HPE launches Greenlake Central, hub of its as-a-service efforts

Hewlett Packard Enterprise launched the latest installment of its Greenlake platform, which is the center of its plan to deliver its products as-a-service.

The launch of HPE Greenlake Central was foreshadowed at HPE's analyst meeting last month. HPE laid out plans to deliver IT-as-a-service, move to a subscription model and sit in the middle of hybrid- and multi-cloud deployments. HPE aims to offer its portfolio as-a-service by 2022.

HPE Greenlake Central, which is available as a beta and generally available in the second half of 2020, uses the company's software portfolio to provide a front end and control plane to enterprise IT and an application marketplace. Ultimately, HPE is hoping to use the Greenlake platform to manage workloads ranging from edge to cloud computing and differentiate its approach from the likes of Dell Technologies, IBM and Red Hat and AWS and its Outposts efforts. 

• HPE launches container platform, aims to be 100% open source Kubernetes
• HPE aims to make its product lineup as-a-service, updates GreenLake, unveils Primera storage
• HPE unveils revamped HPC portfolio with Cray technology

Strategically, HPE is trying to position its IT management approach as a neutral party amid operating models that may make silos of legacy infrastructure, public cloud and hybrid approaches.

Scott Yow, general manager for HPE's hybrid cloud unit, the first iteration of HPE Greenlake Central is just the beginning. Greenlake Central has been in pilot with numerous customers and the platform can bridge on-premises IT as well as manage public clouds like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

HPE also plans on migrating its Greenlake base over to Greenlake Central. "We're on boarding clients and collecting feedback. By the end of January and early February 2020 we expect to have 20% to 30% of our Greenlake base migrated over," said Yow.

HPE Greenlake Central includes:

• One dashboard for storage, compute, virtual machines, containers, workloads and key performance indicators.
• Pay per use models for on-premises IT and tools to move workloads.
• Automation of IT and cloud operations.
• Compliance and governance tools as well as analytics to optimize costs.

According to HPE, Greenlake Central can deliver IT tools to various roles within an enterprise including line of business, CFO, CIO, developers and legal.

HPE Greenlake is the company's fastest growing business with 740 customers globally. "Greenlake is the center of the as-a-service effort at HPE," said Yow. "We're driving investment and doubling down on Greenlake."

In the future, Greenlake is likely to get extensions for edge computing, networking and other IT capabilities, said Yow.