HPE Bets on Edge Computing

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) after pledging to invest $4 billion to develop intelligent edge computing technologies today announced HPE Edgeline, a family of converged systems optimized to run application workloads at the edge of an extended enterprise in real time.

Announced at the HPE Discover 2018 conference, the HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems will provide IT and operation teams with ruggedized compact systems configured with the latest generation of processors need to run applications at the network edge involving, for example, Internet of Things (IoT) projects.

“These systems are not based on a compromised core,” says Dr. Tom Bradicich, vice president and general manager for IoT and Converged Edge Systems for HPE.

HPE claims HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems represents the first platform to converge enterprise-class IT and operations technology spanning control systems, data acquisition, and industrial networks. Software vendors that have pledged to lend their support to the HPE Edgeline series include Citrix, Microsoft, PTC, SAP and SparkCognition, a provider of a platform designed to drive a variety of applications employing artificial intelligence (AI).

Modern IT is evolving into what Bradicich described as a tri-hybrid model spanning public clouds, local data centers and the network edge. Because of the latency issues there will be a need to run a wide variety of applications at the edge to be as close to the point where data is being created and consumed, says Bradicich. In effect, the forces of data gravity remain immutable because the cost of moving massive amounts of data across extended networks remains cost prohibitive. Most IT organizations despite all the hype surrounding cloud computing are well-aware of these issues.

At the same time, however, organizations will want to centralize the management of all those distributed systems spanning the edge the cloud, which in turn will drive demand for the management frameworks HPE has developed as well as networking infrastructure from Aruba Networks, an arm of HPE, says Bradicich.

HPE is far from the only IT infrastructure vendor looking to provide the platform on which application workloads running on the edge of the network. The investment dollars will also be hard to count. IT vendors are notorious for how they account for investments because research and development efforts can be shared across so many initiatives. But given the number of workloads that have moved into the cloud, it's clear that HPE is anxious to become more relevant as demand for computing resources outside the cloud are expected to rapidly increase.

Growth in the SD-WAN market is now accelerating. Learn about why this market will grow to billions of dollars in the next few years and which companies will benefit. Futuriom's premium SD-WAN Growth Outlook is available. Use "FOFU" code for a 10 percent discount.