Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, there’s been no question that we have entered into the Age of AI. The possibilities Generative AI affords to accelerating innovation is too compelling to ignore. But ever since then, enterprises have struggled with how to implement AI solutions. Their expense and complexity have proven to be significant barriers to entry.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NVIDIA took a bold step forward at HPE Discover 2024, making several important announcements that aim to enable enterprise AI adoption. With purpose-built AI solutions delivered through HPE GreenLake cloud that combine the technical prowess of these two companies, they will introduce to the market a simplicity of experience that just may jump start mass corporate AI adoption.

HPE GreenLake delivers a portfolio of cloud services and as-a-service solutions across locations, from the edge to the data center and to the cloud, with simple, agile, and secure hybrid multicloud management. It serves as the base for these solutions. Additional announcements related to the platform focused on offering customers new options for virtualization and providing cloud-type operations for highly regulated environments.

Leading the enterprise charge in AI

Solving for humanity with humanity

Focusing an important corporate event on artificial intelligence can be risky. Fear of the unknown is bound to be in the hearts and minds of attendees. But, as so many pointed out during the event, we have already entered the Age of AI. Isn’t it better that we now take the lead and focus on using AI for the betterment of humanity, setting appropriate guardrails in place, and helping drive its adoption in a positive way?

This was the bold leadership stance taken by the two leaders as HPE CEO Antoino Neri and NVIDEO founder and CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage in the Sphere at Las Vegas to open Discover 2024. Delivering the first keynote ever in this amazing venue, Antonio spoke of the hope and limitless possibilities AI could bring for renewable energy, medical breakthroughs, and revolutionized agriculture.

Accompanied by video emphasizing these points, Antonio broke the barrier and started the hard conversation. Imbuing hope, he did not shy away from mentioning the risks involved and was quick to point out how HPE has been preparing for AI for a very long time, developing the technology and guardrails to help make AI a positive force for our planet.

Accelerating enterprise GenAI adoption

During the keynote, Antonio and Jensen jointly announced the launch of NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE, a comprehensive portfolio of co-developed AI solutions designed to accelerate the adoption of generative AI in enterprises. The portfolio includes HPE Private Cloud AI, a turnkey solution that includes a complete infrastructure, software portfolio, and AI model library managed via HPE GreenLake. Delivering a “private AI in a box”, it offers enterprises a solution to accelerate their AI project deployment while ensuring their data remains under their control.

The foundation of the AI and data software stack integrated into this solution starts with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, which includes NVIDIA NIM™ inference microservices. HPE AI Essentials software adds a ready-to-run set of curated AI and data foundation tools with a unified control plane. The solution includes a fully integrated AI infrastructure stack with NVIDIA Spectrum-X™ Ethernet networking, HPE GreenLake for File Storage, and HPE ProLiant servers with support for NVIDIA L40S, NVIDIA H100 NVL Tensor Core GPUs and the NVIDIA GH200 NVL2 platform. In addition, OpsRamp's IT operations are integrated with HPE GreenLake cloud, HPE’s hybrid cloud platform designed to help organizations unlock the power of data and AI, with OpsRamp delivering observability and AIOps to all HPE products and services. Get additional details about the solution configurations in the press release.

The solution takes into account the gravity of data and its impact on AI and how private clouds can best serve enterprise AI solutions. Read more about the case for private clouds in AI deployment in this blog post, HPE Private Cloud AI: A strategic necessity for enterprises.

For more information on HPE Private Cloud AI and NVIDIA AI computing by HPE, please visit the HPE.com HPE Private Cloud AI home page.

Offering more choice

New KVM offered by HPE

As part of HPE’s desire to offer its customers “optionality”, HPE also announced its decision to enter the hypervisor market with its own open-source virtualization capability. Executive Vice President and CTO Fidelma Russo explained that the decision to release one was in response to partner and customer demand. Providing the new HPE KVM hypervisor virtualization capability provides customers and partners with a choice in the virtualization market. The market response has been quite positive, with numerous industry outlets picking up on the news, such as this article found in CRN.

Addressing regulated environments

HPE also announced that a significant effort being made to address the needs of highly secure and regulated environments with its new dedicated platform. For customers who have data residency and sovereignty requirements and are prohibited from connecting to the public internet or external networks, HPE GreenLake will be offering a fully disconnected/isolated private cloud management platform, allowing customers to consume HPE services in a cloud operating model. You can find more details about this offering in this blog post, Empowering regulated environments with HPE GreenLake cloud. More can be found on this solution, as well as other enhancements to HPE GreenLake cloud, in this article, What's new: Expanded platform capabilities of the HPE GreenLake cloud.

Summary

HPE Discover 2024 was truly an event unlike any other. Whether it was being in one of the 17,000 seats at the Sphere to take in Antonio’s keynote, walking the floor through HPE’s Innovation neighborhood, or interacting with an AI avatar of Antonio Neri himself, the experience was indeed memorable. To catch any of the replays of keynote sessions or interviews with the Cube, be sure to check out the YouTube video library.