Charlie Tunley

Charlie Tunley is channel and partner ecosystem director for the UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa (UKIMEA) at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Through 2026 he has been HPE’s main UK channel voice, speaking for the company on pricing terms, distribution and the integration of Juniper Networks, which HPE bought in 2025.

Restoring predictable pricing

After HPE tightened its partner terms early in 2026, as AI demand pushed up component costs, Tunley led its UK response. In June HPE restored 30-day validity for new server, storage and GreenLake Flex quotes, and on 5 August it removed repricing terms for deals of up to $1m (about £747,000), as IT Channel Oxygen reported.

Tunley has framed the change as a move toward predictability. “We’re working in a really volatile market, and it’s still volatile. But we’ve learned a lot of lessons in that time that have allowed us to walk back from some of the decisions we made earlier in the year, so that we can be more predictable,” he told MicroScope. He told IT Channel Oxygen that HPE was “probably one of the first in the market” to make the change. Omdia chief analyst Alastair Edwards called it a “smart move”.

One program from 1 November

At HPE Discover in June, the company said it would fold the Juniper partner program into HPE Partner Ready Vantage from 1 November 2026. It also offered partners up to 24% total margin on competitive storage takeouts, and three years of free VM Essentials licenses for up to 600 partners that earn its virtualization competency by the end of the year. Tunley calls the go-live “Partner Day One”.

Distribution is changing too. In August Infinigate UK was appointed a specialist value-added distributor for HPE’s combined Aruba and Juniper networking portfolio. Tunley said HPE was “making it easier for UK partners to access our combined capabilities”.

Why it matters to the channel

Quote validity and repricing terms decide whether a partner keeps its margin on a hardware deal. HPE’s changes give its UK partners more certainty on pricing, and the Juniper merger gives networking partners a larger portfolio to sell through a single program.

Tunley has shown he will listen to partners and act on what they tell him. From 1 November he takes HPE and Juniper partners in the UK into one program, with Infinigate UK added to the distribution line-up.