HPE Discover 2021 – Age of Insight

Many thanks to Ian Liston-Brown who promoted on LinkedIn  this transcript of HPE CEO Antonio Neri’s keynote address at HPE Discover 2021. I was a virtual participant and was impressed to see references to NonStop and to a key NonStop partner, Lusis Payments.

However, rather than simply adding my own comments I am including the observations , in italics, of CRN journalist Steven  Burke who has been following these annual evens for many years. His article 10 Boldest Statements from HPE Discover 2021 remains a must read update that came out at the conclusion of Neri’s keynote. His update includes additional quotes by Neri that he gave during press briefings.

Edge-to-Cloud: Ushering in the Age of Insight, Wherever Your Data Resides

HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri

The Future is Edge-to-Cloud.

This phrase will be the theme for HPE’s Discover 2021 conference this week, held virtually for hundreds of thousands of attendees around the globe. Edge-to-cloud will be the perfect topic for corporate decision-makers as they begin to shift their attention away from the immediate demands brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for the next wave of digital transformation.

We’ve been talking about the Age of Insight for some time now, an era marked by the realization that data has rapidly become the new currency that powers our world. Data has become our most valuable asset, and those who do the best job of extracting value from data – quickly and with agility – will win.

Many companies are awash in data, but those that don’t extract the insights from it that are needed to thrive in our hypercompetitive world will struggle to survive in the digital economy. We also, as a society, are looking toward building a more digitally enabled and inclusive world.

Burke: “If you think about the cost of the cloud it is no longer about your need to ride the new innovation curve, which obviously these cloud providers drive to at an amazing scale. But it is the fact that the cost of compute is no longer the biggest issue. It is the cost of moving data back and forth. Data has gravity. Data is obviously the most valuable asset that customers have today. When you move data you incur significant cost to egress it back. Second, you may be dealing with some compliance challenges, particularly some verticals. And third, you may expose yourself to some cyber issues.”

At this pivotal moment, HPE’s purpose – to advance the way people live and work – has never been more important. Our company exists to help customers collect and connect their data, by applying machine learning and AI to their data sets at enterprise scale – and in doing so, turning hopes and visions into reality across every industry and aspect of our world.

During this most challenging year, we never wavered in our commitment to be a force for good as well as a strategic partner for our customers. We accelerated our edge-to-cloud platform as a service strategy, because high-quality, data-driven workloads and workflows became even more critical during COVID-19.

One of those rapidly evolving, data-driven industries is automotive. And for me, a real highlight of Discover 2021 was my conversation with Chairman and CEO Mary Barra of GM, a company we are proud to have served for many years.

Mary recently announced GM’s bold, industry-defining plans to only produce electric vehicles by 2035. It’s all part of Mary’s vision of transforming GM from a “car company” into a “technology company” that is relying on harnessing the power of their data to make that evolution happen.

Burke: “Every company is an IT company today. If you don’t understand technology you are going to have a hard time competing going forward. You don’t have to be an uber engineer to understand how technology advances your strategy.”

Undoubtedly, the future is edge to cloud – across every industry and sector. The opportunities to unlock value and insights from our data are tremendous; but the trick is ensuring that you can use data everywhere it resides, across your distributed enterprise – something we call a cloud everywhere mandate. It’s the need for a simple, automated experience so that you can focus on your data, workloads and outcomes.

That ubiquitous customer demand is fuelling our own transformation at HPE, into an edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service company built to transform your business by bringing speed and agility to critical data-driven workloads and workflows.

We’ve been on the edge-to-cloud pathway for several years, and customers have responded quite positively. Our HPE GreenLake Edge to Cloud Platform – our delivery mechanism for cloud services and agile cloud experiences, everywhere – grew at an astounding 41% rate in Q2 and now has over 1,200 enterprises as customers.

Drawing customers to this innovative platform is its ubiquity, as it unifies the entire hybrid cloud experience with one-click access to a growing suite of services. As we announced at Discover, that suite is getting bigger and better.

Throughout the three days of Discover, we will announce several new HPE GreenLake Edge to Cloud Platform services and enhancements, each designed to address customer needs as the Age of Insight requires us to wring even more actionable knowledge from our data.

Burke: “But this is all about an experience. It is not about technical widgets. That experience to bring it together is very hard to do.

“It happens through the software layers and that is where HPE has been investing for a number of years with the original vision with Flex Capacity but ultimately through that GreenLake experience that we brought to the market over the last 24 months.

“It is all about that experience we can provide through the software integration and then leverage our portfolio from the edge to the cloud to deliver workload-optimized solutions that you can consume as a service.”

You can read all about them here, but I’d like to emphasize two releases which are representative of how HPE is creating more ways to make your data work for you, wherever it lives, and whenever you need it.

One is our exciting release of 5G Core Systems through GreenLake, a cloud-native, open and secure system to generate web-scale speed, flexibility and resilience for the build out of in-demand 5G networks. What makes this particularly significant is that it can be deployed, tested and commissioned in less than an hour; otherwise, it could take weeks to get up and running. 5G Core makes ramp-up fast and simple.

In the same vein, we are simplifying and making almost effortless the provisioning and management of Compute infrastructure – wherever it resides across the enterprise – by adding Compute to our HPE GreenLake Cloud Platform. And, with our new HPE GreenLake Lighthouse – a series of workload optimized solutions powered by HPE Ezmeral software – you can run a range of cloud services from your choice of provider, from your own data center or all the way at the edge.

Burke: “We have always talked about the fact that for us cloud is not a destination, it is an experience for all your apps and data.

“But more and more we live in a distributed enterprise so if I need a cloud capability to run multiple workloads now you can do it with HPE GreenLake Lighthouse, which is a true cloud-native solution.

“So from a click of a button in HPE GreenLake you can deploy a cloud solution and run multiple workloads. We give the customer the fully deployed configuration right up front with one single click.”

These and other innovations launched or underway (including a one-click Silicon On-Demand project, in partnership with Intel) are indicative of our focus on giving customers everything they need to conduct business in an edge-to-cloud architecture.

And it is our mandate to ensure that these digital transformations not only improve business but improve society, as we drive toward a truly inclusive and sustainable world.

What an exciting time for IT. The edge-to-cloud future has arrived with stunning speed and impact. My hope is that all of us – working together and bolstered by breath-taking technological innovations – will make an impact in making our world more equitable and sustainable, for generations to come.

And we at HPE stand ready to help guide you through your data workloads, ushering in this unprecedented Age of Insight.

Burke – On Why GreenLake Could Become Better Known Than HPE In Five Years:

“Yes absolutely. That is the intent. That is the goal. That is why we laid out a vision that GreenLake should be synonymous to HPE.

“That is why we call GreenLake the edge to cloud platform. That is why we said HPE is the edge to cloud platform as a service company.”

If they confuse GreenLake with HPE, I am good. I would rather they confuse GreenLake with HPE and not HPE with HP Inc. That would be a winner.