We're getting encouragement to come along to the Day 2 keynote, with Fidelma Russo tomorrow – it will be the third keynote of the event. Naturally, your intrepid reporter will be there.
apparently the Ryder Cup is using HPE kit for digital twins. No real information on that, but everyone loves a digital twin these days.
HPE Unleash AI partner ecosystem, which has over 60 partners like CrowdStrike and Fortinix, and Protopia, also continues to grow says Neri, though there's no rate or previous partner figures for comparison.
But wait, there's more: New inference capabilities, with multi-node inference, unified gateway, and enhanced conference, and shared KV cache.
Also coming to HPE AI Factory is HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000, which allows agents better access to data and metadata.
Another annoucnement, this is about agentic AI and updates to HPE AI Factory.
This includes: secure agentic operations, which mean agents only run in their own secure environments with guard rails. There's also Nvidia NemoClaw, which is an open framework. Also, Zerto is being included that includes data recovery if something does go wrong.
For a more coherent write up and more information, read more here.
New networking announcement: Aruba CX Switch is coming to Mist and Marvis actions is coming to Aruba Central. This is part of the company's "cross-pollination" efforts.
You can read more about that announcement here.
The Juniper Networking MX301 can help with this. There's also a new switch, the QFX5140 switch for inference clusters. 16 Tbps total capacits un 1RU, optimized for inference and AI-native optimized with HPE Marvis, says Neri and the specs list next to him
Neri is now talking about how AI data centers are now often not a single data center, they are several sites working together. This is where HPE edge offerings come in, he says.
Right, new announcement. HPE Juniper NEtworking now has the QFX5252 scale-up switch for AMD Helios. It's 100% liquid cooled, has open standards, and SONIC with AI-native operations.
In terms of specs, it has 1024 Tbps total capacity and comes with Juno operating system.
We're now watching a short Video about the company's partnership with Vultr, with a person on screen who I am 99% sure is generative AI. I suppose this is on topic for the theme of this morning.
Right: Neri is going to elaborate on two parts of the company's strategy, networking and "managing transformation into an agentic enterprise".
It's never a surprise to hear about GreenLake at HPE Discover, though it's shifted guises over the years. While it was originally pitched as a private cloud offering, it's now effectively both a management platform. I believe that at least some of the "consumption based IT" idea from the original iteration of GreenLake has been offloaded to HPE Financial Services.
I have missed a segment that I believe was about security – HPE acquired Zerto in 2021 – but Neri is now talking about how all of this is brought together in GreenLake, the company's private cloud "platform".
GreenLake intelligence, which is already part of Aruba Central acocridng to the new VO, and helps manage and operate agentic AI. Greenlake intelligence combines context and AI, turing "observation into understanding" and recommending or carryign out a remediation.
Next up: rising virtualization costs. HPE has had a virtualization play for about a year now, maybe two (excuse the fuzzy memory). HPE Morpheus VM Essentials was introduced at HPE Discover Barcelona either 2025 or 2024 (I will clarify this later) as a competitor to VMware, even if it hasn't been outright pitched as such.
The most advanced systems are only as good as the data that they can access, though, he says. Naturally, HPE has an answer for that, too, which is the new Alletra Storage MP X10000.
The agentic AI era doesn't just need network, though, it needs compute as well. As AI moves from creating content to agents, there's greater pressure on compute.
HPE is ansering this with the release of Proliant DL394 Gen12, which features Nvidia chips.
Neri has just mentioned "self driving" networks. We're being shown a recent ad for HPE featuring F1 drivers for Mercedes Petronas who are confused that this is about their vehicles not the network. And relieved that it's not – HPE, of course, is one of the sponsors of MErcedes F1.
For years, Neri says, Aruba (which has been part of HPE for over a decade) the company has provided networking in terms of wireless access etc. Witht he acquisition of Juniper, that has now come into the data center.
Today, he says, we're in a new, shifting technology landscape, where bu=oth humans and AI are creating inputs.
You don't architect a building round one room, he says. For creating AI and agentic AI systems it's the same, you need a solid foundation. For AI, that's networking but also other HPE elements like Private Cloud.
Apparently networks are the foundation of all this, which I predicted would be one of the big messages for the event. Expect to hear even more about this over the next 48 hours, not just in this first keynote.
And we're off. "What does it mean to be an architect?" asks the VO. Apparently, now that we're in a new AI era anyone can be an architect. I think the dictionary and architects in general might have something to say about this...
The tannoy is promising that the program will begin "shortly". In the meantime we're being treated to some dramatic music...
Even busier than I thought!
There's about 40 minutes to go until Antonio Neri, CEO of HPE, kicks off Discover 2026 with his opening keynote. I've already seen massive crowds heading in the direction of the auditorium, so I'm expecting a pretty packed audience.