Listening and connecting: How HPE and PwC deliver ...

EIC_Alliances · ‎01-20-2016

By Drew Denkhaus

Talk about a great place to learn and explore. During my trip to HPE Discover London back in December, there were many messages and conversations on how business today is driving a new style of IT- one that blends the competing needs of digital and legacy technologies. I heard from a number of customers that their business needs require IT to integrate their existing environments with infrastructure cloud services from external providers. And that can be a major challenge.

Co-existing but not working together
Customers elaborated on the fact existing hardware, software, and resources were not able to meet business demands for new capabilities. Coupled with periodic demands from data spikes, this inability required purchases of additional hardware and software resources. However, to compound the problem, many of these purchases sat idle during non-spiked periods and affected budget predictions. The customers I talked with felt private cloud solutions were certainly more flexible and secure for on-premise data requirements. Excellent. One challenge met. But then came the additional challenge of finding ways of integrating and migrating with public cloud offerings to create an ideal hybrid environment.

This challenge of creating a seamless environment was reiterated when I spoke with some Enterprise organization representatives during a coffee break. They explained that their large application portfolios were causing daily challenges and they needed to determine their hybrid cloud infrastructure requirements sooner rather than later. Their greatest hurdle was determining which solution best suited their end goal of a multi-cloud environment while supporting their current traditional workloads. This duality was a common topic among attendees as nearly all are developing new applications or attempting to move existing traditional applications into a cloud environment.

HPE and PwC make it work
So in just a day or so, I had learned a lot about the challenges facing our customers. But what about solutions? Well, I found those in abundance as well.

I was especially impressed by a session titled “PwC shares market insights on hybrid infrastructure, the new IT frontier” presented by PwC UK Infrastructure Director, Mark McArdle. PwC is an HPE Strategic Alliance partner with recognized and respected expertise in creating effective plans to implement IT transformation and make it work to deliver the results the enterprise needs. Mark provided excellent insights on the convergence of IT skills, dynamic operating models and flexible governance - all critical elements on the roadmap to hybrid infrastructure.

Then, while I was walking around the HPE Discover Transformation Zone, I had conversations with a team of Data Center Architects. They explained they are being tasked with designing environments that will support a mix of workloads to run in public and hybrid environments. And while not every application will move to the cloud, they felt many of the application deployments will be hybrid in nature. The HPE Discover Transformation Zone highlighted the fact components and solutions for achieving a unique vision and strategy are actually available and being delivered today.

With the advent of high speed network connectivity and the ability to deliver traditionally complex services on demand, business is moving to the cloud at a rapid pace in order to differentiate and compete.

So the conclusion is pretty clear: The challenges facing today’s enterprises and their IT operations are great, but solutions to respond to those challenges are now readily available. Even more important, the reward from all of this for IT is the opportunity to play a pivotal role in the strategic business agenda.

The strategic partnership between Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has resulted in a number of proven solutions that can directly contribute to the success of our customers on the road to the hybrid cloud. Check out either of these web sites to learn more: