To say we fully enjoyed our time at this year’s HPE
Discover would be to miss the point. This was the largest in-person gathering in
which we have participated in the past two plus years and it proved to be well
worth the wait. Many thanks to the Connect Team for making this experience real
and a big thank you, too, to the team at NTI for giving Margo and me every
opportunity to simply take it all in. This event was the hard launch of the
latest Connect Tech Forum, Business Integration and Analysis and that for us
was the highlight, but I am getting ahead of myself.
What follows here is a number of brief notes I posted in the lead up to the show and then as the days progressed and they do tell the story. Some of it offers up intrigue even as other comments praise the efforts of HPE. One thing is for certain and that is the presence NonStop has within HPE. With the swing to GreenLake as an option, I am expecting to hear more from the NonStop team about GreenLake in the coming months. So, without any further commentary, here are the summaries as they appeared on LinkedIn with only some minor editing to keep the overall length manageable.
HPE Discover: Day Zero, Minus!
It’s Friday and with the weekend almost on us. Given
that it will be the first in-person event I am more than a bit curious as to
how many members of the greater HPE community will be present for this most
important to HPE big-tent marketing event.
But what to expect from HPE Discover 2022 and what
might we hear from Neri? I am expecting HPE’s CEO to take a victory lap as 2022
closes his three year plan to position HPE as a global leading edge to cloud
platform as a service company. This has been a message heard loud and clear
these past three years but like everyone else who will be attending, how
successful has this HPE transformation proved to be? How much focus will be
given to GreenLake and yes, what attention will be given to what we have been
calling the MCS/HPC organization. Hopefully I will also get an updated take on
the organization within which NonStop lives and breathes given how there are
new faces in leadership roles.
For the NonStop community there will be a little more
visibility than in past years. Thanks to Connect there will be a number of
vendor presentations given from their theatrette on the floor of the exhibition
hall. There will also be demos of some vendor products given by members of
HPE’s NonStop team about which I will be providing more information at the
time. As for myself, I will be providing an update on the Tech Forum, Business
Integration and Analysis that is being sponsored by NTI so anticipate a couple
of PowerPoint slides on the new product packaging associated with
DRNet®/Unified.
But for now, with it being Friday, it’s all about
preparation and packing. So stay tuned for all that transpires at this year’s
HPE Discover.
HPE
Discover day one (and it’s just the beginning)
Today it’s all about registering for the event and
getting our badges. As noted in the previous post, we are driving to Las Vegas.
The trip from just outside of HPE’s premises in Ft Collins hasn’t been without
incidents. Turning off a major interstate to take a more scenic backroad we
were forced to turn back as flash flooding warnings were in place. Three days
ago injured drivers had to be rescued by helicopter.
Could this have been a sign of things to come? Is HPE
leaving the backroads to head back to the mainstream highways of tech? Sitting
in a Starbucks about three hours outside of Las Vegas we have now been advised
to be prepared for major highway construction. Again, another possible sign of
what’s to follow this week at HPE Discover? Has construction begun on the next
three year initiative yet to be divulged?
It all adds up to HPE Discover being a much anticipated
event and I am expecting considerable changes to follow. HPE continues on its
journey to a digital transformation, the support of hybrid IT and bringing the
cloud experience to us all. But what’s next? What can we expect to hear? And
the really big question: Where to HPE in this competitive landscape? What are
the plans to ensure continued leadership in today’s world of IT?
Day
one (official) – the HPE keynote
OK, so where do we start. This was the time for maximum
excitement for the HPE community but somehow it was open to interruptions. Some
good; some “interesting” and some raising even more questions! But then again,
that’s why we show up, after all. The surprises are what we are hoping to hear.
While the number of NonStop users were definitely on the low side that wasn’t
surprising as the NonStop community is known to keep it’s powder dry preferring
to wait for the annual NonStop Technical Boot Camp.
When it came time for HPE CEO Antonio Neri to walk on
stage it wasn’t to the support of a big drum roll but rather the scratchy sound
of a snare drum. By this it was more a walk back of things that have happened
rather than specifics about what is to happen. Yes, it was a victory walk given
that under Neri, the three year plan unveiled back in 2019 has been realized.
To become a global player in the world of edge to cloud, everything as a
service platform provider arguably has been achieved. And no amount of center
stage time was spared extoling the virtues of such an accomplishment.
While Monday may have been the official first day for
many attendees this was the main event of the event. Day one – perhaps;
reality, it was all about where HPE is headed and that’s when things began to
unravel. Truly, the success of the mission unveiled three years ago and yes, we
have GreenLake as the centerpiece of all that is HPE today, but when it comes
to the future of HPE then we were all left wanting more.
The big news is that yes, GreenLake was going to
support private cloud. “Connectivity is an absolute necessity and data is the
new currency,” said Neri but this isn’t news for the NonStop community.
Furthermore, but then, when it comes to why GreenLake (as a response or indeed
the question), Neri said that the better question would be “How do I create a
consistent cloud model across all my systems?” Point taken; for the future
however HPE needs to articulate a plan that is more than just GreenLake support
of private clouds.
And yes, with this the only news coming from the keynote, perhaps it isn’t a
time for dramatic proclamations. Declaring anything more daring just doesn’t
seem to be the right thing to say. However what comes through loud and clear is
that there is much ahead for NonStop to become an active participant in all that
HPE is pursuing and alone, it’s just as clear that the NonStop team is going to
have to fall back to further reliance on the NonStop vendor community and
perhaps that is the best news of all. GreenLake may hold considerable promise
for NonStop but perhaps the question left hanging is whether it is the opposite
that is true. Perhaps it is more a case that HPE needs NonStop rather than the vice
versa …
And so, more will be unveiled tomorrow but for now,
it’s a case of fingers firmly crossed that we will hear more about the
inclusion of NonStop in the next three year plans whatever they turn out to be!
Day
two featuring education from walking around!
This was a big exhausting day! But first, when it comes
to attendee numbers it looked to us like the crowd was about 5,000 strong but
then came a more official count of around 8,000. Typical of big tent HPE
events, there were mini events running in parallel and from time to time the
exhibition floor swelled with the arrival of one constituency or another.
Whether it was the folks participating in the executive summit or simply those
from far away, it all contributed to the sensation that everyone was welcoming
the return to in person events.
Having said this, the actual exhibition floor was a
reminder of more work needing to be done; the distance between booths and
stalls was vast. In the past it had proved difficult to move between the
exhibits there were no such problems this year and the many mini theaters
operating around the perimeter of the hall seemed sparsely attended.
Highlights? We caught up with Kirk Bresniker, Hewlett
Packard Labs Chief Architect / HPE Fellow/VP at HPE who is always willing to
share his thoughts on where HPE is headed and what priorities he is setting for
his group. I would like to share more on what we talked about but you will need
to reach out to Kirk to get the full skinny. And then there was that brief
moment when Margo and I caught up with colleague and longtime friend, Sandeep
Kapoor, who today is Vice President and General Manager, Compute and Core
Modernization, APAC at HPE – there hasn’t been a trip to Singapore when we
haven’t had time to chat. And of course, our NonStop leader, Jeff Kyle, was
accessible to everyone looking for something fresh about NonStop.
As for presentations then the Connect Forum was a
reminder of just how the community likes to hear something new and innovative
and the execs from abat+ didn’t disappoint. Want to know what a minute of
downtime would cost Mercedes Benz manufacturing? Producing a car every minute,
including the premier S Class, then a minute lost equates to almost US$100K –
let downtime extend to 15 mins or so and yes, you can do the math. Impressive!
Mercedes Benz running abat+ on NonStop hasn’t experienced an outage in 20
years. Nadda! And did we already mention the collection of live dogs enjoying
their time with the Connect staff?
There is more I can cover; a panel session on Lusis
payments via Green Lake, a really impressive demo of the Striim product by Paul
Denzinger or running into our former Tandem colleague, Jonathan Sechrist, but
you will now have to wait till I post to our business blog before the end of
the month. But until then there is still one more day to go!
Winding
down – the last day …
Going into this event, as I noted at the beginning of
this post, I had concerns about whether the road ahead would be rocky and
whether HPE, out of necessity, would pivot yet again to avoid technology
closures. Would it be a trip to the backroads or would the picture painted by
HPE be as illuminating as it would be demonstrating continued leadership? Turns
out it had something for everyone. If you like GreenLake there was plenty to
digest. If you like modernization tools, utilities and more then you were
catered to in the extreme. Solutions? Plenty of use cases on display.
As for catching up with Denzinger then that was an
opportunity too good to miss and yes, walking back through the venue I had one
more chance to say Hi! to Sechrist, and the lads from abat+ When will HPE next throw
its big tent marketing event? On that final walk out of the venue, dates were
being promoted so mark your calendars for June 20 – 22, 2023 and hopefully, we
will see you coming back for more from HPE, the NonStop team and Connect.
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