HPE Discover 2026 Keynote Hot Take with Steven Dickens
Transcript
CTO advisor, Hyperframe Research. This is like the the the best of both worlds, right? I know we just literally bumped into each other after the keynote. >> We're here at HPE Discover. Stephen Dickens, I've had you on my program forever. And this is People make fun of HPE that it's a legacy uh company, but this is where enterprise architects hang out, right? >> For sure. I mean, I'm been impressed by the breadth of the keynote coming from Antonio.
They're delivering at network, they're delivering at compute, they're delivering at storage. They've got a genetic AI ops. >> They have cloud control planes. They have like Well, you look at And it And I think the thing that gets underrated, they have the partnerships. >> Yes. >> You can put all of this on HPE GreenLake paper and buy it from one source. It is They're They're punching above their weight. >> I think the GreenLake piece, they were early with that sort of consumption-based cloud model for on-premises and kind of in an Equinix data center.
What is it now? 5 years they've been doing that, I think. That's just baked into how they go to market, I think. >> And now you can get all of their AI pop partners, Kam Auwaerter, uh all of the vision uh AI folks, you can buy all of that on GreenLake paper. So, you can get their private cloud AI solution that may not be delivered with HPE uh IP through HPE partners through just one uh frictionless relationship, which is what CIOs want.
>> You want to You want to hit the easy button they In the analyst session here, so they're talking about hitting that easy button. They had the guy on from the Dallas Cowboys talking about how his infrastructure is scaled. Just wheel it in, it just grows as you grow, as new requirements and new workloads come on board. Just scalability. I think what the company's doing in that regard really first class. >> And then the Juniper relationship I I think this is the thing >> They hit it hard in the keynote.
>> They hit it hard. It was the the first technical topic was the uh was a new Q QFS switches. This idea that you can do training on not just NVIDIA hardware, but Juniper networking that's fast enough and scalable enough and open enough with SONiC to compete with the likes of Cisco and NVIDIA. So, this you know, this co-opportunity uh between them and NVIDIA that they didn't hide it at all. >> It's a three-horse race in the AI networking space, and I think HPE's absolutely at that top table.
>> So, the other big thing that I'm super excited about is their deal they acquired Morpheus last year. >> Yeah. >> They're going >> only last year? I thought it was maybe the year before. >> to be about a year before. Yeah. And they're going hard after the VMware customer, like the the Broadcom customer. >> From a technology perspective is not, you know, let's be honest, there's a a nice gap between what Broadcom can do and what HPE can do, but HPE is probably the biggest vendor, I think, that is giving uh VMware customers a option.
And they just announced last, I think it was last week that they're giving them a one-year price break for that trans- for that transition period. So, >> That's the 90/9 program. 90 days free, 9 months at 1% on your GreenLake bill. " It gives you the ability to transition over to what HPE's offering whilst you're getting out of your bill with Broadcom. Which I think there's some really good flexing of flexing of their muscles from the GreenLake there. >> And what both of us have written about this is that the gap that uh Hawktown has has calculated is this transition cost.
Yeah, like if I have to pay a year of Nutanix and I might save 15% might save 15%. >> That's a huge barrier for CFOs to get their head round. >> And HPE with this aggressive pricing It is an exciting conference. It is one of my favorite conferences. I think the only thing that they don't have here, they have Cray but they don't have a mainframe. >> Yeah, I mean we talked The other thing was quantum. We're quantum adjacent.
Do we see them buying IonQ or D-Wave, you know, one of these sort of smaller but public >> Quality software focused companies that have the software bits. And HPE obviously has the hardware capabilities in lab. Antonio talked about what they're what they've been doing in lab with hybrid with Intel and other traditional x86 manufacturers to bring together quantum and traditional x86 compute which is going to be the future, right? >> Well, there's a really strong sort of sidecar with Cray and you know, if you were using IBM or anybody Honeywell or any of the other sort of quantum providers, there's a really strong story for Cray with a high HPC alongside that.
And Antonio started to draw and pencil in that strategy to today on the keynote. >> And then my last comment on Antonio, easily the one CEO that knows the most about his product portfolio and he's got that. He has He knows exactly where Juniper missed, you know, the big thing that we missed in this conversation is missed. They brought that to the data center which has been a big ask from customers to bring Mist AI to data center the data center control plane.
He He how Cray fits in into the conversation. >> I think what he say is what he trades off in sort of executive razzmatazz, he gains us with depth and product knowledge. And I mean, this is a one-hour, once-a-year event. So, do we want that extra 10% of kind of razzmatazz, or do we want him every day, 365 days a year, executing at the product roadmap level? >> He understands the business. He understands how each one fits. And for the stuff that's not central to the business, they get it out of there.
He's an efficient CEO. I I I have nothing but strong words for his operation and for >> I think I'm looking forward to seeing Fidelma and Ramy over the next couple of days. They're going to be crucial to paint some of the sort of in between the lines that Antonio laid out and his keynote. >> Unfortunately, I don't have any sessions with Fidelma, which is one of my favorite, because when you ask her questions, she's got to like hack, right? She'll say she comes dumb.
Or she'll say that she comes straight at it, and then she's a fun interview. >> When we see you in the analyst truck, man? >> You know what? I'm doing my influencer thing here this week. I'm I'm just happy to be back at one of my favorite conferences. Very much happy to run into one of my best friends in the industry, Steven Dickens. You know what? Check us out. Hyperframe Research. You'll be having research notes coming out.
You'll be having I've already seen Ron, and I'm sure he has plenty of networking stuff to talk about. And now I'll be talking about my cloud and AI stuff. com. com. At some point, my friend, we'll do a combined other than just videos, we'll do some combined research together. So, I'll see you guys later. >> Thanks a lot, guys.
