It’s that time of year again when IT firms descend on Las Vegas to talk about their biggest updates and how they’re going to take advantage of the latest trends.
On 18 June, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) will follow suit, with a packed two-day conference preceded by its Partner Growth Summit.
Here are four things to look out for once the conference gets underway.
1: Antonio Neri’s keynote in the Sphere
Okay, this one is perhaps cheating a little given it has already officially been announced, but nevertheless it’s something to look out for. CEO Antonio Neri’s opening day keynote – which we will be live blogging – is the first corporate event to take place at the Sphere, the latest addition to the Las Vegas skyline.
The company’s CMO Jim Jackson declared that “big moments call for bold moves” when the location for the keynote was announced back in March, adding that the “Sphere is the perfect venue for us to declare what’s next for our brand and to bring to life the technologies that will enable enterprises to thrive in the AI era.”
Quite what that means in practice we will have to see, not least as the company’s AI product and strategy announcements last year feel like they could provide enough in the way of “what’s next for [the] brand” for quite some time.
2: HPE GreenLake
It wouldn’t be an HPE conference if GreenLake wasn’t front-and-center. Last year we predicted that HPE GreenLake would be the star of the show and we weren’t wrong.
The key announcement from HPE Discover 2023 was GreenLake for Large Language Models (LLMs), which saw the company use its supercomputing credentials to hop on the AI train.
Additionally, it was announced that the company had partnered with Equinix to speed up deployment of the Private Cloud and Private Cloud Business Edition versions of HPE GreenLake, and that VMware vCloud was available through the platform as well.
It feels like it will be hard to top the announcements from last year, especially GreenLake for LLMs. Whatever is announced, however, it’s almost guaranteed that GreenLake will be in the mix.
3: Artificial Intelligence
You can hardly move in the tech sector for AI announcements. Just this week, Apple entered the generative AI fray with new ChatGPT-powered features for Siri that also leverage private cloud.
With HPE having already pinned its colors to the mast with GreenLake for LLMs at Discover 2023, we’re unlikely to see any massive new announcements. However, it would be surprising if they don’t build on this foundation, perhaps with new partnerships, customer stories, new instances, or new features.
The fact that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will be joining Neri during his keynote can’t be overlooked either. Nvidia has made a name for itself in the AI space and Huang has been on something of a conference tour recently: In May he took to the stage with Michael Dell during his keynote at Dell Technologies World 2024, as well as appearing via video link at Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2024.
At Dell Technologies World, Huang and Dell discussed additions to their existing Dell AI Factory collaboration and we would expect to see something similar at HPE Discover 2024. In November 2023, HPE and Nvidia launched a joint product that, like GreenLake for LLMs, leveraged HPE’s high performance computing (HPC) credentials alongside Nvidia’s specialist chips and software.
Most likely, this will be the focus of the conversation between the two CEOs.
4: Juniper Networks
In April, Juniper Networks’ shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve HPE’s $14 billion acquisition offer, which it had made earlier in the year.
While the deal isn’t expected to close until late this year or perhaps early 2025, it would be surprising if it isn’t addressed at all in Neri’s keynote.
Expect some sweeping statements about the importance of AI in networking and synergy with HPE’s existing Aruba brand, which was itself an acquisition some nine years ago.
ITPro's Jane McCallion will be live on the ground in Las Vegas next week with rolling coverage of HPE Discover 2024. Keep tabs on all the latest news, updates, and announcements in our live blog.
