Whether the goal is elevating customer experiences, promoting operational efficiencies, or delivering new products and services, no one partner or platform can cover all the bases and serve as the central clearinghouse for fueling data insights that drive business success.
To fully capitalize on data-first modernization, organizations need secure access to data spread across the IT landscape. Data is in constant flux, due to exponential growth, varied formats and structure, and the velocity at which it is being generated. Data is also highly distributed across centralized on-premises data warehouses, cloud-based data lakes, and long-standing mission-critical business systems such as for enterprise resource planning (ERP). The breadth and depth of the enterprise data estate only increase management complexity and make it difficult to leverage the data estate’s true value.
Organizations must have seamless visibility and secure access to data wherever it might reside, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Given the current regulatory climate, some data must remain on-premises or be tied to specific systems. This puts the burden on companies to execute an approach that balances the need for frictionless visibility and secure access without infringing on compliance requirements.
That’s where an open platform with a large independent software vendor (ISV) ecosystem holds promise in the world of hybrid, multicloud IT. Access to a rich ISV ecosystem of applications and services can help enterprises unify and extract value from data wherever it resides and throughout its entire life cycle, whether that means delivering secure backup-and-recovery capabilities or serving up analytics capabilities aimed at improving both day-to-day and strategic decision-making. A platform that cultivates an open and active ISV ecosystem gives customers greater choice and flexibility in selecting the tools and services that cater to their specific requirements, making it possible to meet their intended business goals. By creating a collaborative environment, the customer also gains a simpler experience which speeds time to value.
“If you have your data in different tools, based on a private cloud or public cloud, you’re going to run into barriers,” notes Pat Reardon, director, HPE GreenLake ISV ecosystem. “Managing those environments separately is inefficient and creates data silos that make it hard to advance a singular data strategy. One of the benefits of a robust ISV ecosystem is that it’s scalable across hybrid and multicloud and delivers a seamless experience for customers.”
An ISV ecosystem at work
Most foundational IT platforms tout access to an ISV ecosystem, but they are not all the same. Platforms that deliver access to an array of core applications and services that have been vetted and certified to run optimally in that particular environment can eliminate a lot of the guesswork and heavy lifting for IT, making deployment far more seamless.
“Validating a solution eliminates the burden on customers to piecemeal their own approach,” Reardon explains. “They can always be customized, but certifying that these [ISV] solutions are enterprise-grade for what they are trying to accomplish and then standing behind it — that is key.”
Other things to consider when evaluating a platform and related ISV ecosystem:
Simplified customer experience. With core workloads and critical data distributed across a hybrid environment — some in cloud systems, in colocation facilities, and/or on-premises — it’s important to mask complexities to give users a seamless and holistic experience. The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform delivers the convenience and pay-as-you-go flexibility of the public cloud with the privacy, performance, and control of your own environment — which can span data centers, cloud, and edge for its entire ISV ecosystem. This ensures a cohesive and consistent cloud experience for users, no matter where data resides, while decreasing the time-to-insights required for a data-first advantage.
Access to common workflows. An expansive ISV ecosystem isn’t useful for a data-first business if the supported applications and services don’t address data management and analytics processes, among other critical workflows. HPE GreenLake opens the door to a rich ISV ecosystem that spans data protection, database, storage, mainstream business applications, and core enterprise platforms such as SAP ERP.
For example, on the data protection and disaster recovery front, the HPE GreenLake Marketplace encompasses leading solutions from Veeam, Qumulo, and Commvault, and in the database and analytics category, certified ISV partners include Nutanix, Splunk, and EDB Postgres, among others. There are also capabilities to seamlessly maximize and manage data in SAP ERP. Although the HPE GreenLake Marketplace currently serves up an ISV partner catalog, the plan is to deliver click-to-deploy functionality for all certified ISV solutions, enabling scalability and ease of consumption by directly delivering software without physical deployment of a new stack. “Whether it’s backup or AI, HPE GreenLake addresses common workloads as part of the ecosystem,” Reardon explains. “This helps customers considering the as-a-service model have the confidence that commonly needed workloads will run in a hybrid environment.”
Hardened SLAs and one venue for support. Beyond accessibility, ease of support and simplified service-level agreements (SLAs) are optimal when you’re considering an extensible platform as part of a data-first business strategy. HPE GreenLake enables you to easily deploy resources; view your costs; and forecast capacity, which extends to its certified ISV ecosystem. This ensures that costs are based on the actual usage of the selected services and are delivered to meet specified service-level targets and other relevant metrics. The HPE GreenLake IT ecosystem model also ensures that support services are integrated — another important salvo in reducing silos along with IT complexity. “Not all data can be in the public cloud, but customers want the experience of public cloud, just on their own terms,” Reardon says. “That’s where we come in. We can deliver an alternative means to accomplish the same thing when public cloud isn’t the best answer.”
In the end, the combination of a robust edge-to-cloud platform designed for your top workloads and an integrated ISV ecosystem translates into simplicity and accelerated deployment for customers. The result is that companies are free to tend to the needs of data-first business, not the complexities and challenges of IT.
For more information, visit https://www.hpe.com/us/en/greenlake/services.html.
