HPE GreenLake For VMware: 5 ‘Big Deal’ Benefits

The new HPE GreenLake for VMware — which will be available sometime in the first half of 2023 — brings on-premise pay-per-use private cloud service metering to the full VMware Cloud Foundation stack. Here are five big deal benefits of the blockbuster co-innovation being done by the longtime partners.

A ‘Big Deal’ That Brings Pay Per Use To VMware Cloud

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware are combining to bring the full VMware cloud foundation stack to the HPE GreenLake pay-per-use private cloud service.

“It is a big deal,” said Hewlett Packard Enterprise Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Hang Tan. “I think it is a game changer. You have two market leaders in their respective domains coming together. I think one big benefit is the fact that we are now in a true consumption model (with VMware Cloud Foundation on HPE GreenLake).”

HPE partners see the blockbuster agreement expanding the market for HPE’s fast-growing GreenLake cloud service.

The additional market opportunity is “massive” given what HPE and VMware call its installed base of more than “200,000 mutual customers,” said Michael Maher, director of professional services for CPP Associates, one of HPE’s top GreenLake partners.

“Before this you had to go out and get the VMware price quote and figure things out,” said Maher. “Now if you want to try VMware containers, VDI or NSX you have it fully integrated with GreenLake.”

The new HPE GreenLake for VMware was unveiled this week at VMware’s Explore 2022 conference in Barcelona.

“VMware is the market leader in virtualization for a very good reason,” said Maher. “In my opinion, it is the most mature, integrated and business-outcome-driven virtualization platform on the market. This is a big opportunity for HPE, VMware and the partner community. This strengthens VMware’s and HPE’s relationship with the partner community. This is huge.”

HPE Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Hang Tan

HPE Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Hang Tan

A Consumption-Based VMware Cloud Stack

The new HPE GreenLake for VMware brings a fully integrated pay-per-use VMware Cloud to the fast-growing HPE GreenLake cloud service.

“Now the entire (VMware) solution is delivered in a fully integrated seamless way for the customer and the entire stack is now consumption based,” said Tan. “That is how the customer can really optimize their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) because they are not over provisioning and they can now spend more time delivering value added services to their internal customers versus stitching together and managing those environments themselves.”

HPE’s cloud metering capability – which came from its 2017 acquisition of Cloud Cruiser- opens the door for HPE to provide VMware virtual machines on a pay-per-use basis.

“In the past you had to forecast how much capacity you needed for your workloads and that forecasting translated into a set of software licenses and obviously infrastructure that you would have to purchase,” said Tan. “With the new model and with this integrated offer we are basically tying those two together in purely consumption based approach.”

The HPE GreenLake For Private Cloud Enterprise Impact

The new HPE GreenLake for VMware deal puts HPE’s GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise in a “pole position” to capture the massive hybrid cloud opportunity, said Tan.

“This is about helping customers deliver an optimal hybrid cloud mix,” said Tan. “We want to help them deliver the private cloud aspect of that (hybrid cloud mix). On top of that we are providing managed services to help customer manage their hybrid multicloud environment. That is a massive, massive opportunity.”

The deal comes with a major version of HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise being made available on October 31. That new version of HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise establishes a new bar for provisioning and deploying an on-premise private cloud for enterprise customers. It includes increased automation and scalability backed up with an enterprise grade service level agreement.

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise is designed to provide an easy to deploy point and clock private cloud model with an ala carte menu from virtual machines to containers to bare metal.

A Fully Integrated VMware GreenLake Experience – A Huge Differentiator

The HPE GreenLake for VMware service eliminates once and for all the complex integration required to run VMware Cloud Foundation in a private GreenLake pay-per-use cloud.

“This is a fully integrated experience,” said Tan. “So when we are managing the environment in GreenLake they (partners and customers) are not stitching together a solution themselves. They are not stitching together VMware with GreenLake infrastructure. They are essentially subscribing or consuming GreenLake private cloud. That is a much more seamless experience and it lowers the customers’ TCO. So we think that is a huge differentiator.”

A good deal of the engineering effort is aimed at providing a “truly seamless” VMware Cloud on GreenLake experience, said Tan.

HPE And VMware Co-Innovating

HPE and VMware a ‘co-innovating very aggressively” on a GreenLake for VMware road map.

“This partnership allows us to really drive a significant amount of innovation in a very inter-locked way going forward,” said Tan. “I think that will bring a lot of benefits to end customers. Expect to hear a lot from us in the coming year on new features and capabilities. “

That co-innovation is sure to be fueled by HPE Chief Technology Officer Fidelma Russo – the former general manager of VMware’s Cloud Services unit- who celebrated her first anniversary at HPE in September.

Russo, who is responsible for managing the design, development and road-map for GreenLake, has been a driving force in delivering a more seamless GreenLake cloud service experience similar to public cloud offerings like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

An Enterprise Private Cloud Bonanza

The HPE GreenLake for VMware cloud service comes with market researcher IDC estimating that the Enterprise Private Cloud total addressable market for hardware and enterprise private cloud support will hit $32.3 billion by 2025.

“This is definitely an area partners should really focus on,” said Tan. “This is about helping customers deliver an optimal hybrid cloud mix. We want to help them deliver the private cloud aspect of that (hybrid cloud mix). On top of that we are providing managed services to help customer manage their hybrid multicloud environment. That is a massive, massive opportunity.”

HPE GreenLake for VMware opens the door for partners to focus on value added services rather than stitching together VMware with HPE Greenlake, said Tan.

The deal comes amid a significant rise in hybrid cloud deployments, said Tan. “Obviously public cloud continues to grow, but I think especially in the current (economic) environment customers are much more prudent about their expenditures and private cloud is increasingly being viewed as more attractive,” he said. “Hybrid cloud deployment with a more balanced mix is becoming a lot more attractive.”