As reported by Chris Mellor, HPE recently announced Q1 2020 figures that show storage down 8% and servers down 15%. In light of these numbers, we look at HPE’s storage products, partners and overall strategy in the market.

HPE primary products are strong contenders, with XP8 for high-end/mainframe, 3PAR & Primera, Nimble and MSA. Outside of the main platforms, HPE has some data protection hardware and of course, tape.

To meet file and object storage needs, HPE partners with the likes of Qumulo, Scality, Weka and others. But finding details on these companies is hard. They’re not listed in any meaningful way through the HPE website.

How do these partnerships work? Does HPE simply introduce vendors to customers? Are products actively branded with HPE? Finally in this discussion, we look at Primera and how the transition from 3PAR has been managed. There’s lots to learn about moving from one platform to another and how that message is communicated to customers.

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Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:01:00 – HPE financials show Storage down 8%, servers 15%* 00:02:00 – HPE are a leader in the Gartner Primary Storage MQ * 00:02:40 – HPE’s primary storage portfolio, XP8, 3PAR, Primera, Nimble, MSA* 00:05:35 – HPE has always struggled with products in the NAS space* 00:06:45 – Is HCI a storage product? * 00:08:00 – Has HCI taken business from storage sales? * 00:09:25 – InfoSight is not a chargeable product – yet? * 00:11:00 – HPE has a wide storage partner ecosystem * 00:13:20 – What is the relationship between HPE and storage partners? * 00:15:15 – How are overlapping product solutions explained to customers? * 00:15:50 – What is the HPE partner strategy? * 00:18:55 – Could HPE brand partner products better? * 00:22:00 – Are there any product gaps in the portfolio? * 00:23:00 – HPE should acquire, but how would that process be managed? * 00:25:15 – Jeff Bezos – two products are better than none * 00:26:00 – What’s happening with Primera? * 00:29:55 – Conclusions – what have we learned? * 00:33:25 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #77 – HPE Performance Insights with Ivan Iannaccone* Soundbytes 004: Discussing HPE Storage at HPE Discover* HPE Primera – First impressions on the new storage platform* Why is HPE 3PAR not moving to NVMe SSDs (yet)?* Understanding HPE’s Storage Product Portfolio* Nimble, HPE and 20-Year Old Architectures

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