The Intel partnership will generate both three global IoT solutions labs for customers, with the North American one being in Houston, as well as a roadmap of jointly HPE-Intel developed IoT solutions.
Dr. Tom Bradicich, PhD, Vice-President and General Manager, Hyperscale Servers and IoT systems, HPE
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is raising both its profile and its capabilities in the hot Internet of Things (IOT) space. The company has formally launched the Internet of Things Systems, a formal business unit to drive the company’s strategy in the space. They have also announced a major partnership with Intel, which is new specifically for the Internet of Things. That partnership will see the establishment of three global IoT solutions labs for customers. It will also see the development of jointly developed HPE-Intel IoT solutions, which will be forthcoming soon.
“This announcement is the tip of the iceberg for HPE and the Internet of Things,” said Dr. Tom Bradicich, PhD, Vice-President and General Manager, Hyperscale Servers and IoT systems, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “It is profound in its contents.”
Bradicich stated that HP had a significant presence in the IoT space before the split of the company on November 1, but that they had not publicized it that much.
“We have not been as vocal as some in the industry about our presence in this space, but those days are over and we are changing this,” he said. “We have been a significant player – defined by selling product into IoT solutions, which are network connected and have a significant amount of sensor connectivity. We are now taking that expertise and maturity and graduating it to a new level with expressly-defined products through our partnership with Intel.”
The IoT business unit that Bradicich now leads is new.
“There was some activity before, under HP, but it would be fair to say that the coincidence of the new business unit with the company on November 1 is meaningful,” he noted.
The partnership with Intel around the Internet of Things is also new. While of course HP and Intel have had a long-time productive partnership, this is its first specific application to the IoT market.
“This is a new, formal alliance with a new set of terms and conditions expressly designed around the IoT, and with some architecture, software and components having been modified,” Bradicich said. “Intel’s core technologies are key ingredients in our solutions, and Intel will be present with us at the upcoming HPE Discover at London.”
A critical element of the alliance is the establishment of three global IoT Discovery Labs to help organizations experiment and test IoT applications and devices in a secure and confidential environment. These will be located in HPE facilities in Houston, Texas, Grenoble, France and Singapore.
“These are physical labs fully equipped and instrumented with end-to-end IoT solutions, which can include up to 30 vendors in a complex solution,” Bradicich said. “They are of an order of magnitude more complex than traditional data centre solutions. We also have ecosystem of partners and other suppliers who put it all together. The solutions are all pre-validated and tested so customers’ integration risk is reduced and their time to value is reduced.”
The centres’ principal role will be to demo the HPE IoT solutions for prospects, Bradicich said. Access is available through both physical and online access.
The other main manifestation of the partnership will be solutions. To complement the labs, HPE is introducing new reference architectures to provide customers with a proven template for delivering IoT solutions. HPE will also deliver new products jointly developed with Intel that will sit at the edge outside the traditional data centre and collect, process and analyze data from sensors and devices. These new systems will feature Intel Core i5 and Intel Atom processors.
“You will see these new solutions roll out soon,” Bradicich said.
Bradicich said that HPE is determined to drive a leadership position in IoT, taking advantage of their deep expertise in the handling of Big Data to address the analog data problems that the IoT is creating.
“The IoT has achieved celebrity status today, covering everything from a dog food bowl connected to Twitter that tells the dog owner when it’s empty, to power plants that predict failures to prevent brownouts and blackouts,” he said. “However, it is changing almost every couple of days. New applications are consistently being discovered because the cost of connectivity is coming down, which impacts the value of being perpetually connected to derive business value. That perpetual connectivity has three main benefits: the ability to monitor, to do maintenance, including pushing upgrades, and to realize monetization. HPE will be able to lead in driving change by taking advantage of this connectivity.”
