Edge-to-Cloud: Ushering in the Age of Insight, Wherever Your Data Resides

The Future is Edge-to-Cloud.

This phrase will be the theme for HPE’s Discover 2021 conference this week, held virtually for hundreds of thousands of attendees around the globe. Edge-to-cloud will be the perfect topic for corporate decision-makers as they begin to shift their attention away from the immediate demands brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for the next wave of digital transformation.

We’ve been talking about the Age of Insight for some time now, an era marked by the realization that data has rapidly become the new currency that powers our world. Data has become our most valuable asset, and those who do the best job of extracting value from data – quickly and with agility – will win. 

Many companies are awash in data, but those that don’t extract the insights from it that are needed to thrive in our hypercompetitive world will struggle to survive in the digital economy. We also, as a society, are looking toward building a more digitally enabled and inclusive world. 

At this pivotal moment, HPE’s purpose – to advance the way people live and work – has never been more important. Our company exists to help customers collect and connect their data, by applying machine learning and AI to their data sets at enterprise scale – and in doing so, turning hopes and visions into reality across every industry and aspect of our world.

During this most challenging year, we never wavered in our commitment to be a force for good as well as a strategic partner for our customers. We accelerated our edge-to-cloud platform as a service strategy, because high-quality, data-driven workloads and workflows became even more critical during COVID-19. 

One of those rapidly evolving, data-driven industries is automotive. And for me, a real highlight of Discover 2021 was my conversation with Chairman and CEO Mary Barra of GM, a company we are proud to have served for many years. 

Mary recently announced GM’s bold, industry-defining plans to only produce electric vehicles by 2035. It’s all part of Mary’s vision of transforming GM from a “car company” into a “technology company” that is relying on harnessing the power of their data to make that evolution happen.

Undoubtedly, the future is edge to cloud – across every industry and sector. The opportunities to unlock value and insights from our data are tremendous; but the trick is ensuring that you can use data everywhere it resides, across your distributed enterprise – something we call a cloud everywhere mandate. It’s the need for a simple, automated experience so that you can focus on your data, workloads and outcomes.

That ubiquitous customer demand is fuelling our own transformation at HPE, into an edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service company built to transform your business by bringing speed and agility to critical data-driven workloads and workflows.

We’ve been on the edge-to-cloud pathway for several years, and customers have responded quite positively. Our HPE GreenLake Edge to Cloud Platform – our delivery mechanism for cloud services and agile cloud experiences, everywhere – grew at an astounding 41% rate in Q2 and now has over 1,200 enterprises as customers. 

Drawing customers to this innovative platform is its ubiquity, as it unifies the entire hybrid cloud experience with one-click access to a growing suite of services. As we announced at Discover, that suite is getting bigger and better. 

Throughout the three days of Discover, we will announce several new HPE GreenLake Edge to Cloud Platform services and enhancements, each designed to address customer needs as the Age of Insight requires us to wring even more actionable knowledge from our data. 

You can read all about them here, but I’d like to emphasize two releases which are representative of how HPE is creating more ways to make your data work for you, wherever it lives, and whenever you need it. 

One is our exciting release of 5G Core Systems through GreenLake, a cloud-native, open and secure system to generate web-scale speed, flexibility and resilience for the build out of in-demand 5G networks. What makes this particularly significant is that it can be deployed, tested and commissioned in less than an hour; otherwise, it could take weeks to get up and running. 5G Core makes ramp-up fast and simple.

In the same vein, we are simplifying and making almost effortless the provisioning and management of Compute infrastructure – wherever it resides across the enterprise – by adding Compute to our HPE GreenLake Cloud Platform. And, with our new HPE GreenLake Lighthouse – a series of workload optimized solutions powered by HPE Ezmeral software – you can run a range of cloud services from your choice of provider, from your own data center or all the way at the edge.

These and other innovations launched or underway (including a one-click Silicon On-Demand project, in partnership with Intel) are indicative of our focus on giving customers everything they need to conduct business in an edge-to-cloud architecture. 

And it is our mandate to ensure that these digital transformations not only improve business but improve society, as we drive toward a truly inclusive and sustainable world. 

What an exciting time for IT. The edge-to-cloud future has arrived with stunning speed and impact. My hope is that all of us – working together and bolstered by breath-taking technological innovations – will make an impact in making our world more equitable and sustainable, for generations to come.

And we at HPE stand ready to help guide you through your data workloads, ushering in this unprecedented Age of Insight.