HPE Expands GreenLake Push to the Edge
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Hewlett Packard Enterprise continues to extend its GreenLake cloud services to the network edge with the addition of faster deployments for distributed environments ranging from application containers and virtual machines to machine learning workloads and other networking deployments aimed at moving computing resources closer to data.
Launched in 2017 as a consumption-based, managed service, the latest version of Greenlake also emphasizes rapid deployment, with 17 cloud-native enterprise configurations up and running in as little as 14 days. HPE unveiled GreenLake upgrades last June that expanded those services from datacenters to the cloud and out to emerging edge services.
Also this week, the company introduced a Ezmeral software portfolio with services targeting containers orchestration, machine learning and data analytics along with IT automation and AIOps.
The latest version of GreenLake unveiled on Tuesday (June 23) “really leverages our software portfolio and our software-defined [technology] stack,” said Antonio Neri, HPE’s president and CEO.
“Customers require an approach that enables them to innovate and modernize all of their applications and workloads, including those at the edge and on-premises,” Neri added.
“GreenLake is the cloud that comes to [customers].”
The value proposition for GreenLake and other emerging cloud services is the ability to scale while retaining on-premises control of applications and data. Among the cost savings is the elimination of data egress charges that infrastructure vendor emphasize are growing among public cloud vendors.
Testing positive for COVID-19 earlier this month, Neri appeared to be on the mend during a virtual briefing from quarantine at his San Jose home office. “I’m feeling way, way better,” said Neri, who is recovering from what he described as a “mild case” of the novel coronavirus.
Neri said HPE assumes an IT industry recovery from the pandemic will begin in 2021. “We subscribe to a ‘U’ [shaped] scenario,” Nero said, the greatest unknown being how far apart are the two ends of the “U”.
HPE CEO Antonio Neri is recovering after testing positive for COVID-19.
When HPE sold its enterprise software business in 2016 to focus on systems software, it also announced plans to invest heavily in acquisitions and channel partnerships to better compete in the hybrid IT infrastructure market. Among its early acquisitions was Aruba Networks, which Neri described as “a crown jewel for us.”
In shifting its focus to cloud-native systems software, “We actually freed ourselves to offer a new way to deploy software services with security” and automation capabilities, Neri said. “We have an integrated strategy.”
That strategy includes continued heavy R&D spending on the assumption that companies investing in the midst of a pandemic-driven down market will emerge stronger. The HPE chief suspects up to half of workers will not return to their offices. “Connectivity is going to be electricity and water,” he said.
Several GreenLake services are available now, including VMs and intelligent edge services. Cloud services for containers and ML Ops are being released in beta version, with general availability later this year.
If, as the company hopes, that marks the beginning of a recovery in IT spending, Neri concluded, “The timing could not be better.”
