Optimizing Hybrid Cloud Operational Strategy using HPE GreenLake with Equinix Colocation

[Paul_Santilli]

Enterprises are adapting to changing market demands and rising consumer expectations for ubiquitous, ever-responsive digital experiences. Meeting these expectations requires processing distributed data at near-real-time speeds, encouraging enterprises to adopt a cloud-first strategy. In fact, cloud migration has become a must-have for achieving digital transformation. Public cloud in particular is considered the backbone of many business-centric applications, enabling complex ecosystems to connect and ultimately transform data into insights.

However, as customers realize the benefits of the public cloud, they also become aware of its limitations. Since most IT environments consist of both cloud-native and legacy assets, IT departments are under immense pressure to manage the competing needs of net-new and obsolete infrastructure. Justifying capital expenditure (CAPEX) to extend and modernize data centers and equipment alongside public cloud operational expenses (OPEX) adds to the problem. In this complex environment, customers are tasked with simultaneously reducing their overall data center footprints, modernizing any remaining data center assets and enjoying the benefits of cloud consumption.

Given these pressures, customers’ increasing preference for a hybrid cloud strategy can be seen, in part, as an evolution from complex decisions around which workloads belong in the public cloud; it has become clear that certain IT assets were not suited to storage in the public cloud for security, cost and data privacy reasons. In evaluating their hybrid yet the cloud-first approach to managing assets, enterprises are finding ways to consume IT under a consumption-based pricing model. These hybrid cloud strategies are forcing data center and digital infrastructure companies such as Equinix and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as HPE to pivot from traditional, transactional selling models to pay-per-use solutions such as HPE GreenLake with a colocation option.

Customers seek to eliminate data center requirements and gain increased space in off-premises clouds:

As enterprises recognize that certain workloads are inappropriate for public cloud, cloud-out and edge in solutions like HPE GreenLake with Equinix become appealing. HPE GreenLake with Equinix enables customers to more completely define their hybrid cloud operations strategy. This strategy can help customers gain additional space for their assets, move out of data center management and eliminate associated data center costs. Technology Business Research Inc. (TBR), a leading independent market, a competitive and strategic intelligence firm, believes enterprises are adopting a holistic infrastructure strategy that unifies on-premises and cloud-based assets. Moving up the stack, to the application or Software as a Service (SaaS) level, allows enterprises to focus on optimizing their application set, data, operations and overall business strategy. An outcomes-focused strategy such as the one provided by HPE and Equinix specifically enables enterprises to rapidly turn raw data into key insights that support customers’ larger operational goals.

Organizations are prioritizing a lower total cost of ownership within this hybrid cloud operating model, seeking the best way to manage their IT assets regardless of workloads spread across public cloud, private cloud, on-premises and colocation environments. Equinix and HPE help customers evaluate their individualized, strategic hybrid cloud road map, enabling evolution and transformation, as well as better cost management, regardless of an enterprise’s current cloud maturity. Whether enterprises are truly cloud-first in their approach or prefer a more conservative method that focuses on keeping high-security, high-value workloads on-premises, they are increasingly seeking as-a-service consumption models. HPE GreenLake with Equinix provides access to the foundational infrastructure needed to scale and achieve optimal performance, speed and flexibility. A cloud model with HPE and Equinix gives customers with on-premises workloads a significant advantage, as colocation enables them to modernize workloads and realize the benefits of a cloud experience with no up-front investment. Additionally, the solution allows customers to build infrastructure adjacent to the clouds and networks they need to create best-of-breed, hybrid multicloud architectures.

The combination of HPE and Equinix helps enterprises future-proof their IT investments by allowing them to build vendor-neutral architectures that:

• Remove data lock-in from an egress cost perspective.
• Comply with regulations around privacy through in-region data handling.
• Provide better performance and manageability with proximity to ecosystems and multiple clouds (AWS, Azure, Google and Oracle, among others).
• Enable secure and private access to their infrastructure with an optimized network design.
• Provide access to data marketplaces for enhancing enterprise AI models or monetizing corporate data sets.
• This can all be achieved in a modular fashion without requiring re-architecture or “lift and shift” on customers’ terms.

Read how Nokia leverages HPE GreenLake to lead the 5G revolution.

Stay tuned for more blogs on HPE GreenLake.

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Paul Santilli
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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