HPE changes gear – can it accelerate or will it just simply cruise?

We all know the value of gears. In automobiles particularly. Ignoring the broadside of electric cars, many of us grew up learning how to drive and in the process, the importance of matching car performance through the selection of the right gear. Those of us brought up on automated gear boxes at least were taught what these were doing – automatically selecting the right gear for the conditions.

Coming fast and well, almost furious, has been the news out of HPE. From the time HPE  unveiled the new “element” logo in a ghastly shade of green – apart from the Brits, who buys green cars anyway – it all seemed temporary. A quick fix for a newly emerging company, HPE. I suspect acknowledging the green movement with its sustainability goals was a primary influence but even so, please – an elementary green rectangle?

‘It’s a pretty big change, a big deal,’ says HPE Vice President of Brand,
Culture and Creative Paula Berg. ‘Our name as a company remains
Hewlett Packard Enterprise of course, but our new logo we think mirrors
the shorthand that people use to talk about us, most people just say HPE.’

HPE Debuts ‘Bold’ AI Era Brand With New Logo,
Launches Massive Rebranding Campaign

By Steven Burke

June 12, 2025

Pulling clothing off our wardrobe racks – yes we are still finalizing our move from Colorado to Florida – I was surprised at how many items I had emblazoned with that green rectangle. At least HPE tried to influence us all of its significance. But now it’s no more and few will shed a tear.

The new logo? Will in a subtle tip of the hat to the former logo, three sides survived, as a green accent mind you, forming the lower portion of the E in HPE. Will we adjust to the new logo? Will it produce a flurry of excitement in the marketplace? Still way too early to make predictions in this regard but suffice to say, it’s newsworthy and in today’s climate, no news is truly bad news.

More relevant for the HPE NonStop community or should I correct myself by saying, the HPE Nonstop Compute community, I am left with uncertainty bordering on indifference. Whereas the new HPE logo may move the needle a little (in a positive direction) dropping the capitalization of the S from NonStop to the simplified Nonstop and adding Compute will not likely create any newsworthy flurries in the marketplace.

HPE is transitioning its product line from “NonStop” to “Nonstop Compute”. This change reflects the company’s ongoing efforts to enhance its fault-tolerant compute platforms for mission-critical applications, according to News in the Channel and Silicon UK.

Rather, there will be flutters as the Nonstop Compute community directs considerable time, energy and yes dollars to update collateral. In all likelihood, many Nonstop Compute vendors will choose to ignore the change and wait to see where this all goes. I for one know cannot influence eventual outcomes even as I watch and yes pray that with this change, the floodgates will open as new orders arrive.

On the other hand, historically, the logo changes and product relabeling have barely caused a murmur among members of the Nonstop Compute community and I suspect it will be the same this time around. We will just have to muddle through this as best as we can, responding to queries from our peers and management as best as we can. Jimmy T always favored stressing the ‘Xcitment’ angle (of everything) but this change falls well short of being considered exciting!

As for the new models of the Nonstop Compute product suite, “the updated solutions, like the HPE Nonstop Compute NS5 X5 and NS9 X5, offer increased processing power, memory capacity, and networking bandwidth, while maintaining the high availability and reliability that the NonStop platform is known for,” according to News in the Channel and Silicon UK. Perhaps what must be considered encouraging is to hear how the Nonstop team listened to the Nonstop community and put on hold, at least for now, any moves away from a continuation of the converged systems model and for that we can all collectively heave a genuine sigh of relief.

Changing gears? Moving forward? Accelerating or simply cruising? Hard to say for now but as the world of news reporting acknowledges there’s always something about change that lets them fill column inches with stories. And perhaps this is what will happen as HPE gains headlines. However, for the newly anointed Nonstop Compute community I will be surprised if it creates much more than a yawn … with HPE celebrating its tenth anniversary I was expecting fireworks but all I can hear is the grating of gears that are attempting to increase product momentum. To close its hard to ignore that the appearance of two new converged systems may be all the good news the NonStop Compute community needs in these times. And that may be excitement enough for us all.