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HPE: News from the very top …

HPE

DanDan

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It was good news all around following HPE’s release of its Q3, 2018, Financial Results. Even though one financial research organization, Bernstein, predicted that HPE would miss some of its numbers (this reference to Bernstein is only being made as for years it was Bernstein that looked after the financial investments of ITUG), looking at what HPE published it would appear that the company is doing very well indeed.

Going through the transcript of the Q3 2018 Results – Earnings Call held August 28, 2018, where HPE CEO Antonio Neri provided an update (and fielded questions), there were four messages that should resonate well with the NonStop community. They aren’t perhaps messages the NonStop community would immediately gravitate to and yet, they tell an important story for all NonStop stakeholders. Take a look:

A message on growth in value business

According to Neri,

We grew revenues and we significantly expanded operating margins. We also delivered EPS well above our outlook and generated strong cash flow. Our focus on shifting our mix to higher-value growth areaswhile optimizing our volume business is working.”

What this message conveyed is that the decisions to trim back on product lines and to spin merge non-core assets in order to better focus on what is important to HPE going forward is producing positive results. In so doing, its clear from much of what Neri then said that HPE management is encouraged enough by these results to keep doing what they are doing – and NonStop is part of this story!

A message that is positive for mission critical systems

The above proves to be a good introduction to what Neri followed with:

“In Hybrid IT, we have the right strategy. And in a healthy IT spend environment, we are executing well, and it is showing up in our results.

“We’re also gaining share in the higher margin, high-growth segmentslike software-defined infrastructure, high-performance compute and mission-critical systems.”

Now, we all know that mission-critical systems is more than just NonStop, but the two acknowledgements by Neri that jump right off the page are “the right strategy” and “gaining share.” Talk to those HPE managers directly involved with mission critical and NonStop and you will quickly realize that the introduction of NonStop X systems is beginning to make an impact on both top (high value) and bottom (high margin) lines. And the NonStop community needs to see this, as with the return to profitability (and with keeping numerous blue-chip logos), we can expect to see HPE continuing to invest in NonStop!

A message on hyperconverged and composable

Even if you don’t immediately see the connection between mission-critical and NonStop with what follows here, it is still very important to understand that elements of this business will eventually trickle into NonStop and NonStop future deliverables will likely be cognizant of the work being accomplished with these initiatives.

About this business endeavor, Neri said:

“Our hyperconverged segment, which now includes appliances, infrastructure and our composable offerings, grew over 130% year-over-yearand has reached an annual run rate of more than $1 billion. HPE Synergy deliveredrecord revenue and has more than 1,600 customers.”

When talk among enterprise users turns to virtualization and this then includes talk of virtualized NonStop, it is important to make the jump to running virtualized NonStop workloads. In so doing, there is an immediate realization that the subject matter dovetails with talks about the elasticity of provisioning and yes, composability. And when talk goes down this path, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to read at some point about an enterprise user asking about support for NonStop by HPE Synergy!

A message on data …

Perhaps no other message resonates more clearly with the NonStop community than the message about the importance of data – after all, it was HPE VP and GM, Randy Meyer, who told us all about time and data being the new currency (of business!)

As Neri revealed on this most recent call to financial analysts:

“Looking forward, Intelligent Edge is a significant long-term growth opportunity for us, therefore, a key area of investment. I said that because there is a major transition happening right now, driven by the explosion of the data created at the edge. The edge is the word outside the data center. And Gartner says, 75% of the world’s data is generated at the edge.

“That is why we recently announced that we plan to invest $4 billion in this statement over the next four years.

“We see a world that is edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven.”

 

Members of the NonStop community may not all be in agreement over the importance of these four messages however, it is important for each stakeholder to understand that NonStop contributes to the value side of the ledger within HPE’s product portfolio and with the fortunes of the mission-critical systems group on the ascent, NonStop will continue to enjoy the upward trajectory of this ride. And so will we all!