‘This is a significant opportunity for us to work with the channel and to work with all the customers that our partners are representing,’ said Lavista. ‘In terms of investments, it’s a very coordinated effort across all of HPE.’
“This is a significant opportunity for us to work with the channel and to work with all the customers that our partners are representing,” said Lavista of the ambitious HPE hybrid cloud software growth plan. “In terms of investments, it’s a very coordinated effort across all of HPE.”
The HPE software business is mounting a “coordinated effort across all of HPE” to accelerate software sales with offerings like VM Essentials, Morpheus Enterprise and its CloudOps software suite, which includes Morpheus, OpsRamp and Zerto, Lavista said.
“Everything we do from compute, everything we do with the storage, they are all on board with what we have with our CloudOps suite,” he said.
The result of the full-court HPE software press is a “multiplier effect across all the channel resources that we have at HPE,” said Lavista. “There is a pull from our customers and partners. I would say everyone in HPE, whether they’re channel or direct, are having conversations with customers about the CloudOps suite.”
Lavista, who took the top HPE software job five months ago, says “the growth expectation is the biggest growth expectation” that he has ever signed up for in his career.
“It’s literally like doubling the business,” he said of the growth plan. “I think we’re only touching the surface of what we can be doing. That’s why we keep stressing the importance of the channel and the partner organization. For us, it’s about reach and scale, and the partners in the channel are going to help us with that reach and scale. We are enabling partners and making sure it’s a services-led sales approach.”
What is the message to partners about the HPE software opportunity with the CloudOps suite, especially given the memory price increases that are hitting partners hard?
First, I want to emphasize that the channel is so important with what is going on with us with software, given the demand that we’re seeing from our customer base and the scale that we have to drive with this [sales] motion and the importance of CloudOps to our customers.
The time is now that we need to help our customers with HPE software, and we’re only going to do that through the partners. With the infrastructure challenges that we have [in the industry] and with the commodity [memory] costs [rising], I think it’s actually accelerating the demand that we’re seeing for software.
If you’re a customer right now and you’ve got infrastructure out there, you’re on a normal refresh cycle, you’ve got a fixed budget—which we know they all do—and most of them are shrinking budgets, they have to try to solve with less. And what a better way to do that than to have a better operational experience on their existing infrastructure that they own today with the CloudOps suite.
Customers who are looking to extend the life of the infrastructure they own today can layer in the CloudOps suite, Morpheus, VM Essentials, Morpheus Essentials, OpsRamp, Zerto, and they’re able to get more out of the infrastructure that they have on- premises already.
For those that actually have budget that they can refresh, there’s a finite budget that they have, and we know that that has been compressed [along with] some of the legacy software that they have provisioned for those environments. So they now have smaller budgets for infrastructure.
But with VM Essentials [VME], now customers can lower their TCO for the environment with Morpheus Essentials and get more infrastructure to refresh. Given that the cost of hardware now has gone up because of commodities and everything that’s happening in the world and in the marketplace, VME has become an essential part of our customer conversations now.
The No. 1 statistic I like to talk about is we are 100 percent exclusive with VME through the channel.
VMware also claims that skyrocketing costs of memory prices benefits their platform. What is your response to that?
From conversations I’ve had with customers and partners, that hasn’t come up once. I haven’t heard anybody actually use that example as being helpful. I haven’t heard anybody say that they’re getting help from legacy software providers that are really going to help them through this kind of time that we’re seeing with the increased infrastructure costs.
HPE reported in the most recent quarterly conference call that VM Essentials virtualization software revenue grew sequentially for the third consecutive quarter with high-double-digit new logo growth year over year. How much momentum are you seeing with VM Essentials?
It’s all about the VM reset that is happening in the marketplace. It’s the conversation customers want to have, but it is just the tip of the iceberg of that conversation because while they have to solve for the escalating costs associated with their legacy environments, they’re also challenged in that their IT estate and the complexity they are having to manage has become very difficult.
Customers want visibility. They want control, and they want automation and orchestration across their data centers, all of the public clouds and at the edge. Our hybrid cloud software stack, CloudOps suite, is helping our customers who are working with our partners to standardize their operations and improve outcomes. So the door-opener for partners is telling their customers that they’ve got a solution for the escalating costs with their current virtualization stack.
But that’s just the beginning of what their real requirements are, which is complete visibility, automation and control across the whole hybrid IT estate. Every customer is challenged with this.
All those customers have a different operating model for what they’re doing in various public clouds, what they built out at their edges, what they’re doing in their data center or in colos. That’s expensive. It’s expensive. And it’s inconsistent in terms of how they operate, and it just drives fragmented data across their IT estate.
How can you do AI, for example, in an efficient way if you can’t even get your operations under control because you have various operating models and stranded data across the hybrid estate. So, yes, customers are asking us, and they want to have that door- opener and understand how we can help lower their virtualization costs. But the conversation continues across the whole CloudOps software suite that we are driving at HPE.
What kind of channel investment are you making to drive that 100 percent channel-exclusive VME model?
I’ve doubled my sales team in order to effectively help scale through the channel.
Do you have your own software channel sales reps going into the field to help partners?
We have resources that we have invested in that are channel- focused partners.
This is a significant opportunity for us to work with the channel and to work with all the customers that our partners are representing.
In terms of investments, it’s a very coordinated effort across all of HPE. So everything we do from compute, everything we do with the storage, they are all on board with what we have with our CloudOps suite. Regardless of what resources I have, it’s just a multiplier effect across all the channel resources that we have at HPE. There is a pull from our customers and partners, I would say everyone in HPE, whether they’re channel or direct, are having conversations with customers about the CloudOps suite.
How important is the new logo sales incentive for partners with the software push?
New logo for software is a sweet spot because we are just entering the market for the most part with a lot of these capabilities. So for the partners to capitalize on our new logo, and the penetration that they can make in that way, is huge.
It’s more than just leading with the software stack. It’s actually leading with the services. The capabilities we’re providing are helping partners be relevant to their customers. This is the most relevant things on customers’ minds right now.
We’re providing the capability for partners to attach services with recurring revenue. There are opportunities for partners to do assessments to help customers right-size, to do the implementation of the software and then the ongoing management and life cycle within IT operations. Software provides stickiness for partners with their customers.
You’ve been in the job five months now. How does it feel at this point to be leading the software charge?
It was an honor when they asked me to come and lead the sales team for CloudOps suite. Our growth expectation is the biggest growth expectation that I’ve ever signed up for in my career.
It’s literally like doubling the business. I think we’re only touching the surface of what we can be doing. That’s why we keep stressing the importance of the channel and the partner organization. For us, it’s about reach and scale, and the partners in the channel are going to help us with that reach and scale. We are enabling partners and making sure it’s a services-led sales approach.
We’re helping them hit that services sweet spot, creating relevancy and driving attached services, from assessment to implementation to the day-to-day management. I want all of our channel partners to have the same growth that I’m signing up for and have signed up for what we’re doing here in software.
We’re just starting. It’s more than double or triple growth. The growth in doing this with the channel partners is going to be the major accelerator for us. So when you look at some of the accomplishments, and as we continue to grow quarter over quarter, you’ll see that will be done with our partners.
What is the difference between HPE and VMware?
It’s not just VMware. I don’t want to make it just about VMware. The alternatives and some of the legacy environments for virtualization have been solely focused on delivering a very controlled on-premises experience. And while, yes, that is important, we absolutely solve for that with our software stack, but the world is hybrid.
No one from the legacy kind of virtualization stacks are helping customers optimize and operate across the whole IT estate. Think about the shift that customers have made to public cloud. Right, wrong or indifferent they’ve made a shift to the public cloud, and they’re operating some part of their IT estate there and they’ve got a bunch going on at their edges as well.
With our CloudOps, we are helping our customers get control back across all of it, not just on-premises but with everything they’re doing in public cloud. And you cannot find another vendor that is offering solutions like this across the stack from observability to automation and orchestration to backup and recovery and cyber resiliency.
It’s not about just one IT estate. It’s about all of them, and with consistency. That’s the important part. It’s about consistency of how you operate, how you manage, how you control your IT estates. You want to do it the same way regardless of where your apps or your data reside.
What’s the difference in how HPE does multi-cloud management and orchestration with HPE Morpheus and OpsRamp versus Broadcom-VMware?
The VMware equivalent that is out there is only specific to the bubble that is VMware. They are only helping with the operations associated with VMware.
Let’s peel this back. Morpheus is about providing automation and orchestration, regardless of the virtualization engine underneath it, and regardless of the public cloud underneath it.
OpsRamp is about delivering true day two operations with AIOps built into it, with full observability from every application to every piece of infrastructure to every virtual machine across the whole IT estate, regardless of where it lives—in public cloud, or on-premises or at the edge. Zerto is about providing backup and recovery and cyber resilience across all of that.
You can’t find another vendor that’s giving you that experience across all of the IT estate. Everybody’s optimizing only for the part that they have a vested interest in. We’re providing options for things like virtualization, but we’re providing complete, consistent, day zero, day one and day two, regardless of what a customer has today, may have tomorrow, and if they’re consuming our hypervisor, which is built into everything we do with Morpheus, whether it’s VM Essentials or Morpheus Enterprise, they’ve got consistency.
So you can make the comparison to VMware as the gorilla, but it’s a little unfair in terms of how they grew up. Now they’re very siloed in terms of what they are trying to tackle for customers. We’re tackling those as well, but we go well beyond what their capabilities are.
What do you think of Cisco doing their own hypervisor?
What I read is they’re including a hypervisor in some of their appliances, and that’s it. It’s very niche.
It’s not really solving for a customer’s IT estate. It’s solving for an appliance that Cisco is delivering their application on top of. You can’t even make that comparison.
Do you think HPE gets the credit for the innovation you are bringing to market with the software suite?
It’s an interesting question. When I think about it, I think about in the following way.
I think HPE gets credit for listening to our customers and partners and delivering innovation that helps meet and solve real business problems that they have.
If you bring that up to the mega point, yes, HPE gets credit for understanding, listening and delivering solutions that customers want.
We are responding to and even predicting the market trends, always in close communication with our customers and partners who are helping to shape that relevancy.
When you look at the CloudOps software suite, what are you most excited about what’s coming as you look out in 2026 in terms of innovation?
Right now there is an emotional and a real budget financial driver for customers having to look at making changes to their operating model and their virtualization stack.
Taking little bit of a look into the crystal ball, once we help customers settle down across the great VM reset what’s coming is something we are really good at too, which is AI and layering in all this great telemetry and information that we have and then helping customers take advantage of AI in in their operations and in their operating model, helping them make decisions that makes them more competitive and effective in the business they are in. That is where this is going. And we are well positioned across what we are doing in both hybrid cloud and AI.
What are you seeing from the HPE global sales force in terms of support?
We are mainstream. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, we are mainstream in HPE global sales and with what we are doing with our own channel organization and how we are represented in front of our customers.
