Skov, who is Danish and has been running Aruba’s channel business in northern Europe, replaces Donna Grothjan, who retired this year.

LAS VEGAS – Today at the Partner General Session at the start of the HPE Discover event here, HPE Aruba announced the appointment of Lene Skov as the new Vice President of Worldwide Channel Sales for HPE Aruba Networking. She replaces long-time channel advocate Donna Grothjan, who announced her intention to retire from the channel role earlier this year.

“Partners have always been key to our success, and we know the immense value they bring to our customers,” Skov said. “It’s important to offer them choices in how they sell and deliver our solutions so they can maximize their margins and meet their customers’ needs.”

Skov was most recently Regional Sales Director for Northern Europe for HPE Aruba Networking, where she successfully achieved 20% growth every year in the European North Region and doubled the SaaS and NaaS orders in the region year-on-year.

Previously, Skov  worked in a number of companies in both Denmark and France, ranging from IT start-ups, to Oil & Gas with the Danish company, until joining HP in 2011. She held various positions in the former HP Software business unit, among them Country Manager for Denmark and Sweden, before leaving for the role of Vice President of Cloud and Software Services at Atea, before rejoining HPE in 2019 as Regional Sales Director Northern Europe for HPE Aruba.

Skov holds an Executive MBA in Change Management from Aarhus University.

“Lene’s proven proficiency in change management and transformation – and a rare combination of knowing the business from the end user through the partner perspectives – will enable her to support our partners as they strive to help their customers embrace digital transformation, meet changing end user expectations, find ways to be more efficient, understand emerging AI-based technologies, and explore cloud and as a Service business models,” said Alain Carpentier, Head of Worldwide Sales for HPE Aruba Networking, to whom Skov now reports.

“Lene is an ideal match for this role as we expand HPE Aruba Networking’s emphasis on software and on as a Service (aaS) solutions,” Carpentier said.”She was very successful in developing new business for us, including as-a-Service business.”

“Customers today want the flexibility to be able to consume IT via a CapEx or OpEx model, but they want the cloud experience regardless of how they consume,” Skov stated. “They also want a trusted partner to manage their environment for them. To pursue these opportunities, partners need to embrace the emergence of new business models, and that can require a significant transformation of their existing business.  The focus of channel programs is evolving. Traditional channel programs have been geared to enable resale partner “sell through”. New XaaS channel programs are focusing on enabling partners to deliver value-added services and the business outcomes their customers need.”

This also means partners need to be more flexible and customer-centric in assessing and meeting customer needs than many of them have been in the past.

“Partners need to be engaged with their customers throughout the customer lifecycle and they need to develop an ongoing understanding of their customers’ business and the outcomes their customers want to achieve,” Skov said. “Partners must also be able to support multiple business models so they can deliver how their customers want to consume, and they must be able to differentiate themselves by building strong areas of expertise and unique value-added services.”