An intelligent edge can dramatically increase a business’s ability to understand and act upon relevant information, allowing it to create customer and employee experiences that set the organization apart from everyone else.
Edge is where data is generated. It can be a factory floor, an office building or a sports arena. If we look at the edge with a vertical lens, on one side we find the industrial- or operations-technology-focused edge, and on the other the enterprise- or information-technology-focused edge. Edge on the industrial side is comprised of factory floors, oil and gas rigs, power substations and such. On the enterprise side, it is comprised of corporate offices, retail locations and similar sites. And there’s a grey area in the middle which comprises other edge locations, such as hospitals, which straddle the two.
Irrespective of which end of the edge spectrum they’re considering, businesses want to leverage instrumentation happening at the edge to better understand what is happening there and to take actions which often fundamentally transform the way their business functions.
This has led to a race to make the edge more intelligent. There are three main reasons for this:
- An intelligent edge gathers business-relevant data in an effective manner.
- An intelligent edge can also directly participate in making sense of what that data means.
- And finally, an intelligent edge helps create the connections that allow the data to be shared securely and quickly across an organization for analysis and action.
So, now the question becomes, what do you need to make the edge more intelligent? While there are many answers to this question depending on which angle you view it from, here is my perspective on it.
To create a more intelligent edge, you need the following three components:
- You need IoT solutions: solutions that can leverage data gathered from ‘things’ on the edge to solve business problems.
- You need networks that can connect the IoT solutions to the rest of the organization in a secure and efficient way.
- And finally, once you have the IoT solutions and the networks in place, you need to take all this and create a business workplace environment that defines how your employees and customers engage and conduct business.
We see these as the three pillars of an intelligent edge. To help our customers achieve the vision of this intelligent edge, we at HPE have three organizations that work closely together as part of HPE’s IoT & Intelligent Edge Services function. These three organizations are:
1. The IoT Services Group: Focuses on helping clients build solutions spanning the edge, data center and the cloud, leveraging the instrumentation taking place at the edge
2. The Networking Services Group: Focuses on helping customers build a communications fabric that supports delivery of business outcomes.
3. The Digital Workplace Services Group: Focuses on helping clients build a hybrid digital workplace environment that creates differentiated experiences for employees and customers.
Together these three organizations are helping our customers transform how they conduct their businesses by making their edge more intelligent, connecting it to the rest of the organization so it can take advantage of this intelligence and, finally, by creating experiences in the workplace – for both employees and customers – that then become a source of strategic differentiation.
I am happy to announce today that all three of these organizations have been recognized by IDC as global leaders in each of their respective domains. IDC developed this report after speaking to several of our customers and conducting an extensive assessment of our strategy and capabilities. HPE, along with one other firm, is the only company that has a leadership role in all three of these Edge domains. This is a reaffirmation of the leadership role that I see the folks from these three organizations play every day in helping our customers envision the impossible and then achieve it with the finesse that comes only with years of experience.
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Read the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Network Consulting Services 2019 Vendor Assessment |
I am looking forward to partnering with you on the journey to create an intelligent edge for your organization.
Saadat Malik
Vice President, IoT and Intelligent Edge Services
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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SaadatMalik
As VP for IoT and Intelligent Edge Services for HPE Pointnext Services, Saadat Malik leads an organization focused on developing solutions and services for customers that are looking to transform their businesses by leveraging Networking, Digital Workplace and IoT capabilities.
