CEO Antonio Neri: ‘Proud’ HPE Technology And Teams Are ‘Being Called In To Help’ Battle Coronavirus

‘From enabling medical clinics to supporting telework and remote education to powering scientific research, we are focused on delivering for customers in bold new ways in these trying circumstances,’ says HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

Embracing the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) spirit of “Yes We Can,” HPE is stepping up to help customers, partners, employees and communities being hit hard by the “unprecedented” coronavirus crisis, said Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri.

“We are proud that our technology and teams are being called in to help organizations address the COVID-19 crisis,” said Neri in a blog post titled ‘Challenging Times Call for Clear Heads, Purpose-Driven Priorities And a Focus On Communities.’ “From enabling medical clinics to supporting telework and remote education to powering scientific research, we are focused on delivering for customers in bold new ways in these trying circumstances.”

In Vancouver, Washington, for example, which has been hard hit by the coronavirus, the Vancouver Clinic is relying on HPE Aruba’s edge architecture to “ensure their networks can support increased demand and critical care capabilities like telemedicine,” said Neri.

"Our Aruba Remote Access Points have seen a double-digit increase in demand because they allow organizations to extend their network and corporate resources to workers at home with secure, seamless connectivity,” said Neri.

HPE Financial Services group, meanwhile, was able to provision nearly 50,000 laptops that were at the end of their lease and provide them to one of the largest banks in the United States to enable their teams to work remotely.

With researchers racing to find a cure to the virus, HPE high performance computing solutions are powering “simulations involving complex data and deep learning workloads to better understand the new COVID-19 strain and develop drug treatments,” said Neri.

In the artificial intelligence arena, HPE experts are collaborating to support the “COVID-19 Open Research Dataset – among several other COVID-19 initiatives for which AI can drive critical breakthroughs.” said Neri. Those HPE teams are working with researchers to develop “AI tools to mine data across thousands of scholarly articles related to COVID-19 and related coronaviruses to help the medical community develop answers to high-priority scientific questions,” said Neri.

“While we don’t yet know the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we do know that it is a challenge unlike any we have faced in recent memory,” said Neri. “I’ve learned that in volatile and uncertain times, we must focus on and prioritize the things that are within our control. This mindset is driving HPE’s response to COVID-19.”

With that in mind, HPE has established an “assess, address and adapt” framework. That means assessing the ongoing developments and their potential impacts; addressing supporting business operations and people, and adapting HPE “technologies and approaches to help organizations around the world navigate through the difficulty.” said Neri.

HPE is also rallying its team members to provide financial relief for those impacted by the coronavirus. “We’ve set up dollar-for-dollar donation matching to support the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund that will help the World Health Organization’s efforts with global health institutions and health workers to prevent, detect and respond to COVID-19,” said Neri. “Donations will also support UNICEF’s global efforts to provide services like continuous education, healthcare, sanitation, and community engagement.”

With the coronovirus challenges today and those that lie ahead, HPE needs to “continually adapt based on what is within our control” said Neri.

“Embracing the HPE spirit of “yes, we can,” we will continue to support our team members, customers, partners and communities through this unprecedented period, and we will be there when all of our stakeholders need us to recover, evolve and thrive,” he said.

Felise Katz, co-founder and CEO of PKA Technologies, New York, one of HPE’s original Platinum Partners, said Neri’s leadership is inspiring her and her team during this difficult time.

“I always talk about being proud of being an HPE Platinum partner, at this point I couldn’t be prouder because leadership like this is very infectious and contagious,” she said. “This is very helpful in a time like this. A successful solution provider has to have the backing of an OEM that leads and does not follow. Antonio is that leader. There is a reason that HPE is back on top of Dell in the server market. It is because of leadership like this and proving HPE has what it takes. That all starts at the top with Antonio.”

PKA, for its part, is seeing HPE – Aruba solutions come to the fore in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. PKA, for example, has brought Aruba Remote Access Point solutions to several customers experiencing network issues with employees working at home.

PKA has also provided off the shelf Gen10 silicon root of trust server solutions for customers that needed additional server capabilities in the midst of the crises.

“As an HPE partner I am very proud that we have the plethora of offerings in the HPE Aruba portfolio to come up with the right solutions to solve immediate customer challenges,” said Katz.

The HPE GreenLake business continuity pay per use platform is poised to be embraced by more customers in the wake of the coronovirus crises, said Katz.

“Customers are realizing they need that HPE flexible capacity to handle these types of demands for business continuity,” she said. “The size of the workloads change when people have to work remotely during a crises. Security, capacity and the ability to handle network traffic is top of mind. GreenLake is an ideal solution for our customers who are anxious to help their clients in the midst of a crises like the coronavirus.”

Katz said PKA and HPE share a common “thought leadership” ethos that is helping customers get through the coronovirus challenges.

“There is a lot of creative thinking from our team,” she said. “I am extremely proud of how my team has responded to this. They are working 24/7 even though we are all operating remotely. Everybody is online catering to customers and prospects. We are reaching out seeing what we can do to help. We have had a lot of great conversations trying to help our healthcare, financial and government customers through these very challenging times.”