COVID-19 Is Driving ‘Dramatic’ Surge In HPE Cloud Volumes Backup: HPE Storage GM Tom Black

A Cloud Volumes Storage Surge

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Cloud Volumes Backup service is experiencing a dramatic increase in sales in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic, said HPE Senior Vice President/Storage General Manager Tom Black.

“We have seen a dramatic expansion in customer accounts for that [Cloud Volumes Backup service] because of COVID-19,” said Black in an interview with CRN. “What COVID taught us is that business continuity planning is really top of mind for CIOs these days. The idea that when people are locked at home you can’t operate the physical plant just doesn’t hold anymore.”

HPE unleashed Cloud Volumes Backup—its new enterprise multi-cloud backup service—at HPE Virtual Discover in June. As part of the launch of the new service, HPE has been offering a 90-day trial version of the service that includes up to 10 TiB (Tebibytes) of free capacity per month.

COVID-19 has shattered the preconception that the data center is a glass house off-limits to those working from home, said Black. “People are really thinking about this idea that you once had a pristine [data center] glass house, all HVAC-controlled, badge in, everything secure, you can’t get to it from an outside network,” said Black. “That is gone. Life is just very, very different now.”

Among the storage highlights of the most recent HPE quarter were 31 percent growth in big data storage solution sales driven in part by Cloud Volumes; 114 percent growth in the Primera next-generation intelligent storage platform with 104 new customers; and Nimble dHCI growth of 112 percent.

Black—a self-described technology innovation geek who holds four patents—is revving up the HPE Storage innovation engine with an eye toward driving “revolutionary” advances for customers and partners.

One of Black’s first big innovation bets: an InfoSight prototype aimed at helping partners drive sales upgrades and auto-generate storage solution recommendations for the rapidly growing InfoSight installed base.

“I am really dropping the hammer on deeper and deeper integration with our [InfoSight] AI platform to solve more and more meaningful problems,” said Black, a 24-year IT engineering R&D veteran who held top engineering posts at Cisco Systems and Arista Networks before joining HPE seven years ago to lead the networking team.

Black credited HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri for driving a much faster pace of innovation at HPE. “The joy I have had working for Antonio Neri is he is very much an innovation-, customer-centric sort of thinker,” said Black. “For someone like me who really likes to push the bleeding edge, it is just fun to hang out here. I have a great team, and you should expect a very different pace and a very aggressive innovation agenda for us as we move into the second half of this year and into next year.”