HPE’s GreenLake Cloud Service Goes Private

(Bakhtiar-Zein/Shutterstock)

The last few years have seen a mass exodus to the public cloud, but many companies are bringing back computing resources internally for reasons that include data security and government regulations.

HPE at the Discover trade show announced a version of its GreenLake service that can be installed in private infrastructure or in data centers run by hosting services. HPE’s fully managed service, called GreenLake Private Cloud Enterprise, includes the bare metal hardware, software, and services.

HPE’s vision of a private cloud is a modern spin on old-school data centers, but with a larger footprint that includes edge devices – which are gathering data or running artificial intelligence — feeding data into the main computing infrastructure. The HPE private cloud also has the attributes found in public cloud, which includes analytics, orchestration, metrics and cost controls.

The private cloud offering is a pay-as-you-go model. The package includes appliances, a virtualized environment, the performance metrics, and a modular environment in which applications and computing blocks can be easily added. HPE says that IT leaders in companies don’t have to worry about managing the private cloud, which will be taken over by HPE.

“It’s both for cloud native containers as well as legacy workloads like … virtual machines, for example. We provide an SLA-based approach too, so from a customer perspective, they let HPE take the risk of managing it, providing them an uptime,” said Vishal Lall, senior vice president and general manager of GreenLake cloud services solutions, in a press briefing.

Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure have their own services in the cloud that provide coding tools, analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities. HPE wants to provide a similar experience to companies interested in keeping computing in-house with tools typically found on public cloud services.

Many companies are looking at private clouds to keep data inhouse. For example, hospitals and healthcare organizations want to run medical record software in private settings with the cloud experience, Lall said.

“One MRI is 30GB of memory and very private information,” Lall said, adding “if given the choice, everybody wants the cloud experience. They want to modernize that speed and agility.”

There are also companies that require data to be stored on servers in the country, and private cloud infrastructure is needed as public cloud providers like Google or Amazon may not have servers in the country. In other cases, logistics companies may not want data to cycle through public clouds as they need the data to remain internal, Lall said.

HPE is working with software companies like Citrix, Microsoft and SAP for software on GreenLake private clouds. The company is also partnering with Digital Realty and Equinix, which provide bare-metal infrastructure and hosting services.

The HPE GreenLake private cloud comprises multiple layers. One layer includes the computing resources such as data centers and edge devices and cloud services. Modular blocks can be easily added via standard APIs. HPE provides management and pay-as-you-go services, and CIOs can charge back the departments based on usage.

A middleware layer — which HPE calls a “data fabric” — has tools that can store, analyze and manage data, which can then be shared or streamed. This layer also includes tools to govern and secure the data, and delivery mechanisms to other cloud services. It also includes SQL database and multi-cloud delivery systems so the private cloud can be linked to other cloud services.

The idea behind a data fabric is to create a single data source for information stored in different systems, Lall said. For example, a customer may use data stored in sources that include AWS, a Unix system, and an x86 system, and the data fabric provides a virtualization layer to access data across different repositories. The goal is to help customers create a more structured data environment for companies to analyze and make better business decisions.

HPE offers GreenLake cloud services for applications, such as AI and analytics, and also for verticals that include telecommunications.

Related Items:

HPE Relaunches MapR Tech as Data Fabric Offering

HPE Expands Ezmeral Portfolio, Ecosystem

HPE: The Everything-as-a-Service Company