Call it good
planning or call it serendipitous but whatever the call, sometimes it just pays
to be in the right place when news breaks. And this was the case as HPE Discover
Virtual Experience reached out to us all!
It was late 1984 and I was
returning to Sydney from a trip to Australia’s capital, Canberra. At that time
I was working for Nixdorf Computers where I was managing the organization
responsible for the introduction of Nixdorf’s Plug Compatible Mainframe (PCM) –
the 8890. Having checked in early for my return flight I ventured into the
Ansett Golden Wings lounge to relax. Ansett Airlines was the second national
carrier alongside Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) and whereas Ansett eventually
failed as an ongoing airline, in the early 1990s, TAA was gobbled up by that
flying red rat, QANTAS.
For many of my friends in
America, what then happened may hold little meaning but it so happened that I
was in the right spot at the right time to meet the most gracious cricketer of
the twentieth century, Clive Lloyd. Having been knighted since that time, Sir
Clive Lloyd captained the West Indies cricket team during their most dominant
period of all times and all through the 1983-1984 series in Australia,
proceeded to crush the locals.
We chatted for a while and
as we both rose to catch our flights, I asked Sir Clive to autograph the back
of my business card. As we then began to walk to our flights he was joined by
another famous WI cricketer, all-rounder Roger Harper, but I had no more
business cards and so missed getting his autograph. Then again, I really didn’t
want to push my luck as my good fortune was more than just a signature as I had
that unique privilege of talking to one of the greatest cricketers of all time.
Being in the right place
at the right time is something we are all acutely aware of, whether it’s
business, our private lives or simply alone time in an airport or train
station. This past week, it’s been about alone time working from my home office
but I have to say, that’s not unusual for me nor is it a result of the global
pandemic. It’s just the way I work these days where email and phone calls
dominate the daily calendar. However, last week HPE held its annual HPE
Discover event, but in a manner that none of us who regularly attended the
event expected to witness. Yes, it was rebranded the HPE Discover Technical
Experience with registration open to everyone at no charge. Free, and with the
ability to continue the “experience” long after the event itself had run its
course.
While there were no
autographs involved, back in November 2017 attending the HPE Discover 2017
Madrid event, I managed to join with other HPE bloggers and HPE Influencers for
a photo shoot with Antonio Neri just a few months before he took over from Meg
Whitman to become the CEO of HPE. Did he already know something? By the size of
his grin in this picture along with his willingness to talk to us lowly folks
slumped over keyboards for most of the show, posting and tweeting, I dare say
that he was indeed aware of what the future held for him.
As much as I have totally
enjoyed the real events where there was plenty of time for face-to-face
networking and where the exhibition hall, or what HPE referred to as the
Transformation Zone, was the place to hang out should you want to button hole any
of the executives. For me, it was always good to catch up with Kirk Bresniker, HPE
Labs Chief Architect and HPE Fellow, who always was up for a chat and who knew
exactly where “the big stuff” was headed – supercomputers, quantum computers
and even The Machine.
Being in the right spot
last week, seated by my laptop and screens, the world of HPE came to me! I was
free to get up and have a coffee, grab a cookie and in some of the ZOOM
sessions, raise my hand and enjoy a conversation. It wasn’t so much a case of
talking about cricket but when the session brought us together with Formula E
team principal, Susie Wolff, and he driver Felipe Massa, then simply having
Susie state, “good question, Richard!” had to be one of the highlights for me.
Imagine being introduced by the moderator as “Richard, who also racers cars,
Susie, has a question …”
I know I posted of this
last time writing to this blog but I still chuffed to say we kind of had a
conversation going there, but again, no possibility of an autograph on this
occasion. Virtual events can only go so far and provide only so much of an
atmosphere – the “occasion” is truly mitigated by the fact that I am in the
basement. But here’s the thing, when it comes to events real and virtual, it
comes back to content and presentation and if you are given an opportunity to
hear directly from charismatic personalities (yes, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton
participated in one of the sessions) where the content is interesting and where
you have an image of them and their slides right in front of you, virtual is
not a bad alternative to the real thing.
Prior to HPE Discover
Virtual Experience kicking off in earnest, as a blogger I had an opportunity to
sit in on a press, analyst, influencer and blogger pre-event update. Joining
the 140 attendees online for this pre-event briefing were John Shultz, Chief
Legal and Administrative Officer and Head of HPE's Transformation Office,Keith
White, head of the new GreenLake Cloud Services business group and Kumar
Sreekanti, CTO and head of HPE software. The NDA expired mid-morning Tuesday
following Antonio’s keynote but what these executives covered was enough to get
the press that were present pretty excited and willing to publish articles
promoting HPE as returning to a leadership position.
For me, it was a few of
the data points that I found of interest. From John Shultz, “The trend is
towards smaller data centers, everywhere (placing) intelligence closer to the
source. Clouds still don’t address 70% of enterprise’s applications and data;
it’s still residing on-prem. Software is now a huge focus for us.” From Keith
White we heard, “Public clouds simply weren’t built to handle everything; (as
for) Hybrid Program progress, HPE has 1,000 customers, a 90% retention rate and
$4Billion contracted business.” And from Kumar, it was all about “Software is a
huge and critical part of HPE; Software both stand-alone and as part of
GreenLake.”
These executives were then
followed by Antonio who presided over a Q & A session with the same group.
His central message and one repeated throughout the event was how HPE was
becoming the leader in Edge-to-Core delivered as a Service, and where Software
and Services dominated the product roadmaps. With GreenLake and then with
Ezmeral, “we are leveraging our software portfolio (creating) a software
defined stack in Ezmeral.” HPE GreenLake cloud services would now become the
benefactors of taking the cloud experience into the data center where it would
be operationally seamless to move some of that 70% of applications still
present in the data center to the cloud, as appropriate.
Leveraging the company’s
software portfolio isn’t an exclusive response to industry trends. The message
from HPE generally is that after one year of a three years program, HPE was
making available all of their products “as-a-Service.” If your preference was
for traditional purchase options, then these were still a vital part of HPE’s
business plan. Yes, you can still buy from HPE but with GreenLake you now have
an additional option. You can for what you use and pay as you go. You can
forget about capital expenditures and enjoy the taxation benefits that come
from chronicling operational expenses.
It’s now all about selecting
the right option and this is important news for the NonStop community. With
options and with the benefits that come from choosing, NonStop is now
affordable to even the most fragile of enterprise IT organizations. After a
fashion you can forget about everything other than deploying a fault tolerant
system that won’t let you down no matter what might be happening around you.
It’s the business equivalent of piping utilities directly into you premises.
Pick up your phone and there’s a network; flip a light switch and you have
illumination; turn a tap and you have water. Initiate a transaction and it
completes. NonStop as traditional systems and NonStop as virtual machines –
it’s just up to you.
As a community we are
truly in the right spot at the right time. Never before have we been able to
sit back and explore the best fit for our business needs. Do we need NonStop at
the core supporting SQL or do we need NonStop at the edge processing
transactions?
Events will continue to be
held and, for the foreseeable future, they will be virtual. Having sat through
HPE Discover Virtual Experience 2020, I have to say I could see no downside to
participating. Don’t ignore them or think of them as being second class or even
less than meaningful. HPE is moving very quickly and NonStop is aligning ever
more closely with the vision – it would be a shame if you let something important
to your business pass you by. It’s now so easy to find yourself in the right
spot at exactly the right time!
Editor’s note: If you are
a cricket fan and would like to have the Sir Clive Lloyd autograph, send
Richard a check for US$10K and I am sure he will now part with it!
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