Whether you are looking for news about NonStop, NS SQL, GreenLake, a cloud experience and more, it is hard to overlook just how well HPE is performing in the marketplace. The news certainly looks good for Nonstop in 2021.
In former times, it was the town crier we relied upon
for the news of the day. It therefore comes as no surprise to hear that down
through history, such news was often misconstrued. Semantics,
emphasis, a wrongly placed punctuation mark can play havoc with what may have
been communicated. I am always encouraging my readers to check things out for
themselves as my take on the news may differ from what you read elsewhere. Indeed,
I will take that as a complement should you follow the links I provide in many
of my posts.
When HPE released its financial results for Q1, 2021,
the response was mixed to say the least. There was good news reported by HPE
CEO Antonio Neri even as there were some declines in sales for some products within
the HPE product portfolio. However, what many of us in the NonStop community
are witnessing with respect to NonStop continuing to sell well isn’t finding
universal acceptance among investors and for the most part, this comes down to
an expectation of HPE to execute more quickly.
In his exchange with financial analysts that followed
the release of the Q1, 2021, financial results, Neri responded to questions
about execution with the following that in part looks good for NonStop -
“We are a company that has unique
portfolio from edge to cloud. Our competitors don't have all of that. Some have
in one area, some have in another area. And what customers want is an
integrated experience more and more.
“And HPC, I'm very bullish about HPC
because ultimately, the data sets we see in customer sites continue to grow.
And they all need AI machine learning at one point in time.”
When it came
down to the financial performance of the combined HPC / MCS organization it was
a clear case of it being difficult to misconstrue Neri’s update
-
“HPC and MCS are on track to deliver
full year FY21 growth of 8 – 12% with over $2B in contracts.”
In fact, during the conference Neri was very bullish
when it came to the outlook for the rest of 2021 –
“I am very pleased
with HPE’s Q1 results. Our revenue exceeded our outlook and represents a
stronger-than-normal sequential seasonality. We significantly expanded our
gross and operating margins, driving strong profitability across our businesses
ahead of pre-pandemic levels.
“Our non-GAAP earnings
per share exceeded the high end of our guidance, and free cash flow was a
record Q1 performance. These results give us confidence to raise our fiscal
year ‘21 EPS and free cash flow outlook ...”
“Our revenue exceeded our outlook.” “Our non-GAAP
earnings per share exceeded the high end of our guidance, and free cash flow
was a record Q1 performance.” Nice; while he was upbeat and talking about the
seasonality impact from COVID-19, I will take exceeded! Whenever business
leaders talk openly about exceeding expectations the financial community takes
note. Already analysts are pegging share price to reach $16 and last time I
checked, it has been bounding around at this price point.
In January 2021, “JPMorgan analyst Paul Coster upgraded
HP Enterprise to ‘Overweight’ and lifted his price target to $16 from $13.
Coster told investors the stock was a good ‘contrarian long trade,’ given the
company’s move into the SD-WAN space, its ongoing cost-cutting initiatives, and
the expected recovery in enterprise IT spending.” To even the most
casual observer, it looks like HPE’s performance is headed in the right
direction.
Sounds good but even if the positive insights provided
by Neri cannot be misconstrued, what do other industry observers make of HPE’s
progress during this global pandemic? If you happened to visit the HPE web site
you could not have missed the promotion of a recent Gartner report that you can
download and read for yourselves. Again, it is important to check things out
for yourself.
Under the heading of For
the third year in a row, Hewlett Packard Enterprise receives an overall
positive rating in the 2021 Gartner Vendor Rating this
March 23, 2021, post promoting the Gartner report then notes the following
rating overall by Gartner -
“We
believe HPE continues to have a solid product strategy that is supported by a
well-run operational foundation.”
The overall rating of HPE by Gartner was positive as
documented in their Figure 1 below:
With regards to the highlights of importance for the
NonStop community there were a couple that did stand out. Both pertained to the
strategy as well as the execution according to Gartner:
“New
HPE GreenLake Cloud Services, such as networking, containers, machine learning
and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), have allowed HPE to reach new markets, but it needs to continue to
educate customers and prospects as well as its direct sales and Partner Ready
channel partners on their value proposition and differentiation.
“HPE
has a very large installed base of server customers and offers a wide and deep
portfolio, including industry-standard, fault-tolerant,
HPC and edge servers.
“Within
its Mission-Critical Systems segment, HPE is in the midst of a multiyear transition from Itanium to
x86-based hardware, with the latter now the primary option in both its fault-tolerant NonStop portfolio and
scale-up Superdome systems.”
GreenLake; Fault-Tolerant; a positive transition to
x86-based hardware – it all points to a vendor that knows what they are doing,
where they are headed and how best to meet the demands of a changing enterprise
computing environment. If you really want to know about the highlights then
look no further than at NonStop – it remains a key contributor to the overall
performance of HPE and increasingly is being called out for delivering such a
contribution.
Certainly, the work being done to better integrate NonStop with GreenLake is commendable even as the renewed focus on NS SQL are giving NonStop greater visibility within HPE, the financial and industry analyst communities and to enterprise IT management. And with greater visibility the prospects for NonStop only look to be getting better. When it comes to NonStop being better positioned, making a better contribution and performing better in the marketplace than expected, then what more can I say?
I
will take NonStop!
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