Cloud

HPE Discover 2021: CEO Antonio Neri Talks Purpose and Innovation at Virtual Event

Neri noted a shift away from pandemic survival mode and toward digital transformation accompanied by equity and inclusion.

Joe Kuehne

Joe Kuehne is an Associate Editorial Director at BizTech magazine.

The business consequences and technology decisions brought on by the pandemic continue to be felt by organizations and their employees around the world. In his keynote address, HPE CEO Antonio Neri acknowledged that society has been tested and has made progress, but he said there is much work yet to be done.

“We are beginning to shift our attention away from the immediate demands brought by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Neri said. “instead, we are looking more holistically toward building a more digitally enabled, inclusive world at this pivotal moment.”

Neri said HPE’s purpose is to advance the way people live and work. “We have a mandate to imagine new digital transformation strategies that support [environmental, social and governance] goals, leading to better business outcomes and societal impact,” he said. “We will never waver from our commitment as a force for good and a strategic partner for our customers undergoing digital transformation journeys around the world.”

In his keynote, Neri followed up on the theme of his 2020 address, calling the current technology climate “the age of insight,” which he said is driving a new wave of data-driven business transformation. He noted the rise of data all around us and said that cloud architectures can provide speed and agility to an organization’s most critical data-driven workflows.

HPE Expands the Cloud Services Provided by HPE GreenLake

While migration to the cloud accelerated during the pandemic, the trend had started to take root years before. Neri noted that the past decade was all about the cloud-first mandate. “Looking ahead,” he said, “the next decade will be focused on using data everywhere across your distributed enterprise cloud.”

In a June 22 press release, HPE announced advancements in the services offered by its GreenLake cloud platform. “Organizations today know that to succeed in their industries, they must pursue a cloud everywhere mandate, which enables them to collect, analyze, and act on data, wherever it resides,” Neri said in the press release.

“The HPE GreenLake edge to cloud platform empowers organizations to harness the power of all their data, regardless of location, and today’s announcements further extend HPE’s leadership in this hybrid cloud market. From silicon, software, and security, to workloads that organizations rely on to run their businesses, HPE continues to extend the reach of the HPE GreenLake cloud platform, to help customers accelerate digital transformation and generate tremendous business outcomes.”

Project Aurora Adds Cloud-Native Security Services to GreenLake

In addition to the other services HPE announced, Neri offered a preview of Project Aurora, the security element the company is introducing as a part of HPE GreenLake.

“In an edge-to-cloud world, your risks increase exponentially,” Neri said. “The last essential ingredient in a hybrid model is intrinsic security built in at every level. In the cloud-native world, identity based zero-trust security is the gold standard. Project Aurora brings zero trust to HPE’s edge-to-cloud architecture. It will deliver true cloud-native, zero-trust security that can be deployed anywhere.”

Neri said that it normally takes 28 days for an enterprise security team to identify a breach. “Project Aurora will reduce that to seconds. We are building this technology to identify zero-day attacks and advanced persistent threats and avoid data loss, malicious encryption or corruption of your valuable data and intellectual property.”

The offering isn’t designed to replace an organization’s security investments. Instead, it is meant to fortify them and make everything more secure. Neri announced that by the end of 2021, “Project Aurora will expand to HPE GreenLake Lighthouse, GreenLake cloud services and HPE Ezmeral software to provide a platform-agnostic way to define and enforce zero-trust security policies from edge to cloud.”

Data Emerges as an Asset and a Tool for Change

“Data is the new currency that powers the digital economy,” Neri said, calling data our most valuable asset.

“However, it is no longer about simply capturing data. It is about how fast we can extract value from it,” he continued. “The future belongs to the fast, and those who can act on the data the fastest will win.”

Neri spoke about leveraging such plentiful data to promote inclusion. In this “age of insight,” he said, “Data is acted upon close to the moment of creation to drive action. Understand that as we level the playing field, more people have the opportunity to train, advance and participate in the data-driven digital economy. More voices mean more equitable innovation.”

“This is all possible now because in the past 10 years we have seen a profound change in the amount of data we can collect and analyze, as well as a change in the economics of technology,” Neri said.

“I believe every business is a technology company. It is a requirement to participate in a turbocharged digital economy, and the pace of change we see in the market today is truly remarkable,” Neri said. However, he went on to say that the coming decade must be one of shared success. “It is our mandate to ensure that digital transformation not only improves businesses but improves society as a whole to drive a more inclusive and sustainable world.”

To keep up with our coverage of HPE Discover 2021, bookmark this page, follow us on Twitter at @BizTechMagazine or the official conference Twitter account, @HPE_Discover, and join the conversation using the hashtag #HPEDiscover.

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