LAS VEGAS – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a plethora of partner program updates and services at its Discover 2026 event, but the one that garnered the biggest audible response from a partisan crowd in attendance was a surprise doubling on pricing quote validity from 15 days to 30 days.

Neil MacDonald, EVP, president, and GM of HPE’s Server business, made that announcement during a keynote at HPE’s Partner Growth Summit, explaining that starting immediately, pricing that HPE’s go-to-market partners provided to their end users would now be valid for 30 days, instead of the 15-day period they had been operating under. This includes pricing for new servers, storage, and Green Lake Flex offerings.

This garnered a round of applause from the partner-stacked audience, with MacDonald adding: “Thank you, everyone, for working with us through a pretty rough, tough time over the last few months. During the first half of the year, commodity costs were changing in an extremely dynamic way, which is why we had to shorten up the validities, and our goal right now is to be able to stand behind what we're offering you and extend that validity because while we still see prices and costs increasing in the coming months, we see it moderating, and so we're leaning in to help you close more business with validities.”

Commodity costs have been a significant pain point for the technology industry through the first half of the year, with component costs swinging wildly due to geopolitical turmoil. This has challenged vendors in maintaining price points to varying levels of success.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri noted during the vendor’s most recent earnings call that it expects the memory supply chain bottleneck to continue into 2027, but that the firm had already taken steps to deal with the lingering supply chain concern.

“Unlike Covid where people were also doing double booking, we do not see that at all. And we have no cancellations,” Neri said during the investor call. “We feel confident about the durability of that demand, which will drive this sustained momentum.”

“We have not seen any pull in, we do not see a cliff, and in many ways, I think customers are prioritizing getting access to technology now faster than ever before,” the CEO added. “Because nobody wants to be left behind when it comes down to deploying AI.”

Good news and just news

The price validity extension was good news to partners.

Scott Steele, COO at managed service provider and HPE partner Thrive, explained to SDxCentral in an interview that the 15-day validity period did make customer interactions challenging, but added HPE had helped in “making sure that it hurt but wouldn’t kill us.”

“Our account manager was like, life as I know it is going to end,” Steele said, though he did add that many of Thrive’s customers understood the challenge.

“The customer is like, ‘OK, well, I can't have a tripling of the price … and in the end we were able to work it out,” Steele said, later adding, “If you're in technology, if you're the CEO of the company, most of our customers kind of understand what's happening out there. They don't like it, but they understand it and then they want to make sure that you're not the one” sticking the pricing changes to them.

Steele did add that there will an initial challenge in working the change through the sales process to reduce confusion that might arise from pricing bids being offered pre- and post-validity extension.

The extension was also just news for some at HPE, including Simon Ewington, SVP of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem at the vendor, who during a later press briefing noted surprise on the announcement.

“I would like to have said [it], because it seems to be the most popular thing on stage,” Ewington said of the announcement. “Unfortunately, I didn't get that opportunity, and that was a pretty well-kept secret. Actually, my staff didn't know about it either.”

Despite the down-low nature of the announcement, Ewington explained the importance of the move.

“When you're trying to get pricing out from a vendor, to a distributor, to a customer to get in a decision cycle is very difficult, so we wanted to recognize that when we felt the commodity and supply situation becoming a little bit more predictable – and I use the term ‘a little bit more’ – the first thing we want to do is try and release the operation pressure, so that was very popular,” Ewington said.

Juniper Networks partners still waiting

HPE’s partner program changes comes as it continues to work through integration of Juniper Network’s long-standing programs.

That work kicked off late last year with the launch of HPE’s Partner Ready Vantage Program that was centered on three new “centers” based on Compute, Hybrid Cloud, and Networking. Those centers will replace the legacy “As-a-service Center” and integrate those legacy features into a new “Sell Track.”

Ewington at that time explained in a blog post that partners demonstrating “pan-HPE expertise across Compute, Hybrid Cloud, and Networking, and fulfill the eligibility criteria” can gain “Triple Platinum Plus” recognition, which enables “them to access expanded benefits and growth opportunities.”

“The program is intended to accelerate partner success by supporting both generalists and specialists, offering incentives for competency and facilitating rapid advancement within the HPE ecosystem,” Ewington wrote. “Through this initiative, HPE underscores its commitment to fostering partner growth and differentiation in a competitive market.”

However, that commitment is still trickling down to Juniper Networks legacy program. That program is set to be integrated under the HPE program beginning November 1, with what HPE described as “one set of partner membership tiers, one group of competencies, and one compensation structure across the combined program.”

Rami Rahim, former CEO at Juniper Networks and now head of HPE’s networking operations, told analysts at an HPE securities analyst meeting last year that “about 90% of our sales” come through those channel partners.

“When we closed this deal, there was only around a 10% overlap in partners between HPE Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks,” Rahim said of HPE’s $14 billion purchase of Juniper Networks that closed mid-2025. “We now have more than 47,000 partners around the world selling our HPE networking portfolio. So harmonizing partner programs and driving our combined product portfolio through a broader partner community represents a compelling source of revenue synergies for us.”