HPE reiterates focus on edge computing

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has reiterated its focus on edge computing amid expectations that most data will be created at the edge of the network rather than in datacentres.

Speaking at HPE Discover Now in Singapore on 23 July 2019, Phil Davis, HPE’s president of hybrid IT and chief sales officer, said enterprises will create over 70% of their data at the edge by 2023, driving the need for technology offerings that help to make sense of all that data.

“You want to be able to analyse and act on data at the edge, while increasingly leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to automate the action on that data,” he said, adding that there is also a need to bridge the physical and digital worlds through the use of edge computing.

In November 2018, HPE showed off the first fruits of its $4bn investment in edge computing with a slew of offerings to help enterprises better manage their edge devices, applications and data.

These include hardware adapters that connect IT networks to operational technology systems, as well as a software platform that makes insights from the edge available across the enterprise.

HPE’s billion-dollar investment in edge computing follows its $3bn acquisition of Aruba in 2013, which Davis said has given HPE a “phenomenal ability” to deliver digital experiences at the edge. “That’s been probably our most successful acquisition as a company,” he added.

Davis said HPE will continue to strengthen its product portfolio to enable personalised and automated edge experiences across all of its customers’ businesses. That includes connecting edge workloads to a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

“We were the first to go out and publicly say the world will definitely be hybrid,” Davis said. “It's not going to be all public or all private – it’s going to be public and private, and it’s going to have to comprehend your edges.”

Noting that HPE has been clear on the need for the cloud to be open, Davis claimed the company can help enterprises avoid any cloud lock-in through its suite of software-defined capabilities to deliver the benefits of public cloud to enterprise datacentres.

“You can have the ability to dynamically provision resources, depending on what your workloads need, and the ability to scale up or scale down with no manual intervention,” he said.

The growing use of edge computing – and the data that comes along with it – inevitably puts a strain on storage systems. In June 2019, HPE announced a new storage platform called Primera that is optimised for mission-critical workloads.

Davis said Primera brings together the simplicity and ease of use of Nimble, as well as the richness of data services and resiliency of 3Par, while leveraging artificial intelligence and Infosight to achieve a 100% availability guarantee.