HPE GreenLake—Responding to Demand for On-premises, Cloud-like agility
In our conversations with enterprise end users, we hear them speak of IT agility—an expression that often refers to the need for an ability to respond quickly to new business requirements. Traditional IT procurement processes are for them, anything but agile. New projects get bogged down in what feel like endless approval cycles and cost justification paperwork. Public clouds respond to that need for IT immediacy.
HPE GreenLake is designed to take the complexity out of the infrastructure procurement and payment process as well as convert CAPEX to OPEX spend which is more in line with the way customers now budget for cloud. HPE GreenLake packages infrastructure from servers and storage to complete private and hybrid cloud architectures and PointNext delivers it such that customers can acquire the entire solution as a monthly operating expense. HPE PointNext will also layer additional management services on top to meet customer needs.
HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity allows customers to scale capacity up or down while paying only for the capacity consumed. Depending on the infrastructure components, measured consumption can be based on VM’s, processors, containers, storage capacity, communications ports, etc. Automated measurement is enabled by the acquisition HPE made in February 2017 of Cloud Cruiser to leverage the company’s capabilities for metering and billing hybrid cloud usage and spend. These capabilities are a key part of HPE Flexible Capacity.
For ease of acquisition, HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity has been packaged into the following HPE solutions that are focused on customer needs for hybrid cloud, compute and storage. All include metering for monthly billing, buffer capacity and on-demand flexibility.
- ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack
- Synergy 480 Compute Modules
- StoreServ 8200 and 9450
- Simplivity 380
- Proliant BL460 server blade
- StoreOnce 5100
These are available through channel partners that may also add their own services to these solutions.
PointNext can also offer HPE GreenLake solutions as part of a larger managed services engagement that includes HPE Greenlake Flex Capacity infrastructure and on-site management. These solutions are focused on broader set of customer requirements including backup, AI, database, private cloud and hybrid cloud as a managed service. In the case of a hybrid cloud solution, HPE Pointnext also uses its Cloud Technology Partners acquisition to manage the public cloud side.
Evaluator Group Take
HPE GreenLake is an extension of HPE’s Pointnext services division that focuses on delivering HPE infrastructure on an as-a-service basis. HPE Pointnext is what was left of HPE’s services after the EDS divestiture. It is now an $8B business generating 11,000 projects annually, and accounts for the majority of HPE’s profit.
As mentioned, the focus of HPE GreenLake is to bring a cloud-like, pay-as-you go acquisition experience with no upfront commitments to on premises computing. In a business environment that requires agility to respond to quickly changing needs, many enterprises may not have the financial or staff resources immediately available to get a major project or new business initiative off the ground or respond to regulatory pressures such a GDPR. HPE GreenLake is designed to help customers meet these challenges.
We see that enterprise IT is moving more financial resources into OPEX spending. This creates an increasing demand for as-a-service acquisition alternatives such as GreenLake. The good news is that this trend also stimulates increased competition among large infrastructure vendors moving into this market opportunity—good news because it results in a climate where customers can negotiate their best deal. Contractual flexibility is highly valued by customers. They can now put pressure on these vendors to come up with contractual terms and conditions that promote infrastructure acquisition agility.
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