Over the last few weeks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has made multiple exciting announcements about ways they are driving their edge-to-cloud
At the start of HPE Discover in mid-June, an event which continues to run online throughout July, CTO and head of software Kumar Sreekanti introduced the new unified software portfolio that is now under the brand HPE Ezmeral. HPE Ezmeral brings together IT automation, container management, operations, data fabric, security, and cloud cost control.
The announcement came alongside that of the new HPE GreenLake cloud services. The HPE Ezmeral Container Platform powers the HPE GreenLake cloud services for containers and machine learning operations. Sreekanti says that HPE GreenLake responds to customer desires for pay-per-use consumption in an as-a-service-model, open solutions, and a modern cloud experience. HPE GreenLake is a flexible as-a-service model that allows customers to prioritize investments that are aligned with their business priorities. Other services provided include VMs, storage compute, data protection, and networking.
As of last week, HPE was also set to acquire Silver Peak, an SD-WAN company, for Aruba, a networking subsidiary of HPE. By integrating Silver Peak's capabilities with Aruba's edge services platform, the company will be able to further accelerate its edge-to-cloud strategy and expand its leadership in the SD-WAN market.
HPE also recently announced that they are cutting 146 workers in Massachusetts, a move which Jay McBain, principal analyst of channel partnerships and alliances at Forrester, says fits into the company’s shifting strategy. The layoffs will be part of reducing the HPE hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) headcount, and will effect employees who were part of SimpliVity, which HPE acquired in 2017. As HPE works to expand the HCI experience, including edge environments, business-critical applications, and mixed-workloads, the layoffs will allow the company to have HPE SimpliVity concentrate on general purpose, SMBs, and the enterprise edge. The company says that customers will ultimately “benefit from a consistent and better experience across hybrid cloud, AIOps, support, automation and life cycle management for all of their HCI use cases.”
Antonio Neri, who came on as CEO in 2018, has been instrumental in changes like these, and the company’s overall move toward the “edge-to-cloud” consumption model. As for what may be ahead for HPE, Dell’Oro Group VP Shin Umeda said in an interview with SDxCentral that the company is likely looking to acquire a security vendor, an increasingly crucial component in SD-WAN.
