Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri says that the initial version of Dell’s Apex as-a-service portfolio is essentially a VMware offering, and does not bring as broad of a selection of as-a-service solutions as HPE’s GreenLake offering.
HPE GreenLake, which offers an as-a-service, pay-per-use model for consumption of on-premises infrastructure, debuted in mid-2018, while Dell Apex launched into general availability in May.
When asked by Burke what the difference is between Dell Apex and HPE GreenLake, Neri said that Dell Apex is “only one thing.”
“In fact, the entire experience that you see in the early version of it is VMware—it’s not Dell,” Neri said. “And so, what they’re doing is trying to build around the VMware control plane—all the analytics and the metering and so forth. But they are focused on one thing and one thing only, which is simplicity. But they’re not having the sophistication of a broad portfolio.”
By contrast, “when we think about edge to cloud, we think about everything the customer needs around connectivity, cloud and data—not just one thing,” Neri said.
In a statement provided to CRN US by email on Tuesday, Dell said, “we’re focused on our customers, partners and Dell Technologies’ business, and we like the hand we hold.”
CRN US spoke to several US-based HPE partners who said that GreenLake brings some key differentiators.
Brandon Lockhart, director of emerging technologies at Iron Bow Technologies, an HPE Platinum Partner based in Herndon, Va., said that GreenLake is “the most comprehensive consumption model” currently available for on-prem infrastructure.
“When you look at HPE GreenLake, that could be your data center, your edge, your compute platform, your storage platform, your backup platform. So it’s kind of encompassing everything,” Lockhart said. “Being able to grab them from one vendor and keep up to date with all those technologies is where the benefit is over the other programs out there.”
Neri said on Tuesday that the innovation pace is not expected to slow down anytime soon, as “GreenLake is the future of HPE … And I think it’s the future for our partners too.”
For HPE’s fiscal third quarter, ended July 31, the company posted strong GreenLake results with a 46-percent increase in as-a-service orders.
Still, Neri said he believes GreenLake can grow “way faster.” To help accelerate the growth, Neri said he is personally leading an effort to boost the partner and customer experience around GreenLake, including improving the sales process and speeding up deals.
“We’ve got to complete these transitions—particularly on the process side, pricing side, and making it frictionless,” he said.