In an effort to fill its cloud software gap, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has opted to help its channel partners in the cloud help each other with the Cloud 28 consortium.

“One single partner can find, with another one, the way to achieve his goal instead of thinking, ‘I will do it myself, and I will lose my customer at the end of the day,'” said Xavier Poisson (pictured, right), vice president of indirect digital services at HPE.

Being a Cloud 28 partner has driven agility for ThinkOn Inc., Canadian storage, compute and network wholesaler, said Craig McLellan (pictured, left) the company’s founder, who joined Poisson in an interview during HPE Discover in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The mission of Cloud 28 is to combine partners’ diverse offerings into business-use ready cloud solutions for customers, Poisson told John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

Cloud 28 connects cloud service and solution providers, Independent Software Vendors, Systems Integrators, distributors and even some government entities across the planet, Poisson explained.

Two speeds: Now or five minutes ago

The open collaboration in Cloud 28 allows swift communication with customers who have become accustomed to operating at the pace of cloud, according to McLellan.

“Everything is about now or five minutes ago,” he said, adding that Cloud 28 customers desire tailored services through an iterative DevOps model.

“Failure is an acceptable outcome as long as it doesn’t take them 12 to 18 months,” he said. “There is some forgiveness, I think, that occurs from the customer base if we’re all in this together.”

Cloud 28, which began in December 2015, now has 500 members and covers more than 300 data centers. There are 18,000 cloud services on the platform (including  2,000 unique ones), stated Poisson, who foresees the community snowballing in the future.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of HPE Discover US 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover US 2017. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. nor other sponsors have editorial control on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE