The HPE Diversity Startup Program launches with one publicly named customer and a single partner, but HPE expects both will expand significantly as awareness of the program increases.

LAS VEGAS – Today, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is announcing the HPE Diversity Startup Program, which makes complimentary HPE GreenLake services available to women-owned and minority-owned startups. The first startup in the program is Joyuus, a newly launched Rhode Island-based digital health innovator that focuses on post-partum care, and which was highly visible at the HPE Discover event. A second customer has been approved, while a third is in pipeline. The channel partner involved with Joyuus is Alpha3 Cloud, an HPE Partner Ready service provider with offices in Northern Virginia and the San Francisco area that specializes in offering hybrid cloud, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud solutions to organizations of all sizes.

“Joyuus is the first participant in the program,” said Derek Howard, Business Development Manager at HPE.  The HPE Diversity Startup Program provides complimentary cloud service vouchers through service provider partners to eligible startups owned by women and minorities. Those companies are then able to consume HPE GreenLake services to deliver digital solutions to their customers.

“The program provides complimentary cloud services along with consultative services,” Howard said.

“Joyuus was created to solve a problem around post-partum health care, where the information is not consolidated and programmatic,” said Lisa Marceau, one of Joyuus’ two co-founders. “As a result, most people get this information from all over the Internet.”

Joyuus is developing a web app that provides accessible well-being resources for new mothers to support their postpartum care.  The web app requires a multi-cloud strategy to support its business operations and enable collaboration across a distributed team.

In addition to cloud services, Alpha3 Cloud provides Joyuus with personalized consultation, complementary IT guidance, and security and compliance support for federal privacy regulations.

Ron Sacks, CEO at Alpha3 Cloud, explained why the program was a good fit for his company.

“We launched here last year as a brand within a broader group of companies,” he said. “We had to find a niche where we didn’t go head to head with hyperscalers, who are all engaged in supporting startup communities  We knew what Google, AWS, Azure and Oracle were doing, and one segment they overlooked was minority-owned business. So we decided to right-size GreenLake and make it fit for minority owned  businesses. As a result, the stars aligned with this company.”

“A3Cloud took the time to ask questions about what we were trying to do,” said Kristine Merz,” Joyuus’ other co-founder.

Sacks provided more details on how his company will leverage the program to bring maximum benefit to Joyuus and the customers in the program who follow.

“A3C is very much an infrastructure service provider, through GreenLake, and the question will be how we scale that,” he said. “We are focused on trying to expand the ecosystem, so we will bring in other MSPs where we provide the infrastructure and they provide the consulting services.”

While the program is just being announced now, Howard stated that it is already being expanded.

“We announced our second customer this week and a prospective third,” he said. “We are at the stage of creating market awareness. Thursday, we open the doors for applications on the website.”

The number of partners in the program will also be expanded, Howard added.

“We are open to other types of service providers,” he said. “It really depends what type of services that a customer needs.”

HPE is now accepting applications to the program from interested women-owned and minority-owned startups at  www.hpe.com/info/diversity-startups.