HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud updates boost hybrid clouds

HPE hybrid cloud users now have new applications and developer services for GreenLake. They also received expanded container deployment options for HPE Greenlake for Private Cloud Enterprise, including support for Kubernetes and infrastructure as code.

The company also debuted six workload instances for general purpose use, including compute, memory and storage that can be used on HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise. It will be available as a pay-as-you-go consumption model.

There is a growing awareness among HPE's users about the strategic role hybrid clouds can play in digital transformation projects, said Vishal Lall, senior vice president and general manager of HPE GreenLake Cloud Services Solutions, during a press briefing. Lall said the new platform delivers hybrid cloud capabilities as a service from the edge to core data centers as well as across multiple clouds.

Reinforcing its commitment to hybrid clouds is a step in the right direction for HPE, some analysts believe, but the company has plenty of competitors traveling that same path.

"As we saw in HPE's most recent earnings, as well as those of IBM and Dell, the user demands for hybrid cloud is significant," said Dan Newman, principal analyst with Futurum Research and CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. "There's far more workloads on prem than in public clouds. So providing a cloud-like experience with the flexibility of working with on-prem and private clouds is becoming important to the enterprise."

Strengthening the capabilities of its private cloud to better work within a hybrid cloud environment could not only make the best use of investments in the existing product but also keep costs down.

Paul Nashawaty

"CIOs modernized their business by moving applications to the public cloud and built out their investments there. But they need to manage costs, so they moved them onto a private cloud," said Paul Nashawaty, a senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget. "It can be an effective way for user organizations to maximize use of the cloud but stay within their operational budgets."

The improvements to GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise complement offerings released during HPE Discover 2022 last month. One such offering is HPE GreenLake for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, a joint development effort between the two companies. Another is HPE GreenLake for VMware, which integrates the entire GreenLake portfolio with VMware Cloud. The latter is available as a pay-as-you-go consumption model.

"The partnerships with Red Hat and VMware are a critical part of making connections between on-prem and public cloud workloads and our HPE portfolio," Vall said. "They allow users to build on the core platforms that enable their hybrid strategies."

The fact HPE remained committed to the private cloud after getting pushed out of the public cloud arena by AWS and Microsoft several years ago could benefit the company as it moves forward with its hybrid cloud strategy.

"They backed out of the public cloud market. But this gives them a chance to learn from their mistakes," said Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications Network Architects, Inc. "But the competitive situation has changed. It's the services and tools you can provide to users to implement their applications and they appear to be doing that."

HPE has also enhanced its consumption analytics to improve usage and cost analytics of applications working with AWS, Microsoft and Google's public clouds. Improvements include easier showback reporting and dashboard insights that aid capacity planning and budgeting across hybrid clouds.

In addition, GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise is now available in 52 countries as well as to partners through the GreenLake Partners Program. In other partner news, the company said GreenLake for Data Fabric along with HPE Ezmeral Unified Analytics are now available through the newly launched Ezmeral Early Access Program.

As Editor At Large with TechTarget's News Group, Ed Scannell is responsible for writing and reporting breaking news, news analysis and features focused on technology issues and trends affecting corporate IT professionals.