AI in the enterprise: How servers, storage, and networking are getting smarter

Artificial intelligence (AI) is working its way into nearly every technology to make it more efficient, intuitive, and time-saving for users. As-a-service offerings continue to grow as more organizations look to trade capital expenditures for operational expenditures.

Both of these trends fueled major advances at HPE Discover 2019, where HPE extended both Infosight and its Greenlake consumption model from popular products to its entire portfolio.

Each of the announcements pushed these trends in interesting directions that will free up resources and budget for enterprises, and that’s just the beginning. Here’s a look at how AI and consumption models are working their way further into servers, storage, and networking.

AI frees up IT’s time as it takes care of low-level support issues

This year AI went from concept to reality at HPE Discover. While last year’s speakers talked about robot poker players, this year’s demos showed what working alongside robots in industrial facilities would look like, including safety measures. Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge park is using AI to create more customized experiences. AI is also helping farmers cultivate better growing cycles. One of the big show themes was how people and AI are converging to create better products for customers.

One of the biggest announcements at the show was that Infosight, previously available with Nimble and HPE servers, will now be added across the HPE portfolio to complete HPE’s vision of the intelligent data center.

Infosight identifies and rectifies issues often before organizations even know they’re there, predicting and resolving 86% of issues automatically, reducing the time spent managing these level 1 and 2 support problems by 85%. That includes everything from security issues to troublesome software updates, all handled automatically by an AI that has already built up a year of experience while running on Nimble.

Consumption models for networking arrive

HPE’s Greenlake consumption purchasing model, previously only available for servers and storage, is now available for networking as well — HPE expects all its products to be offered as subscription payment models by the second half of 2019.

Greenlake has already helped contain organizations’ capital expenditures by allowing their storage and servers to grow as the company needed. Now that Greenlake is being offered for Aruba Networking and switches, you only have to pay for the ports you’re using. If you buy the smallest switch at 24 ports, but you only use six, you only pay for those six.

The program is designed to monitor your use. If you need more, the program is easy to expand. If you’re using less, your bill goes down. Over the three to five year agreement, it’s easy to adjust as your data and environment change.

Zero downtime for enterprise storage arrays

If you’re in the enterprise space, you’re already familiar with HPE’s 3PAR storage array. Now HPE has taken what it’s learned with Infosight and added it to 3PAR, calling the result Primera.

With Infosight, Primera offers 100% availability with zero downtime, what HPE is calling tier 0. It’s also some of the quickest storage, with rack to app times of less than 20 minutes.

This step forward was a direct response to what customers have been asking for. There’s been a lot of excitement around Nimble and Infosight, but that was best for middle-tier storage. Larger enterprises had no choice but to use 3PAR, which could be expensive and hard to understand.

Primera is as simple as Nimble but has the strength of 3PAR, and by adding Infosight, gives enterprises the storage they need as data continues to grow exponentially.

Flexibility takes center stage

All of these announcements give organizations more flexibility through AI and consumption models. Other major announcements also drove home flexibility. HPE’s new Nimble Storage dHCI combines the efficiencies of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with the flexibility of converged infrastructure that allows organizations to adjust compute or storage for less predictable growth.

The bottom line? Your server, storage, and networking are getting smarter and are easier to conform to your organization’s needs.

How will these announcements affect your organization? Learn more by contacting your SHI account executive.

Kyra Cherry and Blake Sealy contributed to this post.