Zerto expands HPE relationship to add full availability of Zerto replication solution

Zerto has joined the HPE Complete program, making Zerto Virtual Replication an HPE part number that can be ordered directly from HPE for any HPE platform.

Mehran Hadipour, Director of Business Development at Zerto

LAS VEGAS – At the HPE Discover event last week, availability and disaster recovery vendor Zerto announced it has joined the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Complete Program. While Zerto had previously been a strong HPE partner, this significantly expands the breadth of HPE offerings where their flagship Zerto Virtual Replication can be sold directly through HPE and its channel.

“This is an extension of what we have done with HPE already,” said Mehran Hadipour, Director of Business Development at Zerto. Zerto has been doing integration work with HPE since 2015, and last September, they expanded this significantly with an agreement through which Zerto Virtual Replication would be sold by HPE specifically within HPE Helion CloudSystem solutions. Since then, HPE has launched its HPE Complete program, which greatly broadens the route to market directly through HPE and its channel for validated complementary third-party vendor solutions.

“The September 2016 agreement integrated us into the Helion stack, but that just made us available specifically for the Helion class of product for cloud systems,” Hadipour said. “HPE Complete is a way of using us in creating a proven solution for any HPE platform bring sold. We now come as a part number in the HPE system, and can be sold with any platform.”

Veeam, which competes against Zerto, is also an HPE partner and part of the HPE Complete program. Hadipour said that HPE is positioning them differently for specific use cases, with Zerto’s strength being in more complex virtualized environments.

“We can support replication in all HPE’s storage platforms,” he stated. “If, for example, they have 3PAR on one side, and converged on the other, we can provide replication between the two. That cross- platform support is valuable. Our swimlane in HPE Complete is basically these situations, when they want replication across storage platforms, and it is virtualized. If they want virtual availability only, then Veeam is the right solution for that. And if the environment is homogenous, HPE has their own products for that.”

Hadipour said that while they don’t expect this expanded relationship to be a silver bullet in terms of massively increasing sales, they do have specific expectations.

“We have a good presence in the market now, and a strong relationship already with HPE,” he indicated. “We just did a huge transaction with them before this deal closed. We do, however, have a significant overlap already between our own resellers and the HPE channel. We believe that this expanded relationship will accelerate our business with HPE resellers who are not yet working with Zerto.”

HPE is not Zerto’s only major strategic relationship.

“We have something similar with IBM around cloud, and Microsoft with Azure and VMware are also critical relationships for us,” Hadipour said. “Those relationships are my job, and developing more critical relationships like this is a priority for us.”