Hewlett Packard Enterprise has unveiled a consumption-priced managed hybrid cloud solution combining on-premises private cloud infrastructure and off-premises public cloud resources with pre- and post-production professional services.
Called HPE GreenLake Hybrid Cloud, the new offering includes migration and configuration assistance plus ongoing patching, monitoring, logging, auditing, and regulatory compliance enforcement, enabling businesses to enjoy a comprehensive, fully managed hybrid cloud environment. Its introduction comes in conjunction with Palo Alto, Calif.-based HPE’s 2018 Global Partner Summit, which is now underway in Las Vegas.
According to HPE, the new system is suitable for businesses of any size, but likeliest to appeal to midsize companies large enough to have onsite infrastructure but small enough to benefit from outsourced IT management assistance. It’s scheduled to become commercially available just before the November 1st beginning of HPE’s 2019 fiscal year.
Users can choose between Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to power the public cloud part of the solution, and use the Microsoft Azure Stack private cloud infrastructure solution for the on-premises component. HPE’s OneSphere management system and software-defined technology provide administrative automation and orchestration.
At present, the recurring revenue-generating services portion of the solution is provided exclusively by Palo Alto, Calif.-based HPE itself through its Pointnext professional services unit rather than its channel partners. That could change in the future however, according to John Treadway, senior vice president of strategy at Cloud Technology Partners, a provider of cloud management and advisory services that HPE acquired last September.
“We understand the value of the channel to HPE and we want HPE’s channel partners to be able to participate in the opportunity that we’re addressing here,” he says. “We’re looking very hard at it, and it’s really important to us that the channel participate with us in this market.”
Partners can profit from the offering immediately, Treadway continues, by reselling Microsoft Azure Stack deployments. HPE also considers the solution a potentially attractive option for channel pros that specialize in application and business process optimization services and lack deep in-house public or private cloud infrastructure skills.
“Many of them are very, very capable in this area, but some of them are a little less able to bring to bear the operational capability across multiple cloud platforms at this level,” Treadway observes. “It’s pretty complicated.”
The new solution can also serve as the underlying foundation for pre-packaged solutions featuring partner-developed applications.
“What we actually think in the long run is going to be a really great opportunity is for potential channel partners to build solutions on top of this model that go beyond just the deployment and management of the infrastructure,” Treadway says.
The GreenLake Hybrid Cloud services package includes ongoing guidance on optimizing a deployment’s hosting and capacity options. Organizations without such cost optimization processes will spend an average of 40 percent more than necessary on cloud resources by 2020, according to Gartner.
“We will work really, really hard to help you optimize it from a price performance and capability perspective so that you’re not spending too much money in one place, where you could be saving money by moving it to another,” Treadway says.
HPE’s cost optimization recommendations draw on the vendor’s “minimum viable cloud methodology.” Originally developed for public cloud customers, it calculates the smallest set of resources customers need to meet their business requirements fully and reliably.
“I’m not going to build an aircraft carrier to take a sail around Boston Harbor when what I really need is a sailboat,” Treadway observes. “You may not need the most robust, most compliant environment in the world that might run a banking application if all you’re doing is running an information portal.”
The debut of HPE GreenLake Hybrid Cloud comes one day after the introduction of HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity for partners, a new offering designed to help channel pros sell on-premises products on a pay-per-use basis.
Consumption-based options for buying onsite infrastructure are increasingly in demand among businesses eager to pay for hardware through the same monthly installment payments they use to buy cloud-based software. As a result, both manufacturers like HPE and distributors such as Ingram Micro Inc. and Tech Data Corp. are steadily rolling out as-a-service procurement programs.
The 2018 HPE Global Partner Summit opened yesterday with an introductory set of general session presentations by recently-appointed president and CEO Antonio Neri and other top executives. It concludes on Wednesday.
