(NOTE: This story was originally posted to CRN.com Sept. 13.)

Many solution providers say Hewlett Packard Enterprise's current portfolio is its best ever, containing the building blocks channel partners need to build cutting-edge solutions for their customers.

Those building blocks include servers, storage, networking and hyper-converged infrastructure. Here's a look at how three HPE partners -- IT Partners, OnX Enterprise Solutions and Anexinet -- are leading the transformational consulting charge and delivering breakthrough solutions with HPE.

IT Partners: A Hybrid Computing Powerhouse

IT Partners is driving impressive private cloud economics for customers with HPE-based hybrid computing solutions.

Steve Tepedino, IT Partners

The Tempe, Ariz.-based HPE converged infrastructure Platinum partner, which goes to market with a "simplify, optimize and transform" credo, recently closed a $3 million deal for a Stretch MetroCluster HPE hybrid solution with a midsize financial company that left competitors in the dust.

The economics of the HPE hybrid computing solution that IT Partners designed was so compelling that a public cloud alternative never got out of the gate, said IT Partners CEO Steve Tepedino. "The economics just screamed that [our solution] was a better platform," he said.

"It was just cheaper and more highly efficient than using a public cloud," added Tepedino. "What you get with this architecture is business continuity and services that don't go down. You can't go down. The architecture won't allow it. You have redundancy everywhere. Everything is active. It's really cool."

The modern architecture, which effectively provides the financial institution with its own redundant private cloud, is the kind of hybrid computing game-changer that was not available to midsize customers several years ago because it was prohibitively expensive.

"This would have cost two to three times more three years ago," said Tepedino. "Small companies couldn't do it. It was only available to big companies using Tandem. Small companies just didn't have this flexibility before."

A competitive Cisco solution came in at $1 million above the IT Partners solution, said Tepedino. "The fabric-heavy, network centric ACI solution couldn't compete with the HPE architecture with [VMware] NSX," he said. "The HPE architecture was more nimble, agile and cost-efficient than the Cisco solution. Cisco puts a lot of stock in the IT fabric. That is where their costs lie. With the HPE architecture, we moved the intelligence out of the network and kept the costs way down for the customer. We put the intelligence in NSX and [HPE] OneView."

HPE's robust hybrid computing architecture with tight integration with VMware allowed IT Partners to put together a converged infrastructure with HPE server, storage and networking. "It's just a really elegant way to deliver IT services," said Tepedino. "It's really slick."

The beauty of HPE's hybrid computing architecture is it provides customers with a massively converged system, he said. "This solution has great scale up and out," said Tepedino. "It's fantastic." Tepedino expects more and more customers to opt for a hybrid computing solution rather than a public cloud option because of the beneficial economics of the HPE architecture. The economics along with the agility of the hybrid offerings simply make the HPE solutions more compelling, said Tepedino. What's more, he said, there are certain applications that just don't profile well on public cloud.

IT Partners, which is growing its HPE business at a double-digit clip, sees a lot of room to grow in the hybrid computing market with HPE. "HPE has the opportunity to become the dominant player in hybrid," he said. "The market is just starting to evolve."