The News: For this research note, we are looking at two pieces of news that were announced earlier in December related to HPE’s Pointnext and GreenLake Businesses.
First, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced the next major milestone in its strategy to deliver its entire edge-to-cloud portfolio as-a-Service, with the launch of HPE GreenLake Central, an advanced software platform that provides customers with a consistent cloud experience for all their applications and data, through an operational console that runs, manages and optimizes their entire hybrid IT estate. HPE unveiled HPE GreenLake Central today in a keynote address by Antonio Neri, President and CEO, at HPE Discover More Munich.
Green Lake Central
While HPE was one of the early proponents of delivering hybrid cloud/IT as a service in a model that more closely aligned to public cloud, what has impressed me has been the company’s ambition to make user experience a critical component of the launch. GreenLake Central, while it is new and I haven’t spent a ton of time in the portal, represents a UX that models more like what an ITDM would be used to working with AWS or Azure. This represents a more comfortable experience and when you add in GreenLake Central’s commitment to providing usage analytics along with optimization, it seems the company gets that it isn’t just about a new buying model, but about making Hybrid IT truly “As-a-Service friendly”
Competition?
Just about every major OEM and Hyperscaler is playing in the hybrid cloud as a service space. From Azure Stack to Azure ARC to AWS Outposts to Dell Tech on Demand, the industry is aware of the shifting focus to multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud fabric. This serves as a massive market opportunity for HPE and all of its competitors. While I do think competition will be stiff, the growth in cloud and the challenges for enterprises will leave a lot of business to go around and HPE has strong roots in enterprise and GreenLake Central will definitely put it in a strong position versus other OEMs that may have consumption services, but none have a fully bake UX that can match up with GreenLake Central.
Keith White Brings New Leadership to HPE GreenLake
I am glad to see the formalization of a business unit committed to GreenLake. This should end some of the confusion that has existed with Pointnext Services vs. GreenLake as well as it shows that this business unit will be mainstay in the company’s long term ambitions. Keith White, while I haven’t met him personally, is coming from Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud Unit where he had the responsibility for the commercial business. The trajectory of Azure and Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business has been nothing short of remarkable. His role in leading that business should be encouraging to HPE stakeholders, but I will reserve any further comments until his work for HPE can be measured over the next several quarters.
Overall Impressions
HPE’s momentum continues and the December announcements are further validation of the company’s commitment and execution of its everything as a service proposition. 2020 should be an interesting year for the company and you can be sure we will be watching the company closely.
Futurum Research provides industry research and analysis. These columns are for educational purposes only and should not be considered in any way investment advice.
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Image Credit: HPE
The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.
Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.