Everything you need to know about HPE

In any conversation about enterprise technology, HPE inevitably comes up. As a stalwart in the industry, its roots trace back to 1939 when it was first established as Hewlett-Packard.

After more than 70 years of leading innovation, HPE emerged in 2015 as a separate entity, concentrating exclusively on enterprise solutions, while HP Inc. continued to handle consumer products.

A quick history of HPE

When Hewlett-Packard split into two companies in 2015, it marked the dawn of a new era. Out of the historic division emerged Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), a business-focused powerhouse specializing in servers, storage, networking, software, and services.

Right out of the gate, HPE made waves by acquiring Aruba Networks, immediately establishing itself as a leader in networking. It rapidly innovated across its portfolio, including overhauling its LaserJet printers with next-gen toner tech.

Under CEO Antonio Neri, HPE has continued to push boundaries. Its vision is making data work for businesses wherever it lives, fuelling development of cutting-edge hybrid IT solutions.

Since its launch, HPE has shown strong financial growth. As of October 2023, its LTM revenue sits at $29.7 billion, up nearly 6% YoY. With proven strategies and differentiated offerings, HPE is poised for continued success unlocking value across its markets.

What does HPE sell?

Spanning from edge to cloud, HPE's diverse product portfolio aims to help businesses transform their IT and accelerate digital initiatives tailored to industry needs.

A core focus is HPE's compute solutions, including the HPE ProLiant Servers engineered for hybrid environments to unlock more data value and AI outcomes. HPE holds between 15% to 20% of the global server market share, making it one of the top three server providers.

For storage, HPE provides solutions optimized for both traditional and cloud-native workloads to streamline operations. HPE has around a 10% market share of the global storage market.

On the networking side, HPE delivers wired and wireless products designed to accelerate edge workloads while safeguarding data through proven zero-trust approaches. HPE's acquisition of Juniper Networks is expected to double the size of its networking business, where it competes globally with companies such as Cisco.

HPE also offers businesses its high-performance computing (HPC) portfolio, offering scale-out and scale-up capabilities for public cloud, on premise, and hybrid environments. It aims to meet the requirements and business needs of today's enterprises through purpose-built software, storage, and workloads. HPE’s HPC marries the cloud and supercomputing, allowing businesses to access to advanced and high-performance HPC systems while getting access to metered and elastic cloud services. 

Organizations that leverage HPE HPC solutions can access HPC infrastructure to create and improve data analytics, optimize business outcomes, and power AI and machine learning (ML) workloads. With HPE's HPC portfolio, organizations can assemble HPE's infrastructure building block components, high-speed and high-capacity storage, dense computing resources, software, and networking to run and manage their own HPC clusters.

Finally, HPE rounds out its offerings with software and services like HPE GreenLake for Compute Ops Management, which monitors distributed environments, and HPE Integrated Lights Out, which provides seamless, secure server management from anywhere. 

HPE GreenLake is a suite of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) tools that allow customers to consume IT resources on a pay-per-use basis.

HPE GreenLake offers customers a set of public cloud-like services on more traditional on-premise-type setups – with both the hardware and software provided in a subscription mode. Its capabilities include cost management, cloud management, and compliance tools, all accessible through a central console, with tools and services including storage, computing, networking, security, and data protection.

HPE positions Greenlake as a unified solution allowing companies to enjoy a relatively simple and risk-free approach to their digital transformation efforts.

In summary, HPE’s breadth of offerings aim to drive digital transformation, with strengths in compute, storage, networking, software, and services across the hybrid IT landscape.

HPE's mergers and acquisitions

HPE has a robust history of mergers and acquisitions, which have played a significant role in shaping the company’s strategy, filling critical portfolio gaps, and enhancing its competitive positioning.

Since its launch in 2015, HPE has made strategic acquisitions to accelerate its transformation into an edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company. In 2020, it acquired Silver Peak, a software-defined WAN provider, to boost its edge-to-cloud vision and expertise in cloud-native security and zero trust networking.

The following year saw multiple critical purchases, including Zerto for cloud data protection and management, Determined AI to speed up model training, and CloudPhysics for infrastructure monitoring insights.

In 2023, HPE made several key acquisitions. In the first quarter of 2023, HPE acquired OpsRamp, a company specializing in IT Operations Management Software. This was followed by the acquisition of Axis Security, a company that offers a Security Services Edge (SSE) Platform. Shortly after, HPE acquired a company specializing in private cellular technology. In the same quarter, HPE also acquired an open-sourced reproducible AI software.

In January 2024, HPE made a $14 billion bid for Juniper Networks, with the acquisition likely to be completed by the end of 2024 or early 2025. This acquisition is poised to double the size of HPE's networking business. The deal leverages Juniper's expertise in artificial intelligence through its Mist AI service. According to an HPE press release, "the explosion of AI and hybrid cloud-driven business is accelerating demand for secure, unified technology solutions that connect, protect, and analyze companies' data from edge to cloud."

After the acquisition is complete, Rami Rahim, CEO at Juniper Networks, will lead the HPE networking business, reporting to Antonio Neri, CEO at HPE. The complementary capabilities of HPE and Juniper will be able to deliver next-generation AI-native networking to enterprises and enable new digital experiences with the help of intelligent and secure connectivity.

What's it like doing business with HPE?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) positions itself as an edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company that aims to help organizations connect, protect, analyze, and act on data and applications across environments.

The company places an emphasis on partnerships, investing in partner success as part of its go-to-market strategy. HPE offers various programs designed to provide partners with enablement, tools, and resources to deepen customer relationships and drive growth.

For example, the HPE Partner Ready Vantage program aims to equip partners to manage customer lifecycles, while the broader HPE Partner Ready program provides training, tools, and benefits focused on product knowledge and sales incentives.

The company holds an annual conference, HPE Discover, in Las Vegas at which it makes its latest announcements and updates. Within the event, it also holds HPE Partner Growth Summit at which it gives partner-specific insights.

For customers and partners, HPE strives to provide an ecosystem of support and capabilities needed to achieve business and technology goals associated with managing and leveraging data and applications across increasingly complex IT environments.

The company sees partnerships as instrumental to delivering on its platform-as-a-service vision and driving digital transformation outcomes for enterprises.