HPE and VMware Partner to Deliver Connected Hybrid Cloud Strategy

60% of businesses are currently looking to repatriate their systems onto on-prem networks, despite the ongoing growth in spending on public cloud systems. And, as of 2023, only 14% of businesses are all-in on the public cloud.²

The reasons for this are several: most significantly, businesses want greater control, data sovereignty, and portability when it comes to their data storage and management systems. 

And, of course, cost also plays a big part in this shift towards on-prem systems. As global economic conditions become increasingly challenging and IT budgets continue to tighten, businesses are looking for ways to save both in the short and long term.

The next phase of the HPE and VMware partnership includes delivering a new hybrid cloud strategy that aims to offer the cost-saving and performance benefits of on-prem networks alongside the visibility and portability of the cloud.

In this article, we’ll outline how this partnership developed and what it could mean for your business.

Suggested reading: Read our recent interview with the HPE Cloud and Data Partner Lead to learn more about HPE’s current innovation: ‘Five questions on Data and Cloud with Joe Pemberton’.

The HPE and VMware partnership: a connected hybrid multicloud

Together, HPE and VMware have a joint ecosystem of over 200,000 customers, as well as over 100,000 global partners. Their most recent collaboration was announced in 2022, to be released for public availability in 2023.³

The partnership allows clients to optimise their VMware workloads by running them on HPE infrastructure. Commenting on the partnership, HPE CEO Antonio Neri said:

‘Together, HPE and VMware will give organizations greater choice and flexibility with a fully integrated hybrid cloud offering designed to accelerate innovation and data first modernization’.³

Meanwhile, VMware CTO Dave McGraw said that, with the new connections between HPE GreenLake and VMware Cloud Foundation, ‘…we can offer customers a performant, secure and economical solution on-premises’.

What’s the goal of the partnership?

At its core, the HPE and VMware partnership is designed to enable a hybrid cloud strategy that gives IT leaders greater control and flexibility than a purely on-prem or cloud-based solution could. Consider the following:

• On-prem: With on-prem legacy systems, over 90% of businesses wait more than a month for new capacity — and 80% admit that their provisioning is poor. Plus, data is often siloed between servers, making compliance incredibly difficult.

• Multicloud systems: Complex cloud networks are expensive to maintain, cause data ownership issues, and can lead to vendor lock-in. Businesses want the same level of control, but with on-prem servers.

And this is where hybrid cloud services come in. With HPE infrastructure and VMware Cloud, businesses can continue using the cloud systems they have become used to, while retaining a firm base in on-prem storage and management.

Services and features

VMware Cloud and HPE GreenLake are at the forefront of this partnership. However, it extends to a range of HPE and VMware solutions:

Service	Features
HPE Hybrid Cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation	VMware Cloud Foundation is run on HPE ProLiant and HPE Synergy platforms for a streamlined hybrid cloud. Businesses can run enterprise applications on both public and private clouds, for maximum flexibility and control. As with many of these solutions, it can also be procured through HPE GreenLake for VMware.
Integrated HPE vSAN ReadyNodes	When run on HPE servers, VMware’s vSAN ReadyNodes becomes a hyperconverged infrastructure that can reduce storage costs by approximately 50%. vSAN can help you achieve greater consolidation ratios alongside more consistent performance.
HPE GreenLake with VMware	As part of their drive towards ‘as-a-service’ models, VMware solutions are now available on the consumption-based procurement platform, HPE GreenLake. This enables businesses to eliminate overprovisioning costs and pay only for the services they use.
Hybrid Workplace Solutions	Suitable for businesses operating with hybrid or work-from-home staff. This VDI technology helps businesses to unify, secure, and manage data spread across different networks.
HPE ProLiant with vSphere DSE	This virtualised architecture, built on the foundation of HPE ProLiant, prioritises security and performance above all else. Zerto Trust technology protects data from the silicon level up. Perfect for running demanding next-gen applications or heterogeneous infrastructure.
AI-Ready Enterprise Platform	HPE ProLiant servers meet NVIDIA and VMware’s AI-Ready Enterprise Platform. The system is designed to speed up AI application development while unifying AI and business workloads in a single place for more effective data use.

Now that we’ve covered some of the top services included as part of the partnership, here are a few of the benefits these could bring to your IT operations:

Simpler IT management

With data volumes expanding and IT systems becoming increasingly siloed between the cloud and on-prem systems, IT leaders need simple data storage management solutions.

And while on-prem systems are typically the easiest to manage, they don’t have the scalability or portability needed for modern IT operations. 

The hybrid cloud solution presented by HPE and VMware delivers:

• Deployment flexibility: Users can choose between on-prem infrastructure or an externally managed service, and can access support with a single call number across both businesses.

• Optimised portability: The VMware Tanzu container platform allows inter-cloud portability that is persona-based and outcome-focused.

• Preconfigured infrastructure: All infrastructure comes with pre-validated configurations and built-in lifecycle automation for simpler management.

• Intelligent insights: Choose the best location for your workloads based on economics, performance, governance, and security with the tools built into HPE Greenlake Cloud Console and VMWare Aria.

VMware is like a good removal company: it helps you pick up all your data and move it to a new location — and can even help you pack and unpack at either end. Meanwhile, HPE gives you a secure and efficient new home for your data..

Optimised performance and faster deployment

Cloud-based systems generally provide a strong enough level of performance for standard IT workloads. But for those wanting to run data-intensive applications, a low-latency, high-performance on-prem system is generally more suitable.

Speaking at Discover 2022, Antonio Neri acknowledges this sharp divide between on-prem and the cloud:

‘I’m often asked by customers, “what workloads should be moved to the cloud, and what should stay on premises?” I tell them, that’s the wrong question. We think the better question is, “How do I bring a consistent cloud operating model across all my workloads and data?”’.

Having VMware workloads running on HPE infrastructure lets you achieve this consistent operating model. HPE ProLiant runs NVIDIA-Certified Systems^TM for accelerated processing and analytics — while data is easily accessible on the VMware vSphere virtualisation platform.

This efficiency only increases when services are procured and accessed through the consumption-based HPE GreenLake platform, with as-a-service IT able to speed up the time-to-value and cut digital project deployment times by 75%.⁵ 

Pro tip: Read our article, ‘HPE GreenLake Explained: Features, Use Cases and FAQs’, to learn more about the GreenLake procurement platform.

Streamlined compliance and governance

It’s essential to have full oversight of your IT systems to avoid potential financial penalties, especially considering today’s ever-changing governance and policy requirements. But multicloud strategies have made compliance, security, and data governance vastly more complex.

HPE and VMware’s converged physical and virtual environments make data management and ownership easier by providing IT managers with the visibility they need to prevent costly compliance errors. 

Workloads can additionally be protected with VMware Carbon Black Cloud^TM and VMware Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) capabilities.

Consumption-based provisioning

Traditionally, IT managers had to make the difficult decision of choosing between high costs (overprovisioning), or limited capacity (underprovisioning). It’s estimated that approximately 40-50% of organisational server capacity is wasted due to overprovisioning.⁵ 

With VMware and HPE’s recent partnership, all IT infrastructure and cloud-based data storage can be acquired on an ‘as-a-service’ basis via HPE GreenLake. This means that users can:

• Scale rapidly according to demand
• Reduce upfront capital acquisition costs
• And pay only for the capacity they actually use

Consumption-based provisioning is, according to Cloud and Data Partner Lead Joe Pemberton, also beneficial from a practical standpoint:

‘From a power and cooling cost perspective as well, this kind of pricing structure is perfect. Customers don’t have to power and keep extra disks or servers online that aren’t being used […] with the costs now as they are, it’s a huge benefit to be able to reduce that bill for power and cooling’.

Suggested reading: For more insights, check out our interview with the UK Cloud and Data Partner Lead at HPE: Five questions on Data and Cloud with Joe Pemberton 

Configuring your VMware/HPE solution

The VMware and HPE collaboration brings IT teams lots of benefits, helping to resource delivery onsite with extensive workload portability, standardisation, observability, cost control and predictability across the multi-cloud.

However, the collaboration also raises lots of questions regarding system configuration and procurement. When selecting your new system, make sure you consider the following:

• How much storage do you need/currently consume?
• How predictable is your data growth?
• How many VMs do you run?
• What is your RAM utilisation?
• And what are your technical priorities? For example, is improving cyber security, speed, accessibility, or control most important to you?

Keeping these questions top of mind will help you better identify your ideal solution. 

However, that’s not to say that procuring and implementing new software is a straightforward process. It can be costly, time-consuming, and complex, if the migration is not managed properly.

Pro tip: Working with an IT provider can help make this process easier — consider working with a trusted data storage management or security partner to build the best-fit system for your business.

Simplify your HPE and VMware procurement with Nexstor

A hybrid cloud approach is essential to overcoming big data challenges and connecting your siloed data. 

According to Vanson Bourne research, 97% of ‘cloud-smart’ organisations say their approach to multi-cloud has improved their revenue growth, while 96% say it has improved their profitability. Reducing costs doesn’t have to mean running away from cloud networks; rather, it’s about rethinking them and embracing a hybrid cloud operating model.

To truly get the most out of your hybrid or multicloud solution, you need to ensure it is selected and configured correctly. This is where Nexstor can help. 

We are a trusted IT services provider and HPE partner, delivering smart cloud solutions to businesses around the UK. We have extensive experience configuring, installing, and managing complex IT systems, and can help you find the best solution for your business.

As HPE GreenLake specialists, we can implement your chosen solution with or without VMware Cloud.

Want to learn more? Try our free quote calculator to configure and build your custom solution today.

_{1 HPE and VMware collaborate to deliver GreenLake for VMware Cloud Foundation – SiliconANGLE} 

_{2 Public cloud computing market size 2023 | Statista} 

_{3 HPE and VMware advance partnership to drive digital transformation with integrated hybrid cloud experience} 

_{4 HPE and VMware collaborate to deliver GreenLake for VMware Cloud Foundation – SiliconANGLE}

_{5 451 Research, 2019.}

_{6 Takeaways from CEO Antonio Neri at HPE Discover 2022}

_{7 VMware and HPE: Driving hybrid cloud digital transformation | Technology Magazine}