Composable infrastructure and continuous innovation (and disruption) in IT

 

I am a firm believer in the power of innovation to disrupt markets. Innovation, in all its forms including new technologies, business models, and customer engagement strategies have upended countless markets, from healthcare to financial services to transportation.

 

At HPE, our focus is on creating innovative solutions that advance the way we all live and work. This often requires us to take a novel approach to solve the challenges our customers face, whether it is a business or technology problem. By taking a disruptive approach to innovation, we sometimes create new categories that may not fit squarely into traditional models for measuring markets.

 

Creating a new category is difficult. A vendor must deliver a new technology, and convince customers, partners, and market watchers that the new solution provides a better way to solve a problem, or help customers achieve their business goals. It also means you are willing to step away from legacy views and technologies for addressing a market.

 

This is why it is especially validating when the industry analyst community recognizes important new trends that align with HPEs strategy and innovation agenda. A great example of this is the work HPE is doing in Composable Infrastructure.

 

IDC just published a first-ever market forecast on Composable and Disaggregated Infrastructure, and predicts this market will grow from $300 million in 2017 to $4.7 billion in 2023, for a compound annual growth rate of 58 percent.^[1] HPE is the largest vendor in this market, and a first-mover in creating the segment. Please visit HPE.com to download a complimentary copy of this IDC report.

 

Likewise, Gartner recently called out Composable Infrastructure as one of four disruptive technology trends in Compute Infrastructure, in its recent report on the 2018 Strategic Roadmap for Compute Infrastructure.^[2]

 

So...what is Composable Infrastructure, and why are we excited about this new market?

 

Composable Infrastructure allows organizations to manage their data center as a dynamic, fluid, and flexible pool of resources. The technology provides a software-driven approach that allows organizations to leverage compute, storage, and networking capabilities, when and how they need them, in real-time. Organizations are no longer constrained by infrastructure that is fixed and inefficient.

 

Businesses are turning to Composable Infrastructure because it provides an optimal building block for creating private clouds, at better economics, through higher levels of automation and a better overall customer experience. Customers can use a single interface to rapidly allocate and reallocate resources, and accelerate their DevOps workflows, based on business priorities, IT resources, and budgets. These capabilities are crucial for organizations looking to optimize the performance and economics of their applications across their hybrid cloud environments.

 

HPE pioneered this market with the launch of HPE Synergy two years ago. Today, we have over 1,700 customers, and this is one of the fastest-growing products in HPEs history. We are building a powerful ecosystem of partners, developers, and customers who are creating next generation data centers on HPE Synergy.

 

HPE Synergy and the creation of the Composable Infrastructure category is just one example of how HPE is delivering disruptive innovation for our customers, from the edge to the cloud. Another great example is HPE GreenLake, which provides a new model for consuming IT on premise, as-a-service. Businesses are flocking to GreenLake because it provides the agility, flexibility and pay-per-use experience of the public cloud, with the control and security of on-premise IT. And the proof is in the results in HPEs Q318 earnings announced last week, we shared that HPE GreenLake grew 40 percent year-over-year.

 

I am incredibly proud of our innovators, across every part of our company, who are taking novel approaches to solve our customers most important challenges, and improve the world around us. This often means we are charting new territory and making smart bets on the future, which is consistent with HPEs history as an innovation hub for Silicon Valley and the world.

 

 

^[1] IDC, Worldwide Composable / Disaggregated Infrastructure Forecast, August 2018

 

^[2] Gartner, 2018 Strategic Roadmap for Compute Infrastructure, April 2018