Hewlett Packard Enterprise partners with Microsoft to sell Azure as its preferred cloud alternative
Julie Bort / Business Insider :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the opening move in Microsoft's campaign to route Azure through other companies' enterprise sales channels: HPE agrees to pitch Azure as the preferred cloud option to its own customer base. It lands three months after Microsoft's Project A2 partnership with VMware, which targeted desktop virtualization — together they show Microsoft buying distribution rather than building it.
The follow-through came fast: within a year HPE put its own big-data product, Haven OnDemand, onto Azure, and Microsoft extended the same playbook to Dell and Lenovo while signing Adobe to an analogous 'preferred solution' deal. HPE's move is the template those later deals replicate.
First-order effects
- HPE's enterprise salesforce becomes a de facto Azure channel, steering its installed base toward Microsoft's cloud instead of competing alternatives — HPE monetizes the hardware relationship while Microsoft gains reach it would otherwise have to sell directly.
Second-order effects
- Dell and Lenovo are pulled into the same structure via the Azure Stack rollout with HPE, Dell, and Lenovo, since declining means ceding hybrid-cloud accounts to rivals who carry Azure; Adobe's parallel 'preferred solution' partnership confirms the template extends from hardware vendors to software firms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, on-premises hardware vendors stop building their own clouds and become distribution for a handful of hyperscalers — a structural shift visible again in 2019 when Dell let Azure customers manage IT operations with VMware virtualization.
The trend: Microsoft is converting enterprise hardware and software vendors into Azure resellers, making partner distribution — rather than direct sales — the primary path for hybrid-cloud adoption.