Tag: HPE

Dell EMC takes over from HPE as server king

Posted on June 9, 2017 by - News

michael-dell-2Beancounters at Gartner have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that Dell EMC has taken over from HPE as the king of the server market.

HPE still makes more money holding 24.1 percent of the market share – down from 25.2 percent in the first quarter of 2016. But it would seem that Dell EMC is catching up in that  too, with its market share increasing by 4.8 percent to over the same period to take 19 per cent market share in the latest quarter.

Gartner research director Adrian O’Connell said that the first quarter of the year tends to be relatively strong for Dell, but the acquisition of EMC was proving positive for the server business at the moment.

“HPE’s size means it is subject to the moves of the wider market more than some other vendors. Weakness in the business segment and sourcing changes in the service provider space have reduced its revenue significantly.”

Worldwide server sales continue to decline with the growth of cloud computing, Gartner’s figures show. Companies are also opting to move to hyperscale infrastructures, buying lower cost servers from ODMs too, meaning total worldwide server revenue declined 4.5 per cent year-on-year, with shipments falling by 4.2 percent.

EMEA was impacted more than the rest of the world, with the region’s revenues reducing by 12.2 percent year-on-year to $2.8 billion in the first quarter of 2017 and shipments totaling 503,000 – a reduction of eight percent year-on-year.

IBM and Lenovo most felt the squeeze, with revenues reducing by 34 percent year-on-year and 16 percent year-on-year respectively. Lenovo’s shipments also shrank by 26 percent.

 

HPE can do nine new things

Posted on June 7, 2017 by - News

HPE-office-logoHewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has told its partners that it can now provide nine new services.

Speaking to the assorted throngs during Discover 2017 in Las Vegas, HPE said that the programme’s new additions centre on hybrid IT, data and analytics and HPE’s intelligent edge offerings.

New competencies joining the group established in September include cloud automation, software-defined infrastructure, high-performance computing and edge and mobile networking.

HPE chief channel office Denzil Samuels said: “We are going to work on our partner programme to align compensation benefits to the partners that are delivering critical business outcomes for our customers.

“This approach we’re taking is going to recognise partners who are building capabilities and practices in solution areas that are rapidly growing and critical to our joint customers’ needs and future success. We call these capabilities competencies, and our overall partner compensation will now take those investments into account.”

HPE’s Partner Ready programme has been spruced up with services for the data and analytics infrastructure, object storage, business continuity and data protection, workplace experience and Industrial Internet of Things.

The exec noted that since launching competencies for its Partner Ready partner programme in September, HPE has seen progress from “50 or so” partners. Samuels added that HPE will provide incentives to help accelerate adoption.

HPE added a Silver datacentre specialisation to cut partner training time from nine days to five days and drives sales across HPE’s product portfolio, namely Arista, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.

He also announced the HPE Partner Ready Digital Marketing Programme, which includes channel marketing content, campaigns, education, tools and other resources.

HPE blames Brits for poor performance

Posted on June 2, 2017 by - News

article-2521076-19FD5A3C00000578-456_634x423Hewlett Packard Enterprise has singled out the UK for its weak performance in Europe after its revenue dropped in the second quarter.

HPE reported a global revenue of $7.4 billion, down 13 percent on the same period last year.

HPE CFO Tim Stonesifer said the UK was chiefly to blame for difficulties in Europe.

“Revenue in Europe continue to be weak, driven by the UK, although strong results in Germany helped the region,” he said.

HPE suffered because of a mystery tier-one customer in its server business as a major contributor to the revenue drop, as it did when it published its first quarter results earlier this year.

CEO Meg Whitman said that if this customer is taken out of the equation, HPE would have actually reported a revenue increase of one per cent for second quarter.

Whitman said that the customer was a significant enough size to dramatically affect revenue over the coming months.

Forbes speculated that the customer could be one of the big public cloud providers Microsoft, Google, or Amazon Web Services.

HPE’s server revenue declined 14 percent year on year in the quarter to just under $3 billion, but taking the tier-one customer out of the equation brings the decline to just one percent.

HPE was one of a number of vendors to hike prices in the UK specifically after the EU Referendum.

The company was surprised that jacking up the price of their products harmed the bottom line so much. Who would have thought that raising prices in a time of uncertainty would not have made more money?

Because of the difficultly regarding pricing and commodities, HPE will look to make savings of between $200 million and $300 million in the second half of this year – as it integrates Nimble and SimpliVity and adjusts for life after the spin mergers of its software and services groups.

HPE said it was taking significant steps to optimise the cost structure of the future HPE. It is also looking to trim an incremental $200 million to $300 million in cost savings in just the second half of this year, HPE said.

These savings will be a combination of tight control over spending and simplifying the organisation through de-layering and spend-control actions as it becomes a smaller, more nimble company, HPE said.

 

HPE channel boss spills the beans

Posted on May 19, 2017 by - News

C--zInpVYAAfVBaThe recently appointed global channel chief at HPE said that he is working out a cunning plan to ensure partners navigate through an era of “digital transformation”.

Denzil Samuels joined HPE from GE Digital. He said that “digital transformation” is an industrial revolution there are lots of technology shifts going on at the edge.

Samuels thinks that HPE has the best plan, portfolio and partner programme to take advantage of the change that is going on in the world.

However, he now wants to take the plan to the next level which means announcing pay at net, which lets HPE partners get the highest level of back-end rebates in the industry. It is also announcing the inclusion and development of competencies.

HPE already has product certifications but now Samuels wants to introduce “competencies”, because knowing how to use the  product portfolio and putting it into an outcome for the customer is the way “to drive success”.

To do that you need to have the competencies, the industrial or vertical know how and the horizontal know how, Samuels said.

HPE had a partner programme which encourages different types of partner categories, different geographies and countries, different verticals, different horizontal solutions and different business models.

Samuels said that one size does not fit all but embraces the dynamic nature of the market but taking the very complicated but making it simple.

HPE is planning a new “solution” to do all that already but it is still on the drawing board. The plan is to do a cautioned roll out of some of it over the next year to 18 months.

He said that HPE did not want to disrupt what is already 70 percent of its business, which comes from the channel.

Carbon Black poaches channel bloke from HPE

Posted on May 12, 2017 by - Moving People, News

milesripponclearswift-370x229Miles Rippon has been named as Carbon Black’s EMEA channel director and has been ordered to sort out the outfit ‘s European channel business following its strategic distribution agreement with Arrow.

Apparently, Rippon will be building up Carbon Black’s relationships with channel partners, expanding its reach and increasing enterprise sales through the region. To do this he will have to push Arrow and Carbon Black’s joint offerings in cyber security.
In a statement, Rippon pointed out that traditional AV products were going no-where because they could not deliver the improvements needed to protect organisations against modern threats.

While there is a huge demand from customers for a leading NGAV solution, by combining Cb Defense with Arrow’s vast network, Carbon Black is greatly increasing its global footprint, providing high margins for resellers and continuing to stay at the cutting edge keeping businesses protected from cyberattacks, he said.

There is a huge opportunity for Carbon Black to work with its channel partners to grow its market share this year and Rippon said was happy to be behind the wheel.

Rippon joins Carbon Black from HPE’s enterprise security products division, where he served as EMEA channel and alliance director. Prior to that, he has held roles as VP of global channels for Clearswift and VP of EMEA channels for RSA Security.

Mark Reeves, VP for EMEA sales at Carbon Black, said: “Miles is an EMEA channel expert with extensive experience and hands-on sales territory and sales management skills. He has maintained strong sales performance records in developed and emerging territories. With the recent launch of our streaming prevention technology and the appointment of Arrow, we are now well set up to service the channel and build momentum in the market.”

Nutanix and HPE are not chums

Posted on May 9, 2017 by - News

9-coverHPE has made clear in no uncertain terms that it is not partners with Nutanix, after the latter opened up its Enterprise Cloud Platform software to allow users to install it on HPE ProLiant and Cisco UCS B-series servers.

Nutanix made the announcement late last week, signalling a move away from its traditional all-in-one approach.

HPE is cross at the move and issued a retaliatory blog post slamming the idea of using Nutanix software in favour of a purpose-built HPE platform.

In the post, titled “Don’t be misled… HPE and Nutanix are not partners”, the clearly irritated former maker of printer ink told customers “considering running hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) on an HPE server, you should consider the HPE HCI offerings”.

HPE’s VP of marketing, Paul Miller, said: “Landing Nutanix software on HPE hardware without any type of OEM or support agreement is going to cause real issues in the real world – in the absence of a real support agreement.”

Nutanix previously made its software available as part of a hardware all-in-one package, Nutanix said it will make it compatible with rivals’ servers so customers can choose its own offering over those from competitors like HPE and Cisco.

HPE’s Miller warned that in the case of an outage, HPE could provide immediate assistance so long as you’re running its own software, but for those customers taking on third-party offerings, it is unable to provide the same levels of service.

HPE said it is not surprised by the idea that a company would want to run its software on HPE ProLiant, it appears Nutanix has jumped the gun a little by forgetting to inform the hardware provider of its cunning plan first.

HPE’s recently bought hyperconvergence specialist SimpliVity for $650 million, a direct competitor to Nutanix so it makes sense that HPE would not be keen to have customers from turning to a competitor.

Nutanix has said its Enterprise Cloud Platform software will be available for HPE’s portfolio by the end of the year.

HPE gets more Nimble

Posted on March 8, 2017 by - News

Funny-Surfing-22Hewlett Packard Enterprise has written a $1 billion in cash cheque to buy Nimble Storage which makes predictive all-flash and hybrid-flash storage systems.

HPE claims it will mean that it can offer a full range of flash storage systems for different customer bands. HPE’s hopes the move will see of rivals from Dell EMC, NetApp and Pure Storage.

IDC reckons the flash storage market topped reached $15 billion in 2016, and will grow to almost $20 billion by 2020 with nearly 17 percent compound annual growth rate.

Nimble’s flash systems are aimed at SMEs and HPE said the acquisition is complementary to its midrange to high-end 3PAR flash storage systems and its affordable MSA products.

Meg Whitman, HPE president and CEO, in a statement that Nimble Storage’s portfolio complements and strengthens HPE’s 3PAR products in the high-growth flash storage market and will help it deliver on its vision of making Hybrid IT simple for our customers.

“This acquisition is exactly aligned with the strategy and capital allocation approach we’ve laid out. We remain focused on high-growth and higher-margin segments of the market.”

HPE wants Nimble’s InfoSight Predictive Analytics platform to be used across its storage products portfolio. That technology helps IT managers detect and resolve IT infrastructure issues, reducing the amount of time spent on support activities.

Combining the HPE and Nimble product portfolios would allow customers to more easily move and replicate data across hybrid flash and all-flash storage to meet IT demands, more easily manage storage volumes and data compaction to reduce capacity costs, and integrate data protection capabilities with data encryption, replication and integration capabilities provided by third-party applications, Whiteman said.

Antonio Neri, executive vice president and general manager of HPE’s Enterprise Group wrote in the company’s bog that Nimble’s entry to midrange predictive flash storage solutions, coupled with InfoSight, its leading predictive analytics technology, will strengthen HPE’s flash storage portfolio by expanding market reach and enabling a transformed, analytics-based customer experience.

HP wants to expand into hybrid cloud platforms

Posted on January 18, 2017 by - News

cloudThe bit of HP which no longer makes expensive printer ink, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, has written a $650 million cheque for the privately held cloud software company SimpliVity.

The move is part of a cunning plan to expand its operations in the fast-growing market for hybrid cloud platforms.

For those who came in late, hybrid cloud platforms run applications that are based partly on the client’s private servers and partly on public cloud data centers. They are proving rather useful for resellers peddling cloud platforms so HPE jumping on the bandwagon will give them more sales options.

The deal is expected to add to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s earnings in the first fiscal year after it is completed, the company said.

SimpliVity was founded in 2009 and had raised $276 million in four funding rounds.

HPE and Mirantis lay off OpenStack developers

Posted on November 2, 2016 by - News

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudThe former maker of expensive printer ink HPE and Mirantis have laid off roughly 200 OpenStack developers in what is a swift kick in the open saucy project’s development.

For those that came in late, OpenStack is the open source project for cloud computing infrastructure which was supposed to be the next big thing for suppliers trying to create customer projects.

HPE is busy gutting itself so that it focuses on supply chain productivity, discretionary spending and efforts to reshape the workforce. OpenStack was not really that useful for that cunning plan.

The mid-October layoff included at least 65 people from HPE’s Stackato group, which is in the process of being sold to Micro Focus International’s SUSE. In total, given the changes at the Yehud center and across the whole organization at least 100 HPE OpenStack engineers have cleaned out their desks.

That would be suitably grim but Mirantis appears to have done something similar. Mirantis co-founder and chief marketing officer Boris Renski said that his outfit restructured following the acquisition of TCP Cloud.

This meant that Mirantis wound down a number of engineering investments that it didn’t feel were aligned with its new focus of delivering an operations-centric OpenStack distribution through a build-operate-transfer model, Reknski said.

Renski said about 100 OpenStack Developers were laid off and another hundred or so were moved about.

Staff which seemed to have been packing their bags were those involved in a deployment and management tool for OpenStack, and the Workloads team who were trying to build a PaaS product.

Renski pointed out that his outfit was not abandoning OpenStack or exiting OpenStack distribution business.

However, Stackalytics, a website that tracks OpenStack community contributions, shows that OpenStack interest seems to be declining. HPE and  Mirantis were important players to the project.

HPE unveils new channel scheme

Posted on September 28, 2016 by - News, Products

HPE The former maker of expensive printer ink, HPE has taken the covers off its new channel programme.

The outfit’s new Flexible Capacity model for Microsoft Azure allows partners to bridge private and public cloud with a single pay-as-you-go unified billing consumption model.

HPE unveiled the Flexible Capacity option as part of the launch of a new HPE Microsoft Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) stack for HPE’s DL380 hyperconverged system.

The HPE Microsoft Azure stack should be ready to go in mid-2017 and HPE Consulting for Azure Hybrid Cloud services are available now.

The stack provides customers with Flexible Capacity single pay-as-you-go bill for both on-premise HPE private cloud and Microsoft Azure public cloud.

HPE said the DL380 Azure stack, which will sit in the customer’s data center, can be deployed with HPE SecureData software – protecting data in both public and private clouds and HPE Operations Bridge analytics software.

Bad time to be flogging servers

Posted on September 21, 2016 by - News

titanic-life-preserverBeancounters at IDC have said that it is a jolly bad time to be trying to flog servers and the numbers are sinking so fast that it is unlikely that the spotty kid with the posh girlfriend will escape before Celine Dion starts to sing.

The latest server sales figures for Europe, Middle East and Africa show that branded servers are losing ground to Far Eastern ODMs.

IDC numbers showed revenues down 3.7 per cent to $3 billion despite. All this happened while there was a  modest 0.8 per cent increase in the number of boxes shifted, which means that prices have fallen too.

Eckhardt Fischer, research analyst at IDC, said contract manufacturers, some of whom have launched their own branded gear, are doing well and the  HPEs, Dells and Lenovos of the world are suffering.

“This is strongly driven by the continued expansion of original design manufacturers (ODMs) in EMEA, a trend that IDC predicts will continue as mega datacenters and larger enterprises begin to source their hardware directly.”

HPE is still top server seller with 35.4 per cent market share in the second quarter of 2016, up 0.4 per cent. However its year-on-year revenues fell 2.7 per cent.

Dell grew market share to 17.9 per cent and saw revenues creep up by 1.6 per cent.

However Biggish Blue suffered the worst with a 36.9 per cent slump in revenues and a market share which fell to 9.3 per cent. IDC said the fall could largely be blamed on refresh cycles for IBM legacy mainframes last year – this was big enough to hit overall numbers for all vendors.

Oddly the place to try and peddle servers is Russia and the Ukraine where the improved political situation led to increasing IT investment. But the Middle East and Africa saw a decline of 8.5 per cent in revenues because lower oil prices led to cuts in tech investment.

 

Brexit stuffed up HPE’s bottom line

Posted on September 12, 2016 by - News

logoFormer maker of expensive printer ink Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said that Brexit did have an impact on its bottom line.

The vendor said that there had been a slowdown in public sector spending following the referendum decision to exit the EU. HPE mentioned the slow down of public sector activity in its  latest results announcement but this was largely missed when HPE announced it was off-loading its software business in a spin merger with UK firm Micro Focus.

Speaking to analysts, HPE CEO Meg “Yahoo” Whitman said that Brexit was something that it had felt in its order books in the UK and across the continent.

“What we saw was actually a pause in purchasing in the UK. Certainly the UK public sector, but also the UK and then more broadly Europe which was, this was unexpected, a big change, let’s take a pause and decide what we want to do here. What I will say is that in the last couple of weeks we’re actually seeing orders pick up again,” she added.

But the result of Brexit and the shock to the UK economic system, particularly the value of the pound, has led to ongoing price scrutiny.

“We continue to also monitor the pricing, competitive pricing environment that we see and we adjust as necessary particularly in the channel. So the channel is where we serve SMB and that’s where our ability to sort of move the pricing in response to competition, we look at that actually every single week sometime multiple times a week,” added Whitman.

 

HPE spins and goes British

Posted on September 8, 2016 by - News

hp_enterprise_logoThe former maker of expensive printer ink HPE will spin off and merge its non-core software assets with Britain’s Micro Focus in a deal worth $8.8 billion.

The move is part of HPE Chief Executive Meg Whitman’s cunning plan to shift HPE’s strategy to a few key areas such as networking, storage and technology services since the company separated last year from computer and printer maker HP. It will also off-load the troubled software side of the business.

HPE acquired part of its software portfolio through the $10.3 billion purchase of Britain’s Autonomy in 2011. HP’s $11 billion purchase of Autonomy was supposed to form the central part of the US group’s move into software.

HP later wrote off three-quarters of the company’s value, accusing Autonomy executives of financial mismanagement.

Whitman said in a statement that HPE was taking another important step in achieving the vision of creating a faster-growing, higher-margin, stronger cash flow company well positioned for customers and for the future.

The deal with Micro Focus, a multinational software company based in Newbury was announced along with HPE’s latest quarterly earnings. In the third quarter, HPE reported net revenue of $12.2 billion, down 6 percent from $13.1 billion a year earlier.

The transaction is expected to be tax free to HP. Micro Focus will pay $2.5 billion in cash to HPE, while HPE shareholders will own 50.1 percent of the combined company that will operate under the name Micro Focus and be run by its executives. HP said it would pay $700 million in one-time costs related to the separation of the assets.

Other HPE assets that will be merged include software for application delivery management, big data, enterprise security, information management & governance and IT Operations management businesses.

Micro Focus has been bulking up on acquisitions to boost growth, and this would be its largest deal to date. Earlier this year, Micro Focus acquired U.S. firm Serena Software for $540 million.

Kevin Loosemore, executive chairman of Micro Focus, said that “the time is right for consolidation in the infrastructure software market and this proposed merger will create one of the leading players in this space.”

HPE is the latest firm looking to Britain for expansion opportunities after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Valuations of British companies have been relatively low given current exchange rates.

HPE brexits 220 staff

Posted on August 24, 2016 by - News

axeHPE is planning to remove 220 more jobs in the UK as part of its continuing culling of staff.

In a memo sent to staff, the rather long titled HPE UK and MEMA Vice President  of Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing (ITO) Maurice Mattholie says it is all part of its Workforce Management Programme which is the latest euphemism  for rampant stuff cuts.

However, the number of staff for the chop this quarter is not as bad as the last quarter when 500 HPE staff were asked to clean out their desks and exit the building with their belongings in a photocopy box.

Mattholie said HPE was talking to the UK Works Council and Trade Union representatives about the cuts.

“It is important to point out that we are fully committed to continuing to use redeployment and voluntary exits to manage WFM in the UK and Ireland…. It is expected that up to 220 positions within UK&I ITO will be impacted through WFM in Q4.

“Whilst I appreciate that this announcement may cause concern I am committed to providing regular updates to ensure that everyone is kept informed.

 

HPE wins illegal discounts case

Posted on July 28, 2016 by - News

spockICP has been told to pay up £1.95 million to HPE for  fraudulently claiming than £1.5m worth of discounts on its products.

Matthew Archer, ICP’s managing director, and the company itself were sued in a trial which took place in April. HPE claimed Archer and ICP were involved in fraud, conspiracy and inducement of breach of contract.

The case centred on an “abuse” of HPE’s partner programmes and discounts, with the defendants “fraudulently obtaining” over £1.5 million in discounts on HPE products, HPE successfully claimed.

Marc Waters, HPE’s interim managing director, said the firm is “satisfied” with the verdict.

“Grey marketing is a serious problem for the industry in terms of lost sales, margin erosion, poor customer experiences and reputational damage,” he said. “HPE has a well-established grey market avoidance programme and the outcome of this case clearly demonstrates that we will not hesitate to take court action to enforce our rights if required.

“We would also encourage anyone concerned about potential fraudulent activity to contact our brand protection team at and we will investigate as appropriate.”

Grey market activity is a long-standing issue in the channel and in recent months some vendors have stepped up their efforts to protect their brands. Headset vendor Plantronics settled a number of cases on the issue since the end of last year.

ICP said in a statement that it was disappointed and surprised by the outcome.

“We strongly deny any wrongdoing and must now consider all options available to us.”