CEO Antonio Neri Implements New HPE GreenLake Development Model, Makes Cloud Services Delivery His ‘No. 1 Priority’

‘Our ability to transform with increasing speed and agility is so imperative –that I am making this transformation my No. 1 priority, and I will devote a significant amount of my time and energy to propel our strategy forward,’ says HPE CEO Antonio Neri in a blog post.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri (pictured) is putting in place a new GreenLake cloud services development model to accelerate the transformation to a much more seamless and unified pay-per-use cloud services delivery model and experience.

As part of an aggressive new GreenLake edge to cloud platform as a service evolution, HPE has created a new GreenLake platform development team and is set to name a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) by September.

Kumar Sreekanti, who has been heading up the GreenLake software development effort, is retiring, but will continue to lead the team until a new CTO steps in.

The new development organization marks a bold new front in HPE’s bid to make HPE GreenLake on premises cloud services delivery every bit as seamless as swiping a credit card to load up a new instance from AWS or Microsoft Azure.

[RELATED: 10 HPE GreenLake Game Changers From HPE Discover 2021]

“Our ability to transform with increasing speed and agility is so imperative –that I am making this transformation my No. 1 priority, and I will devote a significant amount of my time and energy to propel our strategy forward,” said Neri in a blog post.

The new HPE GreenLake Platform Development team is chartered with delivering a new unified GreenLake cloud platform where all of HPE’s edge to cloud services will be delivered.

The new organization brings together expertise from across HPE, building upon a core Common Cloud Services and Common Cloud Platform from HPE Aruba.

“The new model leverages our innovative history and enterprise strength, and will further establish HPE GreenLake as the market-leading edge-to-cloud platform,” said Neri.

Aruba COO Vishall Lall – who will play a key role in driving the new unified HPE GreenLake platform - will head up a new GreenLake Cloud Services Solutions Group reporting directly to Neri. The new GreenLake Cloud Services Solutions Group centralizes all of HPE’s Software Teams focused on as a service under a single umbrella including HPE Ezmeral, HPE GreenLake Lighthouse and all of the GreenLake workload offerings. That team will focus on delivering cloud services that seamlessly integrate with the new unified GreenLake Cloud Platform.

Keith White, who has built a broad ecosystem of GreenLake partners as senior vice president of the GreenLake Cloud Services business, will head up the new GreenLake Cloud Services Commercial Business Group. That group will be focused on driving HPE GreenLake cloud services delivery through partners, HPE sales and HPE’s advisory and professional services teams.

HPE is also establishing two new company wide teams, the Services Reliability Engineering team and the Cloud Services Operations team, which will be responsible for running the cloud platforms, services and security functions and operations across all of HPE’s as a service offerings. Both of those teams will report to HPE Chief Operating Officer John Schultz.

Schultz — who oversees HPE’s Transformation Office — will work in partnership with Neri to ensure HPE maintains its as a service momentum.

HPE has also created a new position that will set new user interface standards for HPE cloud and own the digital user experience. That new post will be filled by Gabie Boko, global vice president digital for HPE, who will become HPE’s new Unified Customer Experience Officer.

“This is an outstanding day if you are a partner because HPE is going to help you deliver technology as a service,” said Jeff Vogel, a senior director and analyst for Gartner, the IT research and consulting company headquartered in Stamford, Conn.”They have bundled that in with solutions. They are building out the whole customer engagement process with SDOE (the AI based Software Defined Opportunity Engine) – the CloudPhysics component of the overall engagement model. That to me is technologically advanced in terms of how they are thinking about the whole customer and partner experience. They are making it very simple for partners to deliver technology as a service.”

Vogel said the new HPE organizational structure brings together a stellar executive team to accelerate the HPE cloud services delivery transformation. “HPE has a really good grounding on the business model, the organizational structure and all the technology that needs to go into the solution to make it a reality,” he said.

First off, putting White in charge of the commercial GreenLake sales model assures partners will “get a lot more attention” as HPE accelerates the cloud services delivery transformation, said Vogel.

“With Keith White you now have someone that is going to be field operations focused, that is really what he did over at (Microsoft) Azure before he came over to HPE (nearly two years ago),” said Vogel. “This guy is a field general. He knows how to get cloud business done. He built the whole partner channel for Azure. He is basically the guy that got Microsoft converted from an on premise license model to a cloud services model. You need a guy like Keith in the channel who is very partner friendly and very much understands what the partners are going to go through in converting from a product oriented resell model to a cloud model. That bodes well for partners.”

White, in fact, has already built out a broad ecosystem of robust GreenLake pay-per-use on premise cloud services solutions for partners including Epic healthcare software and SAP enterprise resource planning software. “That is helping partners drive into the marketplace into these various different verticals,” he said. “That’s a really good story and message for the partners.”

The operational changes with Schultz now driving back end cloud services delivery is sure to lead to a “better customer experience,” said Vogel. “You put a guy like John Schultz in charge of the operations and backend processes in conjunction with what is going on in the field, then you have Antonio riding herd on this every day and every week, and Vishall leading the whole GreenLake BU (business unit), now I think you have the right mix here for executive leadership to drive this transformation.”

Vogel — whose research report titled “Enterprise Storage as a Service Is Transforming IT Operating Models” has attracted widespread attention — said HPE competitors are “beyond worried” and are all trying to “mimmick” HPE’s as a service model. Separate from the hyperscalar cloud providers, there are now 14 vendors competing to grab a share of the enterprise storage as a service market and HPE is “out in front” of that pack, said Vogel.“The reality is that HPE has the more proven, more mature model, having been at it for quite some time,” he said.

Vogel — who was the CEO of two cloud native software standouts before coming to Gartner — credited Neri with having the fortitude to transform an HPE business model that has been in place for decades upon decades.

“Neri is the only CEO in the mix that has put a target with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 30-40 percent as a service revenue by the end of HPE’s Fiscal Year 2023,” said Vogel. “Nobody else is willing to put a target out there for Wall Street. I think that has drawn some serious consideration and interest from both Amazon (Web Services) and Azure. They are looking at this as a potentially serious alternative to what you can do with mission critical databases in a hybrid cloud type of setup which is essentially what GreenLake is really endeavoring to do.”

Neri, for his part, said in his blog post that he is “very excited” for what’s ahead for HPE customers and partners. “I believe we are still in the early stages of the growth of an entirely new cloud market, which HPE GreenLake pioneered, as the “cloud that comes to you,” he said. “Stay tuned for the next chapter in innovation on this front from HPE, in September.”