Recap of EBC Learnings

In early April, our clients gathered in Orlando for an intensive executive briefing, bridging Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Logicalis, and Walt Disney World together. Beginning with a VIP Star Wars experience at Hollywood Studios’ hidden lounge in Galaxy’s Edge, the group delved into HPE’s role in powering Walt Disney World.

Over three days, the group explored topics related to data and networking and learned about HPE technology solutions directly from the Logicalis and HPE subject matter experts who develop and support the products. 

Keep reading for an in-depth recap of everything that was covered at the latest Logicalis and HPE executive briefing:

Elevating Your Security Strategy with Zero Trust & SASE

The enterprise edge is undergoing the most significant transformation in history. Remote and hybrid work, the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the transformation to cloud services are a few of the key trends that are driving digital transformation in today’s digital landscape.

A necessary first step to delivering world-class experiences to users is secure, reliable connectivity.

The solution: security-first unified secure access services edge (SASE), a network security solution that integrates a set of solutions into one security toolbox.

The HPE Aruba Networking approach to zero trust and SASE combines several components to protect users and applications, no matter where they connect:

• HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN provides agented or agentless zero trust network access (ZTNA), unified policy management, and global points-of-presence (PoPs).
• HPE Aruba Networking SSE offers secure SD-WAN with a multi-cloud backbone for improved quality of experience (QoE).
• HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor & ClearPass Network Access Control delivers AI-powered client visibility and profiling, dynamic segmentation, and continuous monitoring.

HPE Aruba Networking, in short, offers a complete, integrated solution modernize remote security with components that include ZTNA, cloud-first security with secure web gateway (SWG) and cloud access security broker (CASB), and network modernization with SD-WAN.

HPE GreenLake Edge-to-Cloud Platform

The demand for as-a-service solutions is growing, in no small part due to the need for more sustainable, environmentally friendly IT solutions. While the public cloud offers scalability, responsiveness, and financial flexibility, we live in a hybrid world. For a variety of reasons – such as data gravity, security, and performance – most enterprises will not or cannot move all of their data to the public cloud, yet they still want the agility offered by the as-a-service model.

HPE GreenLake is a unified software platform that provides a consistent, consumption-based, cloud-like experience for all apps and data, through a single online operations platform. It enables organizations to overcome key barriers to hybrid cloud adoption, while accessing a comprehensive, curated catalog of enterprise-grade software services spanning a wide range of categories.

With the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, customers can:

• Simplify their hybrid cloud journey and simplify management of the hybrid infrastructure across the edge, data center, and cloud
• Optimize business through innovation, reduce IT spending, maximize ROI, and drive sustainable initiatives
• Extend business reach with solutions from HPE GreenLake and its vast ecosystem

Unlike the public cloud, HPE GreenLake offers security and control over your data, with the benefits of a hybrid cloud. You can avoid overprovisioning, shorten time to market, realize significant upfront CapEx cost savings, and predict pricing more accurately.

In short, HPE GreenLake is the cloud that comes to you – offering a single hybrid operating model and experience everywhere, across private clouds, public clouds, on-premises, and everywhere in between.

HPE ProLiant: Compute Engineered for Your Hybrid World

HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers deliver the performance and security you need for all your workloads, so you can accelerate innovation and drive data-first modernization confidently:

• Hardware-based security and a trusted supply chain provides comprehensive protection from the firmware to the application layer
• Gen11 servers offer up to 99% higher performance compared to the previous generation, as well as more energy efficiency, more bandwidth, and more scalability
• Accelerated graphics capabilities provide up to 33% more high-performance GPU density per server to power next-gen workloads, such as AI, ML, rendering, and data-intensive applications
• A commitment to open industry standards supports increased flexibility, interoperability, and a broader ecosystem of compatible products and solutions

The lineup of HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers offers optimized performance for all workloads, from VDI to analytics to edge to hybrid cloud, virtualization, and more. Plus, HPE continues to evolve HPE Synergy, a converged infrastructure platform for private and hybrid cloud, data management, and analytics. The latest release, the HPE Synergy 480 Gen11 compute module, is built with the latest Intel Xeon processors, PCIe 5.0 support, higher-speed DDR5 memory, and greater storage capacity.

The HPE Compute Management portfolio also offers optimized server management solutions for a variety of scenarios. HPE GreenLake for Compute Ops Management offers lifecycle management for all servers, HPE OneView provides on-premises infrastructure management software for composable compute, networking, and storage solutions, and HPE iLO is an embedded server management solution that simplifies HPE server configuration, monitoring, and updates.

From Hybrid Cloud “By Accident” to Hybrid Cloud by Design

Research from HPE shows that enterprise decision-makers are increasingly choosing hybrid cloud as their operating model not because they have to, but because they prefer it.

All hybrid cloud advocates claim that their strategy improves flexibility and responsiveness, which in turn helps extract meaningful insights from data and drive new opportunities for growth. They also say that multi-gen IT is easier to integrate into their environment, addresses security and redundancy issues, and helps them meet compliance standards.

The key is having a strategy to execute against, since certain workloads are more suited to certain environments – some are suitable for the public cloud, some for private cloud, and some for on-premises environments. Without the right strategy, enterprises can wind up with services layered upon services, each with its own operating model and security protocols – a situation commonly referred to as entanglement.

Hybrid cloud strategies are paving the way for optimally scaling one’s business, while balancing cost, performance, and control. This approach enables businesses to leverage the benefits of every environment, without being restricted by the limitations of one.

No matter how an organization begins its hybrid cloud journey, the results are the same: a hybrid cloud strategy opens up new opportunities, accelerates innovation, optimizes processes, and sets the stage for business transformation.

HPE AI Strategic Outlook: The Art of the Possible with AI

Per the Emerald Research Group, AI is established and growing exponentially:

• 75% of dedicated AI budgets will continue or increase over the next year
• 47% put AI among their organization’s top two initiatives
• 98% of organizations are using AI in some capacity

Over the next several years, firms such as IDC predict that the total AI market and technologies such as GenAI will climb at a staggering pace, which is perhaps why NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang views this as AI’s “iPhone moment.”

The explosion of AI is perhaps due to its ability to deliver value and outcomes across industries. It has the potential to revolutionize every industry, from retail to industrial to healthcare to finance, by massively amplifying productivity and achieving unprecedented levels of efficiency.

With HPE, however, enterprises ready to innovate with AI don’t need to build their own infrastructure, purchase their own 100% liquid-cooled supercomputers, or use the scale-out cloud of the hyperscalers.

HPE AI Cloud delivers custom compute options that span the spectrum of business needs, from interactive model development and single-GPU inference deployments to large-scale converged HPC and AI workloads.

From on-prem to on-demand, HPE’s HPC and AI solutions can be customized to suit any AI use case, with any method of deployment, across any industry.

Building Resilience through Data Protection with HPE and Zerto

Today, staying secure and compliant is increasingly important – and increasingly challenging.

From cyber threats to unplanned disruptions to cyber complexity, the ever-present danger of data breaches and business disruption spotlights the need to mitigate these risks with solutions such as disaster recovery and backup.

Data protection with HPE and Zerto run on best-in-class HPE storage, compute, and networking, offering protection for all tiers of applications:

• Disaster recovery. Solutions such as Zerto for VMs and Cloud and HPE GreenLake for Disaster recovery offer 5-15 second recovery point objectives (RPOs) and can replicate across the hybrid estate.
• Cyber recovery. Solutions such as Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault act as an additional layer of protection on top of disaster recovery and long-term backup, through isolated recovery environments with immutable data vaults.
• Backup and long-term retention. Solutions such as Zerto Backup for SaaS and HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery provide comprehensive, simple backup with daily RPOs and retention timelines stretching back 7+ years.

Together, these solutions offer complete data resilience solutions that can protect against unplanned and planned disruptions, such as migrations and mergers and acquisitions.

Modernizing for Tomorrow with HPE and Logicalis

From AI to security to infrastructure, it seems that the tech landscape is evolving more quickly than ever.

While digital transformation has always been essential, today’s IT and business leaders must find ways to do more with less, while simultaneously driving more innovation, productivity, and efficiency.

HPE, a long-time industry leader in enterprise hardware and software, has built a solution portfolio that addresses these challenges on all fronts. With as-a-service solutions such as HPE GreenLake, on-premises hardware such as ProLiant Gen11 servers, and flexible AI solutions such as the HPE AI Cloud, organizations can find an enterprise solution that meets their specific needs, without worrying about heavy upfront CapEx costs, infrastructure complexity, or the risk of being tied to a specific technology roadmap over the long term.