CEO Antonio Neri on Nvidia integration differences between HPE's private cloud AI and Dell's AI factory

“Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together,” said Neri in an interview with CRN at HPE Discover. “And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri told CRN that the new Private Cloud AI HPE is bringing to market with Nvidia is a "fully integrated" private cloud that can be deployed in just three clicks and 24 seconds versus "the bunch of widgets" that make up the Dell Technologies AI Factory with Nvidia.

"Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together," said Neri in an interview with CRN at HPE Discover. "And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide. And the only thing we need to do is hook up the power and the network, and you are good to go."

During HPE Discover in the first ever keynote at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Neri and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introduced the new Nvidia AI Computing by HPE portfolio, including HPE Private Cloud AI, before 15,000 customers and partners.

"This is really the big deal that we have integrated everything into a really easy-to-use Private Cloud AI solution," said Huang during the keynote.

"All of the complexity that goes into all the technology has been provided to you, hidden from you, and it is helping you operate it over time. Remember, you are not buying a computer that you are using. You are buying a service. And you can own a service that you are operating."

Huang's comments come just one month after he joined Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell on stage at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas to unveil an expansion of the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia portfolio to include new server, edge, workstation offerings and services.

Neri called Dell AI Factory with Nvidia an AI framework versus a "fully integrated" Nvidia AI Computing by HPE private cloud. "They offer some of the solutions, but you have to bring it all together," he said.

"You as a customer have to decide what you want, which ingredients you want, and then stitch it all together and deploy it yourself."

HPE and its partners with the HPE GreenLake-powered Private Cloud AI are providing a private cloud service that is fully integrated and ready to deploy, said Neri. "That is why we had to work with Nvidia together to drive true deep integration of their stack with our stack," he said. "Otherwise, it's just another reference architecture of sorts."

For channel partners, the HPE Private Cloud AI reduces the sales cycle "dramatically" to bring AI solutions to customers.

What's more, Neri said, it means that partners are selling compute, storage, networking and software all together with their own services. "Therefore, they get more margin, but do it in a much shorter sales cycle," he said.

CEO Antonio Neri on Nvidia integration differences between HPE's private cloud AI and Dell's AI factory

“Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together,” said Neri in an interview with CRN at HPE Discover. “And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide.”

Is there any way to size the cost and time to value for the customers?

It's going to be pretty significant. We're going to learn as we go through this. But many of the partners, as you know, have already sold GreenLake. In fact, it is one of the fastest routes to market that we have. Partners should go back to those customers [that have bought GreenLake] and sell [HPE Private Cloud] AI. Right away. Right away. They don't have to do anything. Just tell the customer: ‘Tell me the use case, and I will help you deploy it faster.'

You can see it on the [Discover] show floor. The solution is so simple. It is absolutely so simple. So the IT Operations time to deploy is 24 seconds. I mean, that's how fast it is.

From a data scientist perspective, there is a huge productivity benefit because they have all the tools right there. They have the large language model. They have the NIM which is the conversational [Generative AI service] for the data. The way Jensen [Huang] describes it is now that can talk to your data and get the insights from that data.

So the container environment is there. Everything is there. The data pipeline automation is there. Everything is in one place.

So it is productivity at an IT level. It is productivity at the developer level. And it is a faster return for the enterprise by deploying it at the speed of the business. And for the channel, the sale cycle is short.

What is the difference between the Dell AI Factory and the HPE Private Cloud AI?

Dell has what I call a framework. They offer some of the solutions, but you have to bring it all together. You as a customer have to decide what you want, which ingredients you want, and then stitch it all together and deploy it yourself.

We, with our service partners and our channel partners, we give it to you all ready, fully integrated. It is just click and deploy. And that is because of our HPE GreenLake platform. Because we designed this for a cloud-native architecture from a console operating model perspective, using the cloud experience, and everything else was fully co-engineered and fully integrated into that rack.

Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together. And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide. And the only thing we need to do is hook up the power and the network, and you are good to go.

CEO Antonio Neri on Nvidia integration differences between HPE's private cloud AI and Dell's AI factory

“Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together,” said Neri in an interview with CRN at HPE Discover. “And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide.”

What are you seeing in terms of customer adoption of private cloud, and what is your vision for the future of private cloud?

No. 1 is customers have become way more sophisticated and understand that with specific workloads, which are data intensive, it is way more cost-efficient to run them on-premises.

There is no need to move data around. You reduce the risk on cyber, and then, honestly, the cost of egressing data back and forth goes away. By default, it is already significantly cheaper. You don't have to move data. It is already there.

Second is that because of the challenge we see today in the virtualisation aspect of this, customers now are saying, ‘Do I move this stuff to the public cloud or do I keep it on-prem and move it to containers or bare metal or an alternative hypervisor?'

That is why another big important announcement is what [HPE Executive Vice President and CTO ]Fidelma [Russo] said today, which is we are going to offer an alternative virtualisation hypervisor layer. But the trick is, No. 1, we have inside GreenLake an orchestration layer, which means you can go at the pace and speed you want, meaning I can manage your VMware environment as I do today. You can start moving to other run times if you want to do that. You can move some of your workloads to the open-source KVM, which has been hardened for the enterprise with the features you need and fully integrated with cluster management.

It is one thing to have a hypervisor, but you need to be able to orchestrate across and orchestrate down. We have orchestration across because that is the orchestration layer inside GreenLake, and now we integrated the KVM, orchestrating down to the cluster management while you manage your VMware.

At the same time, we manage bare metal and containers in addition to the run times, whether it is OpenShift or the like. So we are giving customers control. We give them flexibility, and we give them choice. Those are the big three elements.

And as you go to AI, knowing that you need to manage the public cloud instance where your data sometimes is, we give you the hybrid experience because, in the end, you need a hybrid strategy to deploy AI. You can't just do it in a monolithic approach because AI is a distributed workload and data lives everywhere. But you want to control the data.

That is why when I think about our strategy, you may have a private cloud today for virtualisation we can move that to open-source KVM. You have containers. You may have bare metal. Now we added one more thing: it is called AI. It is a private cloud AI stack. That is it. But all of that is managed consistently through the HPE GreenLake experience. It doesn't matter what it is. You just deploy at the speed of the business. And this AI thing [HPE Private Cloud AI] obviously was designed for simplicity.

CEO Antonio Neri on Nvidia integration differences between HPE's private cloud AI and Dell's AI factory

“Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together,” said Neri in an interview with CRN at HPE Discover. “And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide.”

Is HPE going to offer more private clouds?

Yes. We have optimised for workloads like VDI, SAP, databases and alike. So what that means is it is going to be way more standardised for customers. But for partners what it means is that they still sell compute, storage and networking, but it is all fully integrated. Instead of selling a server here and storage there and this and that, you now sell the whole thing integrated together, which means more margins.

How important are those SAP and VDI private clouds you are delivering?

Very important. We are seeing a lot of traction. Actually, we have seen a lot of traction in SAP private cloud already. The reason is simple: people are modernising SAP from ECC to S4/HANA. We are the No. 1 platform for SAP private cloud. The reason is GreenLake, again, integrates the whole solution and you can scale it up and down as you go through the transformation. We manage the entire lifecycle of that transformation and that environment. We have security built in. We have the data platform built in. And then with VDI, people have realised that VDI can be challenging at times, especially for specific use cases.

So the ability to now take that workload and optimise it for remote work with data protection built-in, with all the policy management integrated with the storage and the network and everything else is critical.

Think about the challenge of running VDI with lots of customers and the profile and then having to add more workload onto that profile without the ability to truly scale.

Again, that's what this GreenLake experience gives you. This is what we call the cloud experience wherever the data lives, and obviously, the data could be on-premises or in the public cloud or at the edge. But the beauty is you don't have to do anything. You just click and deploy. So that is why it is important.

CEO Antonio Neri on Nvidia integration differences between HPE's private cloud AI and Dell's AI factory

“Depending on the use case, you buy small, medium, large and extra-large versus the Dell AI factory, which is a bunch of widgets that you have to bring together,” said Neri in an interview with CRN at HPE Discover. “And then we actually build this in our factory right away. So we ship it exactly as you decide.”

Can you talk about the channel enablement strategy and the excitement that Jensen Huang spoke about with regard to the HPE channel ecosystem, including the global system integrators that have signed on for HPE Private Cloud AI?

I think Nvidia's limitation in the enterprise is the reach. It is one thing to reach tens of customers, which you can do direct. But once you go to hundreds of thousands and millions, you need the channel.

More than 70 per cent of our business at HPE goes through the channel, in some cases over 90 percent depending on which [geographic region] and country you are talking about. That coverage is golden.

So we both committed to sales-enable the channel, my direct sales force, his very, very small direct sales force, and show up as one company. On one end you have the global Sis, which are the five we announced—HCLTech, Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Deloitte. For us, they play more of a consultative role with business process optimisation. As they go through the digitisation and automation of that process, now they can integrate AI into that digitisation and then technologically deploy one of the stacks we announced.

When we go through the channel, you know and we live it, it is more about now I need to deploy it, run it and sell it. That basically allows us to go much faster. Much faster now. Because it is now a simple offering with an easy button. And then keep doing what you are doing with GreenLake. We don't give you another thing to sell. We give it to you as an extension of what you are already doing. That is the objective. That is why what we did today was to make the channel relevant in AI. That is the headline. This announcement makes the channel relevant in AI for the first time. What is the call to action for partners? Get aboard. You are already selling servers, storage and private cloud. Now you can sell Private Cloud For AI. Keep selling GreenLake, because the more customers you bring to GreenLake, the easier it is to cross-sell. You are already selling Aruba. You are already selling ProLiant. You are selling Alletra [MP]. And now you are selling private cloud for AI. It comes all together with the same experience. It is just a different instance.