HPE's Greenlake offering sees tidal wave of demand in Q3

CEO Neri praises performance of as-a-service solution in otherwise mixed quarter

HPE saw orders for its Greenlake as-a-service (aaS) offering grow a record 82 per cent year-on-year in a quarter that delivered mixed results.

CEO Antonio Neri revealed that it closed some of the largest Greenlake deals in its history in the quarter, including one worth $27m with LyondellBasell, a plastics and chemicals refining company.

"We believe this growth is faster than the orders growth of public cloud vendors and it is a validation of our hybrid strategy and competitive differentiation," Neri told analysts on a call.

"We are focused on delivering one seamless cloud experience for all applications and data, no matter where they exist: at the edge, in a datacentre, in a colocation or in a public cloud estate.

"While others are now publicly declaring plans to offer everything-as-a-service, we have been focused on this for several years and have made significant organic and inorganic investments to deliver a differentiated experience for our customers."

HPE's revenue saw a six per cent year-on-year dip to $6.8bn, but was up 14 per cent on the previous quarter.

It also managed to clear $500m off the historic $1.5bn order backlog it built up in Q2, mostly in its Compute segment, which saw revenue grow one per cent year-on-year to $3.4bn.

Elsewhere, storage revenue was down 9 per cent to $1.1bn and the vendor's High Performance Compute (HPC) segment grew three per cent to $649m.

Neri also spoke of the vendor's plans for Silver Peak, which it has acquired for $925m. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2020.

Neri explained that purchase will work in tandem with HPE Aruba to strengthen customers' networks as their workforces continue to work remotely.

"Silver Peak's advanced SD-WAN offering complements Aruba's existing work-from-home and branch office solutions to deliver one of the industry's most comprehensive portfolios designed to securely connect any edge to any cloud," Neri stated.

"This combination will allow enterprise customers to simplify their branch office and one deployments to empower remote workforces, enable cloud-native deployments and transform business operations without compromising quality or reliability."