Hewlett Packard Enterprise Vice President North America Channels and Partner Ecosystem Phil Soper, who has been recognized by CRN as one of the industry’s most influential channel chiefs for the past three years, is leaving the company.
HPE Wednesday announced internally that Soper, who helped power the HPE GreenLake cloud service channel transformation, has “made the decision to leave” HPE.
Chellappan (Chells) Narayanan, an 18-year HPE and HP veteran, has been named “interim leader” for North America Channels and Partner Ecosystem starting immediately.
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HPE said Narayanan—who will also continue to act in his current role as senior director and head of Partner and Ecosystem Sales—will focus on “forecasting, operational cadence and go-forward strategy.”
Soper—who was a finalist in the CRN Channel Madness competition last year as one of the most popular channel chiefs—will remain with HPE until the end of April and focus on what HPE called “managing the partner relationship transitions.”
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Rob Schaeffer, president and CRO of e360, a top HPE partner based in Concord, Calif., No. 128 on the 2024 CRN Solution Provider 500, said Soper will be missed.
“We in the channel know and appreciate Phil Soper and the work he has done to advance our business,” he said. “Phil is from the channel and knows our business well. In Phil’s absence, Chells is a friend to us all. He knows the inner workings of HPE well and will be a great advocate for us.”
Schaeffer called Chells the consummate professional.
“Chells is a treat to work with and will shepherd the HPE channel well,” he said. “The HPE channel is a resilient group, has amazing customer relationships and will continue to represent HPE with professionalism, competence and care. We wish Phil and Chells best wishes in their next journey.”
Before heading up national service providers, Narayanan spent five years overseeing global systems integrators and ISVs for HPE.
Soper’s sudden departure comes after a rapid ascent at HPE to one of the industry’s most prized channel jobs.
Soper, a three-decade channel veteran who previously spent 12 years as a solution provider executive including as president of PCM of Canada, joined HPE as chief commercial officer of HPE Canada in March 2020.
In June 2022, Soper became head of HPE North America Channel Sales, declaring his intention to accelerate the hybrid cloud GreenLake transformation.
“It is a really exciting opportunity to do different things and to be part of a new HPE story,” said Soper in an interview with CRN when he was first appointed as channel chief. “We have made some progress, but my intention being in this job is to have people look back and say, ‘This is not your grandfather’s HPE.’”
Dan Molina, co-president and CTO of Nth Generation, San Diego, No. 298 on the 2024 CRN Solution Provider 500, said Soper was a “high-quality executive with a great deal of experience” who will be missed. “We are looking forward to meeting and working closely with Chellappan,” he said.
Even with the changing of the HPE channel guard, Nth Generation expects to post double- digit HPE sales growth this year, said Molina.
“We continue to see great growth opportunities with HPE across the entire portfolio with AI, GreenLake, hybrid cloud, HPE Aruba and even HPE’s new hypervisor options,” said Molina. “We look forward to getting more details on the change but as always we are sure that HPE will continue their market-leading commitment to the channel.”
C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company, and a leading HPE AI solution provider, said he is also sorry to see Soper leave the company but is looking forward to working with Narayanan.
“With all of the innovation going on at HPE with GreenLake, AI and networking—potentially with the Juniper acquisition—there has never been a more critical time to have channel leadership focused on executing the HPE strategy in the field with partners,” said Howdyshell.
Advizex, for is part, is investing heavily with HPE on all of the key HPE strategies, said Howdyshell. “My message to Chells is to embrace the channel and invest in those partners that are committed to joint success with HPE,” he said.
Separate from the HPE channel shake-up, Howdyshell said he could not be more excited about the potential for AI sales growth this year. “We are seeing more and more energy, interest and momentum in the market around AI,” he said. “It is not slowing down. We have made the big investments in AI and already have big wins under our belt.”
As part of its big AI bet, Advizex has also made significant investments with Nvidia. “We are committed to the Nvidia strategy and have several customers that we are bringing to Nvidia GTC in two weeks,” he said.