Maybe it was only appropriate that HPE held their biggest conference of the year, HPE Discover 2016, in Las Vegas, as they’re clearly betting everything on the cloud.
It’s the right strategy, of course, but it’s more than a “vision thing” for HPE; the technology they’re building today promises to change the shape of the cloud tomorrow. In case you missed it, HPE Discover 2016 showcased some of the company’s groundbreaking work in cloud storage and their next-generation platform, The Machine. After attending the show, a few key observations stick out in my mind.
“Moving at the speed of light”
HPE unveiled The Machine last year and captured a lot of peoples’ imaginations with its science-fiction-meets-reality next-gen computing. Some of that technology, such as HPE Synergy, is already out on the market today. Other aspects, such as using photonics (light photons running through glass fibers) in place of copper wires for memory-to-storage communications, are right around the corner. As photonics becomes more widely available, it will enable cloud-based computing to operate at the speed of light, literally, and may well spell the end of the desktop computer.
“Looking for a UNIX exit strategy”
The days of UNIX running on expensive servers are ending. As computing grows more commoditized, enterprises are looking to move to cheaper x86-based servers running Linux. Some of those servers are moving to HPE’s Superdome platform in a consolidation strategy. A lot of the companies I talked to at Discover 2016 were holding off on the traditional three-year server refresh as they decide whether or not they want to go completely into the cloud.
“Security remains top of mind”
Executives are still worried about security, and many of them view the cloud as a security problem more than a security solution. HPE is addressing that concern with increasingly sophisticated security offerings, particularly in the mobile security space with their Aruba Networks acquisition.
“Millennials matter.”
Besides security, IT executives are concerned about delivering technology that meets the needs of the growing millennial workforce. Millennials are very mobile centric and app oriented. As IT becomes more about mobile apps, HPE is helping enterprises make the necessary network transformation by offering solutions like Stackato and partnering closely with companies like Docker.
We seem to say this every year, but it really is an exciting time to be in IT. HPE is doing a lot to generate that excitement, especially in the cloud space and around The Machine, and we’ll continue to be there to help our customers leverage that technology in their enterprise. ▪