HPE CEO Antonio Neri: Reflecting on accomplishments and momentum in the face of adversity

As I reflect on the past two weeks, I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to applaud the accomplishments of our team here at HPE and celebrate the momentum of our company, even in the face of great adversity.

Over the past few months, hundreds of HPE team members worked to deliver our first-ever HPE Discover Virtual Experience, which launched last week with incredible results – a true technology showcase, with hundreds of sessions and demos, translated into 10 languages, featuring our company’s top experts, as well as leaders from the worlds of sports, journalism, technology and business. I am so tremendously proud of what our team accomplished in such a short period of time.

Of course, a virtual showcase was not our original plan. But owing to COVID-19, the team magnificently transformed what is typically our largest annual event in Las Vegas into an virtual experience, which will extend for several weeks as we do deeper dives into some of the areas customers tell us they need the most.

Most importantly, I believe our customers and partners walked away from last week’s event with a clear understanding of our progress to become an as-a-service company and our capabilities to deliver the cloud experience everywhere.

Just as HPE has been adapting to the impacts of COVID-19, we’ve also been helping our customers – thrust suddenly into a whole new paradigm of business disruption – to navigate this pandemic, as we weather this storm together.

The future everyone talked about before the pandemic is now here, ahead of schedule. Three years ago, we predicted the enterprise of the future would be edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven. Today, that is no longer a prediction, it is reality. And we know this edge-centric, cloud-enabled world will require the right technology, expertise, and financial flexibility to help organizations accelerate their transformations.

As I discussed in my keynote address, and as our daily interactions with customers confirm, we are now moving from the Information Era to a new Age of Insight that's driven by the next phase of digital transformation. The next decade must be about creating action from oceans of information to elevate the greater well-being of every human on this planet. It’s an era that reconfirms why we made a commitment last year to deliver everything as a service by 2022, furthering our strategy to be the edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company – with a platform that connects, protects, analyzes and acts on all data.

To make the next wave of digital transformation a reality, our first priority is to address the workloads that must be close to the data – whether at the edge or in data centers. Almost 10 years after public cloud emerged, more than 70% of apps and data are still outside the public cloud. They still lack agility due to data gravity, latency, and app entanglement. As a result, you have two divergent operating models – one in the cloud and one on-premises – while paying higher costs to maintain them both.

In the next wave of digital transformation, I believe we will shift from a cloud-first mandate, to a cloud everywhere mandate.

To accelerate this vision, we unveiled some powerful new ways we’re helping bring our customers into the Age of Insight.

• We introduced our next generation of cloud services through HPE GreenLake, which provides cloud services to customers in the environment of their choice – from edge to cloud – delivering an agile, lower-cost and consistent cloud experience everywhere for our customers. Unlike public cloud vendors, HPE GreenLake’s flexible as-a-service model allows customers to prioritize investments that are aligned to business needs. Now more than ever, HPE GreenLake is the cloud that comes to them.
  
  
• We also introduced our new software portfolio, HPE Ezmeral and its first two offerings: HPE Ezmeral Container Platform and HPE Ezmeral ML Ops. It’s a complete software portfolio – spanning container management, AI/ML and data analytics, cost control, IT automation and AI-driven operations, and security – that will help brands fuel data-driven transformation and will be made available as cloud services through HPE GreenLake.
  
  
• And, we announced five new return-to-work solutions that will help organizations accelerate business recovery and reopening plans, while enabling business continuity, in the wake of COVID-19. These solutions are a powerful example of how HPE technologies are helping customers make this transition safely while building a long-term workplace digitization strategy.

Speaking of COVID-19 recovery, I am in the midst of that myself, having tested positive for the coronavirus just over two weeks ago. Fortunately, I am doing well. I’ve completed my 14-day self-quarantine and have not had any symptoms for 10 days. My spirits have been bolstered by the many messages of support I’ve received from friends, family and colleagues around the globe.

Our world is mercurial, and it’s changing at an unprecedented pace. Digital transformation is now at a critical point for organizations of all sizes – from large enterprises to small businesses – and HPE is here to support our customers through this accelerated evolution with technologies and talent that are second to none.

The promise of technology lies in its potential for positive change. To map our galaxies. To prevent future pandemics. To heal our environment. As we begin to reimagine a new and better world, HPE is committed to helping us get there…together.