Seeking to accelerate adoption of flash-based storage systems while staving off competition from hosted storage alternatives, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched a new initiative designed to help businesses deploy all-flash storage solutions on premises for a fraction of the cost of public cloud platforms from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and others.
Called HPE 3PAR Flash Now and introduced on the eve of HPE’s Discover partner event in London, England, which begins tomorrow, the new offering makes onsite implementations of HPE’s 3PAR StoreServ Storage platform available for as little as $0.03 per usable gigabyte per month. That’s dramatically less than what public cloud storage providers typically charge, according to Palo Alto, Calif.-based HPE, and positions users to combine the speed, availability, security, and control of locally-installed storage with the convenience and agility of public cloud consumption models.
The 3PAR StoreServ Storage platform is designed for use in midsize environments and up.
“Capitalizing on digital disruption requires that customers be able to flexibly consume new technologies,” said Bill Philbin, vice president and general manager for storage at HPE, in a press statement. “Helping customers benefit from both technology and consumption flexibility is at the heart of HPE’s innovation agenda.”
Backed by a 99.9999 percent availability guarantee, HPE 3PAR Flash Now includes flash-optimized networking and data protection components, as well as access to free automated data migration tools and fee-based custom migration services. Subscribers can defer payments until their new all-flash array is up and running and apply asset trade-in values to their purchases. They also receive upgrade rights to next-generation technologies such as storage class memory and NVMe.
In connection with today’s all-flash storage launch, HPE also unveiled an update to its StoreFabric 32Gb (Gen 6) Fibre Channel portfolio, which utilizes HPE Smart SAN technology to enable fully automated orchestration directly from HPE 3PAR StoreServ flash storage arrays. According to HPE, that feature can slash provisioning times by 90 percent.
To help all-flash storage users archive data cost effectively, meanwhile, HPE also announced a new reseller relationship with Spectra Logic Corp., of Boulder, Colo., today. That agreement is designed to make tape-based solutions for long-term storage available to 3PAR StoreServ Storage users for under $0.01 per gigabyte.
The HPE 3PAR Flash Now initiative arrives as adoption of public cloud storage is growing rapidly. Global outlays on cloud-based storage solutions will rise from $18.87 billion in 2015 to as much as $67 billion by 2022, according to a report published by Research and Markets in July.
Sales of all-flash storage arrays are climbing swiftly as well, however, and were up 94.5 percent on a year over year basis in analyst IDC’s most recent quarterly worldwide storage spending report.
