Taking On Public Cloud Providers With The GreenLake Model

HPE is driving head to head comparisons between GreenLake and public cloud providers.

Neri and Hope urged partners to layer the GreenLake cloud services into the same sales teams that are driving public cloud sales.

“We need to be more and more connected with your cloud teams not just through the infrastructure team because the way we are developing the services on the GreenLake platform is true cloud operations,” said Neri. “We want to make sure you can expose all your services through the platform and create pull for your services.”

As an “Information Cloud” Leader, HPE is embracing the public cloud as a means of delivering a full hybrid edge to cloud experience integrating on premise clouds with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

“In the context of edge, cloud and data with the world being hybrid, customers want us to be able to manage those (public cloud environments) as part of the hybrid estate,” said Neri. “So for us long term the future of this company is GreenLake. Long term everything is going to be delivered through GreenLake. The sooner you get on the platform the better it is for both of us.”

Ultimately, partners need to get customers to try the platform and experience the “unification” from the edge to the cloud, said Neri. “In the end it starts with the data and the workloads, where the data needs to be and where they need to run the workloads in the most cost effective way,” he said. “The fact is most of our joint customers are on a multi-generational IT journey. They have legacy stuff, stuff on prem, in a private cloud on prem or in the public cloud,” he said. “We can bring it altogether.”

HPE is effectively bringing partners “an entire new world from edge to cloud,” said Neri. That includes everything from connectivity with HPE Aruba to compute and storage data services, ransomware protection and high end enterprise workloads like high performance compute, said Neri.

That ability to sell high end solutions that were traditionally sold by just a few partners is a channel game changer, said Neri. “Those mission critical systems and non stop (capabilities) have been totally virtualized, making it cloud native and we are going to make it available on the platform too,” he said.

Hope for his part, said partners need to start with workload assessments that drive comparisons between HPE and public clouds. “You need to be making recommendations on what should be on prem and what could be in the cloud, having a holistic view of it, and working to uncover what are the desired business outcomes,” he said.

CPP Associates, Clinton, New Jersey, one of HPE’s top enterprise partners, for its part, is doing head to head comparisons between GreenLake and the public cloud through its Infrastructure Anywhere Assessments (IAA).

Without reserved multiyear instances on the public cloud, HPE’s GreenLake is at times coming in at time at a 50 percent cost savings over public cloud in a head to face off, said Pat O’Dell, general manager and managing partner CPP.

“There is a place for the public cloud if you are a seasonal company or you need to get up and running quickly, but if you want total flexibility in a 24 hour, seven day a week, 365 day a year production environment you are going to spend substantially more in a public cloud environment,” said O’Dell. “Public cloud without reserved instances is much more expensive.”

Ultimately, HPE is providing customers the “software and services” they need to compete in a new information data insight era, said Neri. “I’m excited because we are making great progress,” he said. “We need to continue to make it simple, simple, simple because it is a whole different sales motion. That takes IT, it takes process and programs. What I am excited about at the same time is the level of innovation we are bringing to the market.”