Leverage cloud services in part or in full with HPE GreenLake and HPE NonStop

[ComputeExperts]

HPE NonStop is taking great strides in its integration with HPE GreenLake with multiple waves of features and capabilities planned. Explore what’s happening and what it means for our NonStop customers.

For anyone who has ever ventured into the surf rolling onto a beach, the presence of waves as they fade on the sand is obvious. They just come at you one wave after the other. But avid surfers know that waves typically come ashore in sets — sets tied to the ever-changing winds.

So it is technology in general. The winds of change are always present and with each new gust, the waves of technology move forward. It’s certainly true for HPE and HPE NonStop. There are times when external forces combined with the company’s overall direction determine the course of NonStop. When these winds sweep across the entire company, it affects the course of NonStop.

Winds of change get a push

In June 2019, at the annual HPE Discover event, Antonio Neri first unveiled HPE’s pursuit of everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) where the entire HPE product portfolios would evolve such that customers could choose future products solely on the basis of XaaS — not as a replacement of traditional systems, but rather complementing mainstays.

Yes, you can continue to rely on HPE to deliver new products dockside, as and when you need them, but now you have the option of acquiring the latest products as a service. Our customers can also choose to do both if that better meets their business demands. As the most recent HPE GreenLake campaign highlighted:

There's no need to choose between keeping your IT where it is or moving it all to the cloud. With HPE GreenLake you can do both and have the cloud come to you! Literally, you can stay AND go at the same time. 

As part of this announcement Antonio made it clear that delivering the HPE product portfolio on the basis of XaaS will be a challenge and this is where HPE GreenLake takes center stage. HPE is aggressively pursuing a transformation in the economics of product purchases and that shift playing a significant role in customers’ digital transformation.

The message is clear. HPE’s purchasing solution is GreenLake.

Evolution of HPE GreenLake

Initially, HPE GreenLake was offered through HPE partners, but with Antonio’s HPE Discover 2021 announcement, the platform is being expanded to include robust edge as well as infrastructure offerings.

The goal of GreenLake is not to provide an alternate cloud offering, but rather to bring the cloud experience directly to HPE customers. Another emphasis is that with GreenLake, even traditional on-prem deployments could be financed on the basis of pay-per-use resulting in a better alignment between costs and business needs.  

As Antonio put it at HPE’s 2021 annual meeting: “Customers are looking for the agility and simplicity of the cloud, but need the flexibility and control of a hybrid business model – and increasingly want to consume IT as-a-service where we have a unique and differentiated value proposition. This is why I remain more committed than ever to our edge-to-cloud platform as-a-service vision that addresses these evolving customer needs - and positions us to deliver long-term sustainable, profitable growth for our shareholders.”

Coming at a time when we’re two years into the company’s stated three-year GreenLake program, we’re encouraged to see an upward trend in positive reviews. It has become a matter of record that we have understood the needs of today’s enterprises and of how we are catering to all three marketplaces — traditional, hybrid on-prem with cloud and multi-cloud deployments. Other vendors are being forced into playing catch up.

In a March 16, 2021 vendor rating of HPE by Gartner, there was no ambiguity as Gartner rewarded us with an overall rating of “Positive.” 

Winds at the back of HPE NonStop

For the HPE NonStop development team it has become apparent that NonStop customers were concerned about access to the skillsets and in-depth experience required to run today’s IT solutions, particularly those of a homogeneous nature. “Our IT estate is complicated, spanning traditional data center, hybrid cloud and edge. We need insights, tools and skills to manage our IT estate,” was a common, indeed consistent, response that we heard from our NonStop user community.

“The next wave of digital transformation will be fueled by Apps and Data everywhere.” — David Lambert, HPE GreenLake Cloud Services, NonStop Technical Boot Camp Oct. 5, 2021

The value of cloud service providers’ elasticity of provisioning has been widely known even among the staunchest of NonStop users and yet, tapping into cloud service offering was viewed as high-risk. And with HPE GreenLake becoming the center point of HPE’s edge-to-cloud strategy and go-to-market choice, together with the benefits of cloud economics that it offers, it was only a matter of time that the NonStop team also looked for meaningful integrations.

How GreenLake and NonStop intersect

How will NonStop users benefit from GreenLake’s capabilities? It may bring the cloud to you but how will it work? You’ll follow the routine of choosing NonStop, ordering it through normal channels, flag the order as being the GreenLake option and then install NonStop with assistance from NonStop team members.

What will be different is the presence of GreenLake Central, an external server that collects metrics from NonStop systems whereby monthly pricing can be determined. GreenLake Central provides an intuitive, self-service, point-and-click portal and management console and is the very nerve center of all things related to GreenLake.

However, projecting future HPE GreenLake capabilities including access to the many GreenLake services such as analytics and management tools will be forthcoming over time — the waves of new functionality that will continue to enhance the capabilities afforded all NonStop customers under GreenLake.

In consultation with the GreenLake team, the NonStop product portfolio will be recording actual usage of systems and associated storage and networking resources, operating system and middleware usage and applications. This is achieved through accessing an API provided by the NonStop team that is not only used internally but has been published in order for all applications to use, even those coming from the NonStop partner community.  

When a set of waves appears on the horizon, surfers know the first one is simply a signal — an indication of what’s to come. Tumbling beneath their surfboards, experienced surfers will continue to watch for that all important high-energy cresting wave that will propel them to their destination.

When it comes to those waves, our NonStop team has already begun taking steps towards closer partnering with GreenLake team. We’ve announced support of metric gathering related to GreenLake service charges as well as providing an API to access those metrics.

Putting the NonStop vendor community on the same footing as our own development teams is a clear demonstration of our willingness to embrace the NonStop ecosystem at large. There are many more waves to come as metrics become finer grained, with the possibility of supporting consumption based on database accesses or even transactions processed.

Together, NonStop and GreenLake provide you with new options that can better address your critical concerns over complexity as you embrace the world of hybrid IT. There are still many more waves appearing on the horizon driven by the winds of change capable of propelling every NonStop user forward. Remaining competitive with the ability to address new business opportunities remains the goal of enterprises today and our NonStop and GreenLake teams working together will make this possible.

Please visit us for more information on the HPE NonStop family of systems. 

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Meet Compute Experts blogger Karen Copeland, Manager, Worldwide HPE NonStop Product Management

Karen has worked in various roles at different management levels within the HPE NonStop business, with leadership positions for Software Engineering IT functions, configuration management functions, release functions, and process improvement. She has led application development teams creating business applications running on NonStop systems that still support the NonStop business today.

Compute Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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