Highlights from HPEDiscover 2017 Madrid
Few weeks ago, I had the pleasure to participate at HPE Discover 2017 in Madrid. I’m really proud to be chosen in a influencers list composed by bloggers (some of them already seen in other IT events), and be called to participate in a “Coffee-Talk” show: an opportunity to meet important HPE people in a round table and ask/share experiences about upcoming products and features and real cases about HPE technologies.
Digital transformation and edge computing, with a redefinition of the new technologies were the most popular arguments: in that way HPE considers the cloud as one of the important technology enabler for data center, IoT and vertical applications. The integration is the main ingredient involved in a redefinition of the boundary between governance and performances which are the new IT challenges with the IoT ecosystem.
It’s really impressive how HPE displays his implementations, professionalities and facts near all the techonology pieces that are composing their offering: a demonstration of the ability to be a technology partner for companies that want to consolidate or evolve their business.
Focusing on IoT, is important enforce the link between IT and OT to realize a solid environment and building a new models for the data consumption: device technology should think more and more to be a natural extension of the edge computing, collecting data which must be analyzed and used for many purposes like interaction, predictions or be sources for further processes.
Computing engines, storage, devices and networks continues to be the elements that make the “physical layer” of the new IT, where the large amounts of data must be generated, transmitted and consumed more rapidly than traditional IT. In this way, into memory driven computing and software defined datacenters are at the centre of the new datacenters.
Focusing on the software side of the company, HPE is growing his portfolio: integrations, efficient resource management and virtualization are the key components for the cloud computing; in the same time the new trend of the expert people is focusing on integrating pieces of functionalities starting from the “sources” of new data like sensors and edge devices. In this case the needs to handle edge and private/public cloud is the must to stay aligned with the market… but HPE is doing more! While all the management layer should embrace all element that are composing the customer data center life-cycle, the as-a-service model adoption represent the overcoming of the his old frontier: an important step to make the IT, cloud and device utilization more cost affordable for old and new companies.
Let’s see some highlights…
Superdome Flex
During projects, It’s used to spend a lot of time thinking, choosing and design the storage for an infrastructure that is serving applications with near 0 downtime and very high performances; Capacity and IOPS are the two measures that determine the success (or not) of the project. But while the application performances and availability will sentence the correct design, the computing layer could be a good chance to play, moving the perspective into memory driven computing with HPE SuperDrome Flex.
HPE Superdrome Flex is a converged linear scale computing composed by 5u blocks, that enables the huge available resources (up to 48TB RAM and up to 32 processors) with a hardware resiliency that brings this infrastructure a good physical infrastructure element for SAP HANA and mission critical analytics systems.
For further information check the official page here: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/product-catalog/servers/superdome-flex/pip.hpe-superdome-flex-server.1010323140.html
IOT at the edge!
In the IoT ecosystem, data sources are very critical. They must be caught all and analyzed to take actions and filter what is relevant to be the source for the next step. Talking more about transmission, the latency play a central role in the IoT manufacturing implementation: sensors are implemented many pieces of production chain like actuators, pumps, valves, motors, safety detectors etc, and they must react in time!
Powering the edges means reflects the same key features seen in the cloud, bringing the same quality/cost aligned with the business needs: near a pay as-you-go and reduced time to feature, the thing that companies are looking for is the reduction of the risks acquiring technologies and expertise involved to meet the predicted benefit of this digital transformation. Not all companies have clear design for what is going on their business, and where is the real break-even after in this acquisition; in some case IoT represent a bet, in that case the professional supports and the integrations could be the winning card!
Talking about the integration with vertical software and analytics, what is the best way to consume these data? Is the edge computing “eating” the cloud?
I think no! In the IoT ecosystem there are plenty ways to implements and analyze the data; thinking about the manufacturing sector, the critical part of the implementation is represented by the latency. But when it’s time to analyze data or build services that are available for the consumers, the cloud still be the best choice for its worldwide availability. Moving the eye to smart-cities the use of the cloud is really extensive and there are a lot of opportunities to bring the digital transformation handy for the citizens using the cloud technologies.
However, this means that the cloud must be transparent! People doesn’t want to know how to use, they must feel as a natural extension of their life without the needs to have instructions or special support by technicians. And this is the play
Storage
During my last meeting with Nimble (TechFieldExtra VMworld Europe 2016) and HPE Nimble (CloudFieldDay 2 in Palo Alto (CA)), I knew Infosight (https://www.nimblestorage.com/technology-products/infosight/), an analytic tool that now seems more and more focused in the whole infrastructure systems. In this field HPE wants to provide the right tool to cut the application infrastructure from the top and take actions to prevent bottle-necks with the respect of performance and availability. In fact, starting with Nimble experience, the announcement of the availability for 3PAR, extends the offer of this tool into large enterprise environment.
Another element that deserve an attention by the cloud architect, specialist and consultant is Nimble Cloud Volumes: the solution already seen during CloudFieldDay 2, is an interesting way to separate and replicate data across cloud providers. Check my post here: https://blog.linoproject.net/cloud-field-day2-hacking-the-cloud-with-hpe-nimble-cloud-volumes/
HPE success stories (Texmark and Dreamworks)
Talking about technology from highest perspective, is used to ask to a big vendors what’s your success story. In this case HPE have done more: during coffee-talk they invited two companies to present how they approached to digital transformation using HPE solutions.
Texmark Chemicals, a company situated in Texas, represent one of the most important IoT implementation for automation and reaction during the industrial processes. The time to react when the system requires action is the challenge that literally facing the whole implementation. Edge computing and on-premise implementations are the used element to reach the concept of reaction by predictions. (https://www.hpe.com/us/en/customer-case-studies/texmark-iot.html)
The opportunity to meet Kate Swanborg, Technology Communication at Dreamworks, was one of the best ever moment to talk about digital transformation in a field in continuous transformation: a place where change and improvements are directly connected to the success of their movies.
Digital transformation is the key for every creation and the software defined paradigm is the mandatory thing to consider to get the maximum rendering possible without wasting money and resources between every change. (https://www.hpe.com/us/en/customer-case-studies/dreamworks.html)
The Coffee talk show!
The “secret” ingredient of this new format is to create a discussion without filters with blogger, influencers where the active participation is the main thing to really disclose what’s inside HPE innovation and what are the sentiments in the real world. And also, this could be a great opportunity for folks outside the room to make questions during the show.
The presence of Jeffrey Powers (Geekazine) and Alastair Cooke (vBrownbag) in this show represents another important (and fun) element: their experience making community IT events interesting every day is foundamental for catching the audience in the cyber-space: a lot of “geeks” of the planet (me included) are grown with their contents.
Finally I want to say thanks to Becca Taylor, Laura Mackey and Calvin Zito for let me into this new community and I hope to meet them and the other community members next year!