HPE is refining GreenLake strategy with hybrid cloud push: CTO Fidelma Russo

Global IT company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has evolved its GreenLake strategy over the past few years and is now prepared to take it to the next level, as more enterprises are moving from a "public cloud first approach" to a hybrid model.

HPE GreenLake is a managed platform provided by the IT vendor that combines the simplicity and agility of the public cloud with the security, governance, compliance, and performance benefits of on-premises IT infrastructure.

At HPE Discover 2023 in Barcelona, held from 29 November to 1 December, Fidelma Russo, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at HPE, said that GreenLake is the answer to today's critical IT complexities. She claimed that while enterprises earlier adopted public cloud services as an ad-hoc supplement to on-premises IT, that's changing, as workloads continue to spread across the multi-clouds with increased complexity and CIO/CTOs need to run multiple applications both on-premises and in the cloud. This is where HPE GreenLake, with its open-standard approach, can help.

In September, the company established a Hybrid Cloud business unit that encompasses all GreenLake activities, with Russo playing a significant role in building this unit. Russo also mentioned that the GreenLake portfolio now includes multi-cloud orchestration for virtual machines, containers, and bare metal.

When HPE launched its GreenLake suite of cloud and infrastructure offerings in November 2017, it was in response to organisations' demand for consuming IT as a service and paying only for what they use. The as-a-service model has since gained popularity as a way for organisations to control costs and become more responsive to changing IT needs. This year, HPE's annual recurring revenue from GreenLake crossed the $1 billion-mark. The company has 27,000 GreenLake customers with 3.4 million connected devices.

Russo claimed that HPE can differentiate itself from the public cloud by solving critical enterprise challenges, such as transforming businesses through the power of data, modernising IT infrastructure with the cloud, and simplifying the operations of multi-generational and multi-cloud IT assets.

In June, HPE entered the AI cloud market with GreenLake for large language models (LLMs). This public cloud service enables enterprises to privately train, fine-tune, and deploy large-scale AI using supercomputers that can run LLMs more efficiently than hyperscale infrastructure.

HPE also offers private cloud solutions, allowing customers to self-manage or opt for a fully managed service. Additionally, GreenLake provides AI infrastructure-as-a-service, according to Russo. She also emphasized that GreenLake includes AI-powered monitoring and observability through HPE's acquisition of OpsRamp earlier this year.

Russo also focused on the ethical and safe use of newer technologies like generative AI and data protection. HPE aims to help customers manage and understand the lifecycle of their data, including backup data, whether it is on-premises or in the public cloud, through a centralised management platform. “A robust data strategy is crucial for organisations to effectively harness AI. HPE has been investing significantly in this area and offers solutions that cover the entire AI lifecycle, including machine learning data management software,” she said.

[The writer was in Barcelona to attend HPE Discover 2023 hosted by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE)]