going to lie, but I would say that we are ahead of schedule at this point. I think any successful integration is going to start with culture and cultural alignment. Now, [I've been] really very positively surprised to see just how aligned from a cultural standpoint Juniper and HPE were right from the get-go, which allowed us to focus on what's important right from the very beginning."
"We want to get the integration right. We could not let the integration de-focus us for what is really critical, and that is our customers, our partners, ensuring that there's no disruption to any of our customer deployments, and very importantly, innovation," he adds.
Mottram wasn't joking when he said this would be speedy, we're now onto Rami Rahim, former CTO of Juniper and now in charge of networking at HPE. This is obviously one of the most interesting things for partners this week, as it's been a significant transition especially for Juniper partners.
"We are seeing a lot of demand for on-prem infrastructure, especially around AI, and so that's where we see a lot of adoption around private cloud AI for customers who are seeing that from a cost perspective, from a compliance perspective, from a sovereignty perspective, and from control perspective, that this is the best way to deploy their AI workloads. So I think that's a huge opportunity for partners, especially with services," Russo says.
Fidelma Russo, CTO at HPE, joins Mottram on stage now along with the company's CTO of worldwide technology.
Russo talks about how AI is changing things across the board and – another familiar refrain from infrastructure vendors in general – that businesses are discovering that private cloud can be overly expensive for some workloads. This presents an opportunity in private cloud for everyone.
We'll be hearing more about this in Russo's keynote on Wednesday it seems.
Another announcement, this time from Culloty, is a change to how credit works. She says that partners are asking for more credit capacity.
"We're working in a very dynamic environment right now, and ... I'm proud to announce ... an increase to approve to credit items 150% making it easier for you to sell and upsell to your customers," she says.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: The company is moving away from a 14 day period to finalise a sale/quote validity. That's now 30 days.
"Starting tomorrow we are moving our standard full mobility out to 30 days for new servers, storage, and relay pricing," says MacDonald.
"Thank you, everyone, for working with us through a pretty rocky time over the last few months," he adds. "During the first half of the year, commodity costs were changing in an extremely dynamic way, which is why we have to shorten our core validities, and our goal right now is to be able to stand behind and extend that ... validity."
MacDonald reflects on changes the company has made recently to help partners, including faster delivery starts and smart choice SKUs.
Joining Mottram for the first segment are Maeve Culloty and Neil MacDonald.
MacDonald is addressing one of the biggest issues for partners (I've heard this not at HPE but elsewhere too) is supply challenges.
"We know that the supply environment is difficult and that it's added a lot of work, too much work for you and your teams, you're dealing with supply availability challenges, you're dealing with higher prices, pricing changes, and you're dealing with customers who all have serious budget challenges because of the dynamics in the industry, and what we don't expect this place situation to resolve any time soon," he says.
Now Phil Mottram is on stage for a "tight session" as it's sort of a "three in one".
"We're going to hear about the big trends we're seeing in the market, and where our customers are coming to us for answers"
Back to Ewington, he's asking what HPE needs from partners in FY 2027. Neri starts off with a thank you to the partner community, adding that the role of HPE is to make partners "relevant", which grows business for everyone and increases innovation.
"Our role is to grow with you," he says, but it's not just abotu 2027. He's summing up by saying that the technological challenges and disruption that's happening now "we're all experiencing" but there's business opportunity there. And with a big round of applause he has left the stage
There's a lot of hinting, nods and winks about what's going to be announced tomorrow. Big netowrking announcements (no surprise there) and the importance of AI. More on that tomorrow, where I'll be running a live blog on ITPro.
"Consider the large scale companies coming together, and we continue to deliver profitable growth for our shareholders ... so I'm very proud, because, as you said, we are building investment in business in the industry," he adds
Antonio Neri, CEO of HPE, is now on stage with Ewington.
"First and foremost, thank you for all the support you provide to us as enjoying customers, and for the spectacular tools we deliver," says Neri.
He also talks about what has happened in the five months between the acquisition of Juniper in July 2025 and January 2026.
"To take advantage of our merging networking portfolio, refine existing networking competencies into one, and adding a new rounding competency, which we've adopted to capture that opportunity," he adds. This means integrating the Juniper and HPE channel programs into a single one – which means moving everyone to Platinum, Gold, and Silver levels.
Ewington also talks up HPE's networking prowess and associated security.
"We're enabling you to meet strictest data residency and regulated requirements with air gaps and solvent ready private cloud solutions, which then can be combined with partner delivery, and then most obvious opportunity we create in one portfolio is through our worldwide HPE networking business," he says
The announcements are coming thick and fast! First is some new channel-only offerings – we will have a write up of this available shortly – which include HPE Morpheus VM Essentials and a VM Essentials offering for partners themselves, which will be available 'free' for three years (there is a "nominal" support fee).
Ewington is talking about the changes that have happened over the course of 2026. The "Power of One portfolio" is a three part thing, he says.
"First, we want to help others unlock greater relevance by delivering one portfolio built on innovation that keeps you ahead in the customer market. Second, to help partners [build] expertise, so that you can position that portfolio by providing the right tools, right training, and the right knowledge, and last to help partners as well higher knowledge when you sell and you win."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Antonio Neri will also be on stage at some point during this keynote, but we're kicking off with Simon Ewington who is talking up "the power of One". He starts with a thank you to the HPE channel partners, saying 64% of all business is done through the channel. This rises to 90% in networking.
Hello, and welcome to our live blog from HPE Partner Growth Summit 2026, I'm managing editor Jane McCallion.
This is the first Partner Growth Summit since HPE acquired Juniper Networks in July 2026. In December, at HPE Discover Barcelona 2025, the company talked about "cross-pollination" between Juniper and its existing networking business, Aruba, in terms of technology. Based on this week's strapline "the power of one", we may have more to hear about how that's working from a channel point of view.