Antonio Neri’s 10 Boldest Statements From HPE Discover Virtual

HPE CEO Antonio Neri told HPE Discover virtual attendees that HPE GreenLake Cloud Services means customers don’t have to ever get hit with data egress charges or 'pay 2X the cost of storing data just to get it back.' Here are Neri’s 10 boldest statements from HPE Discover Virtual.

HPE GreenLake Cloud Services—No Data Egress Fees

See the latest entry: HPE Discover 2022: CEO Antonio Neri’s 10 Most Provocative Statements

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri Tuesday told HPE Discover Virtual attendees that HPE GreenLake Cloud Services are providing the flexibility and agility to move enterprise applications without exorbitant egress charges.

The problem with the public cloud providers is “they are not open and they don’t enable movement between other cloud platforms,” said Neri.

Not so with HPE GreenLake Cloud Services, said Neri. “With our new HPE GreenLake Cloud Services, you don’t have data egress charges ever,” he said. “With the public cloud users can pay 2X the cost for storing data just to get it back. More and more of you have shared how inflexible your public costs really are.”

HPE this week made what it is calling a huge leap forward in its GreenLake pay-per-use channel model with a move from a bespoke, customized model to a standardized group of 17 “building block” offerings for small, medium and large businesses.

On top of that, HPE is bringing the full GreenLake Cloud experience to HPE.com, where customers can price and try the various services—from disaster recovery/backup to private cloud and container as a service—and then buy from an HPE partner.

The “point-and-click, self-serve simplicity” is empowering developers, data scientists and lines of business to create solutions that “delight customers,” said Neri.

On Public Cloud Shortcomings—‘They Are Not Open’

Today public clouds are extending their platforms into the data center in what [market researcher] Gartner calls distributed cloud. The problem is these solutions were architected to be very centralized and rely on connectivity to their control plane. They still don’t address the over 70 percent of your apps and data. They are not open and they don’t enable movement between other cloud platforms. [Public cloud] data transfer and egress [charges] are expensive.

With our new HPE GreenLake Cloud Services you don’t have data egress charges ever. With the public cloud users can pay 2X the cost for storing data just to get it back. More and more of you have shared how inflexible your public cloud costs actually are. With GreenLake we give you much more flexibility to plan and land costs how and when you want. Our offering is elastic and pay-per-use, providing the financial guardrails that fit your needs.

With HPE GreenLake and our container services based on Kubernetes, you are not locked in. You can move those workloads and data to any public cloud if that makes sense for you.

Taking On Software License Fees From Competitors

We have heard your concern about how some software companies are changing their cloud licensing terms, requiring you to buy new licenses to move into public cloud. Not with HPE GreenLake Coud Services. You can use your existing licenses. If you have this issue, we are here to help.

In many cases, you can begin building your HPE GreenLake Cloud with your existing infrastructure. We can help you repurpose it and move it to this model and potentially return value from those assets to fund your transformation. Over the last three years, we have returned to customers more than half a billion dollars to fund their transformation.

As we continue to build the HPE GreenLake Cloud platform and the HPE Ezmeral software portfolio with greater automation, self- service and ease of use, we can unlock many more possibilities for you. You focus on your business, customers and data. We will do the rest.

The Power Of ‘Next-Generation’ HPE GreenLake Cloud Services

To help you grow even faster today I am excited to introduce our next generation of HPE GreenLake Cloud Services with point-and- click, self-serve simplicity so you can quickly deliver services to your developers, data scientists and lines of business so they can create solutions that delight your customers, protect your business from risk and streamline your operations.

HPE GreenLake is delivering a whole new cloud experience enabling you to explore our services, initiate a free trial and get pricing online. All of our new cloud services can be deployed and run on your choice of 17 pre-integrated workload-optimized configurations available in small, medium and large sizes. These solutions can be delivered to your edge, colo or data center in as little as 14 days. Each one is pay-per-use, rapidly scalable and managed for you. For those who want the private cloud experience, we are launching a series of HPE GreenLake Cloud Services for virtual machine services, container cluster services, storage, bare-metal and more as-a- service [offerings].

Through GreenLake Central you can provision VM and container instances in just five clicks. We also introduced a new cloud data protection service, which is an enterprise cloud backup service that mobilizes backup and recovery and helps you get value from your data. All delivered with speed and agility without data egress costs or lock-in.

HPE’s New ‘Modern’ Ezmeral Software—An AI/ML Ops Advantage

As we continue to transform HPE, software is a significant focus for us. Today we have more than 8,000 software engineers focused on new modern software for the most important part of our business. That is why I am also very excited to introduce a new software portfolio, HPE Ezmeral, and our first two offerings: HPE Ezmeral container platform and HPE Ezmeral ML Ops. Both are available as a software license or as a cloud service offering through HPE GreenLake.

While most enterprises are investing in AI and machine learning, only 6 percent have a mature process to operationalize their ML models. With our HPE Ezmeral ML Ops software solution, data science teams can instantly spin up and scale containerized enviroments for their ML pipelines with secure access to the data they need so they can deliver insights in minutes, not months. With the new HPE GreenLake ML Ops Cloud Services, you can bring DevOps agility to the end-to-end machine-learning life cycle to accelerate time to value for AI projects from pilot to production.

An Intelligent Edge Cloud Service—Delivering The ‘Full Potential’ Of Edge

To deliver against our edge to cloud platform strategy, we are announcing a new cloud service for the Intelligent Edge. [It is] based on the Aruba Edge Service Platform [ESP] to unify, secure and automate network operations and serve as the foundation for realizing the full potential of the edge.

What I am really proud of is that today through the Aruba Central Platform and now the new Edge Services Platform we have a unique set of capabilities which I think are really unmatched in the marketplace.

Obviously, the first step was integrating Wi-Fi and LAN. The second was to expand our level of connectivity to the software-defined wide-area network. Obviously, build security at the core and the analytics to provide a better experience and do it at scale, moving from billions of people and devices to trillions of things. We have done all of that and more.

What comes next is actually very exciting. We have in our plans in our road map over the next 12 months to integrate 5G in the same control plane in the cloud and also be able to provision the cloud at the edge from the same portal. So for us the ESP and Aruba Central are becoming critical elements to deliver these edge to cloud platform as a service vision. Aruba is a crown jewel for us because it was conceived at the beginning as a cloud-native solution.

A Partner-Led Company

We have been, we are and we will continue to be a partner-led company. That is a fact. I continue to reinforce that every time I speak, not just in front of our partners.

What we have done is make it easy for partners to come along in this transition to deliver everything as a service and at the same time grow profitably with us.

It is not just about GreenLake because we have a transactional business which is very large and we are pivoting to as-a-service, which is the long-term future. We need to be able to do both and be able to give partners the flexibility to come along.

For us, remember 70 percent of our sales on a global basis goes through the channel partner community. Given that, it is going to be hard for us to grow our business without partners. We have no intention to change our go-to-market strategy.

Move To An Age Of Insight

Despite decades of investment in technology there remained[(during this worldwide pandemic research effort] hundreds of dark, unconnected pools of data. Researchers and providers were overwhelmed by the volume of the data—unable to create insights and action from portions of information. We cannot repeat this failure.

I believe we are nearing the end of the information era, which focused on generating and collecting massive amounts of data—data that could not be brought together to create timely insights and actions to change our future.

The next decade must be about insights and discoveries that are shared and elevate the greater well being of every human being on this planet. Today we are entering the age of insight.

The age of insight requires new principles and priorities for digital transformation. The focus is to build an edge to cloud platform that connects, protects, analyzes and acts on all of your data and brings agility to your apps to unlock your enterprise’s full potential.

Helping The World Navigate The Pandemic

We consider it our responsibility to help the world navigate this pandemic. We have prioritized protecting the health and safety of our team members and supporting our customers and partners as we weather this storm together.

The future everyone talked about before the pandemic is now here ahead of schedule. Three years ago we predicted the enterprise of the future would be edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven. Today that’s no longer a prediction. It is a reality. We know this edge-centric, cloud-enabled world will require the right technology expertise and financial flexibility to help you accelerate your transformation.

These ingredients made us unique before this crisis. They were also essential to you when you needed our help the most. These same ingredients are what will enable us to serve as your strategic partner going forward.

During the pandemic we also responded with very important initiatives to address your needs. For example, we designated $2 billion in financing through HPE Financial Services to help customers and partners with financial hardship. This program helped May Seed— the leading agricultural company in Turkey—when financial uncertainty threatened to derail a critical IT initiative. They turned to HPE for financial help by participating in our 2020 Payment Relief Program. Rather than jeopardizing the production and delivery of crucial crop seed to more than 40 countries, May Seed was able to eliminate disruptions to keep their supply chain on track while deferring more than 90 percent of the costs until next year.

Our Aruba Networking capabilities have been deployed in drive-up and virtual health-care clinics and in schools that are facilitating distance learning.

Standing Up Against ‘Systemic Oppression And Racism’

The last few weeks have been very hard for me to process. I have felt many emotions: anger, disbelief, sadness, grief and frustration with the systemic oppression and racism that still exists in our society.

HPE as a global company has a responsibility to help shape a world that is equal for all people. I am committed to taking a stand, to speaking up, to advocate within and outside HPE for equality. We have a belief at HPE and it is to solve humanity with humanity. Everyone deserves to be free of oppression and racism. I challenge you to join me to use this moment to take a stand to speak up on inclusion and to advocate for equity. We have to do better as a society and together we can make a difference and be a force for good.

More Optimistic Than Ever

I am more optimistic about the future than ever. In a moment like this, people, communities and companies show the world who they truly are. At HPE we are continuing to deliver on our purpose: to advance the way people live and work.

It is how our founders Bill [Hewlett] and Dave [Packard] imagined our company and it remains our North Star today. I am incredibly proud of the innovation we continue to bring to market. But what is more important is our belief that technology’s greatest promise lies in its potential for positive change: to map our galaxies, to prevent future pandemics, to heal our environment. That enormous impact is only possible because of you, our customers and partners.

Technology is enabling real tangible change and at HPE we are leveraging our most powerful innovations so that you can accomplish more than ever before.

I know that we can and we will get through this unprecedented time together. I am inspired and humbled by the humanity in your responses and recovery efforts and our society is stronger for it. As we begin to imagine a new and better world for ourselves, HPE is committed to helping each of you move forward.