Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has had a change of heart about offering certain COVID-19 financial relief to the Australia and New Zealand channel.
The vendor earlier announced a number of assistance relief to partners and distributors to combat the cash flow crises faced by many partners, but the majority of these excluded the Asia Pacific market.
However, the vendor appears to have had a rethink and now will offer more financial support locally, including an early settlement Incentive to distributors and so-called ‘corporate’ resellers.
In addition, its US$2 billion global stimulus package, the HPE Financial Services (HPEFS), will now offer A/NZ partners payment relief program, following them to defer 90 per cent of their costs until 2021.
It will also allow partners to convert existing IT assets into capital including a buy back scheme, while making payment deferral available on new technology purchases.
A final measure includes an offer of shorter-term rental of pre-owned HPE technology to “empower” a remote working set-up.
These will sit alongside a decision to suspend revenue thresholds for HPE Partner Ready Program and the Aruba Partner Ready for Networking Program locally, and a raft of customer-centric aid.
HPE’s efforts join a raft of vendors stepping in to ease the disruption by making changes to their partner programs, including Cisco, Microsoft and Nutanix.
