HPE Discover 2019: Intelligent Products and Services Unveiled for a Complex World
As it strives to meet the demands of data-driven businesses, Hewlett Packard Enterprise unveiled a range of “intelligent” new products and services June 18, the first full day of its user conference, HPE Discover 2019, in Las Vegas. These included a new AI-driven storage platform and updates to its network management platform, Aruba Central.
The introduction of its new server platform, called HPE Primera, was the company’s biggest announcement of the day. Executives described it as a storage platform “designed for the intelligence era.” Available in August, Primera promises to all but eliminate the time IT teams spend managing storage, speed up the performance of mission-critical applications and will offer predictive analytics to help teams see issues before they become problems.
It’s all powered by InfoSight, the artificial intelligence component that HPE builds into its advanced server technology.
“When you learn from your environment, you can deliver a better experience, and that’s the model for HPE Primera,” said Milan Shetti, senior vice president and general manager of HPE storage unit. “We want to organize the complex and unpredictable workloads of the world using intelligence.”
HPE Primera Delivers Agility and Reliability
HPE said Primera would eliminate the need for businesses to compromise between reliability and the speed and agility they need to develop new applications and support existing ones. Shetti said machine-aided intelligence is key to managing modern infrastructure because workloads have become too sophisticated for people to manage on their own.
“It’s far too complex for human beings to go and figure out what’s happening with their workloads,” he said. “It’s almost impossible, really.”
Primera is simple to install, manage and upgrade, HPE said. And, like everything else HPE is announcing in Las Vegas, it’s available as a service through HPE GreenLake. Primera also offers a guarantee of 100 percent availability.
“HPE Primera is architected for high availability with multinode design, transparent business continuity with HPE Peer Persistence and data replication,” the company said in a statement.
Although Primera is not yet available, HPE customers using the InfoSight AI platform inside it said the technology has greatly improved their businesses’ ability to manage their storage reliably. Stefan Floyhar, senior manager of IT infrastructure at Ferrara Candy Company in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., for example, said his company’s previous storage solution was “a nightmare,” with frequent outages, regular maintenance required and few insights delivered.
“InfoSight has at least twice saved us from what would have been a pretty large outage for a company our size,” Floyhar said. “The predictive analytics have been crucial.”
MORE FROM BIZTECH: Digital transformation starts with the data center.
HPE Moves Forward on the Intelligent Edge
HPE also announced a number of innovations aimed at what it calls the “intelligent edge” — advanced technologies that help businesses store, manage and analyze data in places other than cloud-based and on-premises data centers, such as farms, retail branches, oil rigs at sea and even military battlefields.
Most important among these are updates to Aruba Central, HPE’s cloud-based network management platform, including new AI-driven network analytics capabilities; a new SD-WAN Orchestrator that makes it easier for IT teams to connect large numbers of branch locations; Aruba ClearPass Device Insight, which provides Internet of Things visibility and security via a single pane of glass; and network management workflow enhancements that simplify the provisioning of devices with a mobile app.
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