HPE Focuses on AI Agents and Declares War on VMware

In the last four years, the buzzword has been "artificial intelligence," and now HPE has joined the list of companies following the latest trends, continuously discussing "artificial intelligence agents" and "agent-based AI." At HPE Discover, the company's annual conference, the main announcements include the arrival of NVIDIA Vera processors in the HPE Private Cloud offering, the renewal of the HPE Networking offer with the integration of Juniper following its acquisition, and the launch of a rather aggressive policy to persuade companies to abandon VMware in favor of HPE VM Essentials.

HPE Bets Everything on Agent-Based AI and AI Agents

HPE's communication regarding the innovations presented at Discover is entirely focused on AI agents and agent-based AI, with every single aspect framed from this perspective. This signals how much HPE is betting that AI, in its agent form and as agents, will be particularly important in the business world.

And, as one would easily expect from a company that produces hardware for corporate data centers, HPE sees private cloud as a response to the evolving needs of AI for companies. The offering, called HPE Private Cloud AI, is a "factory for AI" created in collaboration with NVIDIA, now enriched with the new HPE ProLiant Compute DL394 Gen12 servers equipped with NVIDIA Vera CPUs, offering 88 cores and 176 threads with ARM architecture supported by up to 3TB of LPDDR5X memory in an air-cooled 2U chassis.

The Private Cloud AI offering will also see the arrival of new features: HPE Zerto, which controls access to systems and offers backup and recovery functionalities; secure local agent registration, allowing centralized approval of the use of models, skills, and tools; HPE Data Fabric Software, which expands data availability through support for MCP and Apache Airflow.

Speaking of AI, HPE is also looking at networking, one of the perhaps lesser-discussed aspects of the revolution occurring in data centers. The acquisition of Juniper has equipped HPE with powerful tools (ironically based on AI) to manage networks, and these are exactly where new developments are coming: the Mist AIOps platform now also supports HPE Networking CX switches, which can be managed in an automated, "zero-touch" manner, and there is support for automated management functionalities via Marvis (the AI agent developed by Juniper) in HPE Aruba Central. This latter aspect marks the beginning of the integration of the offerings between Juniper and HPE Aruba, which will take time to be completed.

New hardware is also coming: the new Juniper QFX switches are specifically designed for clusters used for inference and aim to reduce network bottlenecks, thereby improving infrastructure efficiency; these switches can be managed via HPE Networking Data Center Director.

Speaking of integration, HPE emphasizes that it possesses an offering that includes all elements of the data center and has thus announced the integration between HPE Mist Networking Data Center Assurance and HPE Compute Ops Management on one side and GreenLake on the other, which it claims "reduces tool proliferation." If you got lost in the plethora of services and products, take solace, as we have too; a consolidation of the offering can only help make things clearer.

Not Just AI: HPE Sets Sights on VMware

Perhaps the most unexpected announcement from HPE concerns its aggressive policy toward companies looking to refuge from VMware. Last year, HPE announced the launch of VM Essentials, a virtualization platform that effectively competes with VMware and which, in fact, the company describes as an alternative to Broadcom's offering. The latest evolution of this offering is at least surprising; HPE has announced that it will offer VM Essentials for free for the first year to companies that choose to migrate from VMware.

Not only that: support for HPE Zerto, software used for managing backup and recovery, will also be included for $1. A year of free software usage does not make a difference in setting a long-term strategy, but it can help companies test VM Essentials to see if it meets their needs.

HPE therefore seems determined to capture market shares from Broadcom, or at least sees a significant opportunity to position itself as a provider of vertically integrated solutions (from hardware, to hypervisor, to backup and network management software) at a time when, more than ever, the market appears to be flexible and ready to embrace new solutions.