HPE Discover is always an occasion that the NonStop
community looks forward to and with the event going virtual, HPE met our
expectations …
One of the benefits of living in Colorado is that the
weather is truly a hit or miss circumstance. For the past week we have ventured
out into morning sunshine only to be pelted a few hours later by heavy rain and
yes, hail. Whether it’s ducking back into stores that happen to be open or
jumping into our vehicles it doesn’t really make a difference. Living in
Colorado, alongside the Rocky Mountains, means making adjustments quickly in
response to changing circumstances no matter what plans were in place. And yet,
after checking with the locals, apparently Colorado enjoys more sunny days than
just about any place else in USA.
Among the many changes of circumstance that the global
pandemic has brought about is that for Information Technologists the big-tent
marketing events put on by major vendors have undergone change that will likely
live on well after any sense of normalcy returns. Nowhere was this more
apparent than with HPE’s annual trek to Las Vegas for HPE Discover. It may be
June and the weather may be openly hostile but every year for as long as Margo
and I have been associated with HPE, there has been an event in Las Vegas. And
we have travelled to each and every one of them beginning with HPTF 2008!
For 2020, with the global pandemic still in full swing,
HPE Discover 2020 became a virtual event and I have to say the effort made by
HPE to ensure a sense of community paid off handsomely. From the early press,
analyst and influencer briefings that began early Monday on through to numerous
entertaining sessions with HPE executives along with industry and sporting
personalities were very well prepared and interesting – I even had the chance
to ask questions of Susie Wolff and Felipe Massa of the Formula E Venturi team,
of which HPE is one of the sponsors.
I have to admit I went into the week a little wary of
how it would be received. I also have to admit that I wasn’t all that upbeat
about this event’s prospects of attracting a crowd. And was I wrong. Numbers
were clearly up across the board – if you hadn’t registered for the hands-on
labs that were being held that week then you were plain out of luck. They were
essentially oversubscribed even as I am still unsure what a virtual hands-on
really means other than what I did hear back from those who managed to
participate. There were dedicated systems set up for the purpose and these
virtual attendees got real world experience with newly announced software.
To say I had a change in
perspective sums up my own experience. Once again the guest of HPE as a member
of its influencer program, HPE manager Laura Mackay and her team went to great
lengths to keep us all engaged and throughout the event there were numerous
occasions where Laura simply invited us to log onto Zoom for “Bloom Networking
Events” where there was no agenda other than each of us updating the others on what
we were doing and then joining in on a free flowing exchange about our
experiences to date. And yes, these sessions were held in good spirits and were
fun … and we all enjoyed a kind of informal social even as some of our European
colleagues were participating at very unfriendly hours.
We each received SWAGs from Laura and as in former
times we each ripped into the package as it landed on our doorstep. Sweat
pants, coffee mugs, a HPE custom Rubix Cube, Apple earphones, and more … but
again, it was the opportunity to hear directly from the HPE team that held our
attention. It had only been a few days earlier that HPE CEO Antonio Neri advised
the world that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and yet, here we were,
logged into the HPE network, listening to Antonio early Monday morning as he
held a press and analyst pre-briefing on the as-a-Service and HPE GreenLake
news that HPE was releasing at Discover Virtual Experience.
All under NDA, of course, until early morning the next
day when Antonio gave his keynote address. I have to admit there was more than
one of us caught by surprise over the steps HPE was taking to truly differentiate
itself from the competition. HPE is now one year into a three year program
whereby it is focusing all of its energies on becoming the edge-to-cloud platform
“as-a-Service” company. “Edge to Cloud, delivered as a service is the right
solution for today,” said Antonio. “Furthermore, we are entering the age of
insight; more informed doesn’t mean more intelligent. The edge is where we live
and work (and now we are delivering) on the next wave – bringing the cloud
experience deep inside the core; to the data center.”
In a separate presentation, Antonio said:
“I believe we are nearing
the end of the information era, which focused on generating and collecting
massive amounts of data—data that could not be brought together to create
timely insights and actions to change our future.
“The next decade must be
about insights and discoveries that are shared and elevate the greater
well-being of every human being on this planet.
“The age of insight
requires new principles and priorities for digital transformation. The focus is
to build an edge to cloud platform that connects, protects, analyzes and acts
on all of your data and brings agility to your apps to unlock your enterprise’s
full potential.”
Pointnext; GreenLake, Ezmeral – what do they all mean?
And what exactly is the Edge? As HPE provided more information about its vision
it was clear that the Edge was much more than a sensor or terminal. For many
enterprises, the trend was towards populating mini data centers as it was
becoming more important to process data as it was being created. The Edge is
the manifestation of intelligence being moved closer to the source. When
announced, Pointnext was billed as being the HPE technology services
organization in support of Hybrid IT but as of May 2020 its leader, Pradeep Kumar,
reports directly to Neri. As HPE accelerates it’s move to
as-a-Service, it is Pointnext where the skillsets needed to oversee
as-a-Serivce deployment reside.
GreenLake? It too can be viewed as a service that
brings with it products heavily oriented towards software. If you want to run your
IT as-a-Service, who is tracking your usage? GreenLake Central is a hub (supporting
a dashboard) where the data is located and where HPE looks for updates on usage
– think Pointnext as financing your IT resources and GreenLake as collecting
data on how those resources are being used. All under the general heading of
only having to pay for what you use …
Ezmeral is a branding exercise that brings together all
the HPE software needed to ensure that you not only can deploy your IT as-a-Service
but where you can bring the cloud experience you see today on offer by the
major cloud service providers, in-house. One set of tools and utilities with
the added flexibility that from a dashboard you can assess the cost benefits of
running an application in-house or in a cloud. Flexibility in ways unimagined
only a short time ago and yet, with only 30% of applications and data running
in clouds today, this will help modernize and indeed integrate what remains in-house.
The easy applications were moved quickly to the cloud, but now those hard to
move applications can benefit from cloud-like oversight.
CRN reporter Steven Burke saw it and following HPE CTO
Kumar Sreekani covering the introduction of GreenLake and introducing the new
HPE software brand, Ezmeral, Steven concluded that as of now, HPE
Ezmeral Is ‘Undisputed Leader’ In AI Battle With AWS, VMware, Red Hat: Kumar
Sreekanti If you read just one article published following HPE Discover
2020 then this might be the one you want to choose – just follow the hyperlink
above.
Of importance for the NonStop community came much later
statements by Antonio with none more important than the following:
“It is not just about
GreenLake because we have a transactional business which is very large and we
are pivoting to as-a-service, which is the long-term future. We need to be able
to do both and be able to give partners the flexibility to come along.”
Delivering Edge to Cloud as a service is the vision but
it’s also complementary to what HPE delivers today to its enterprise users. The
subtle twist however is that even with its transactional business HPE will not
be excluding NonStop from GreenLake. It may not seem apparent at the moment
even as there is work to be done by the NonStop team to complete the journey to
“as-a-Service,” but it’s safe to say that this journey for NonStop is being
investigated even now.
Perhaps it was in the explanation of the goal for
Ezmeral given by CTO Kumar that clarifies at least one future for NonStop:
“While transactional (business) remains popular, we have to change customer experience and engagement as it really is all about the end-to-end experience.”
If you aren’t sure about what this implies then it
should become clear in the coming months – NonStop will be as easy to configure,
deploy and operate as any other cloud service offering today with enterprises
able to readily glide between platforms without any loss of the cloud
experience. Not today, as there’s much to do. This may take a while to sink in
but NonStop is a part of this journey and as such, will be subject to
additional development work that brings it into this new age of insight. After
all, NonStop creates data and it is fresh data created in real time that has
the most to offer enterprises poised on making insightful decisions.
Circumstances just like the weather can change rapidly
and for vendors like HPE the future is changing rapidly. Very soon HPE will
become more like a software and services vendor, with hardware lessening in
priority. NonStop customers will still be able to purchase traditional NonStop
systems but looming large on the horizon is a completely new way to view
NonStop. And the good news that continues to develop? Whether you deploy
NonStop out at the edge, close to the source of transactions or integrate at
the core supporting database services, there are always benefits to be had with
a solution that never fails.
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