Summary: HPE rolled out a new managed services portfolio for the Microsoft Azure cloud. It comes shortly after HPE confirmed its partnership with Microsoft for Azure Stack that is slated for availability next year.
Details: HPE will help customers with design, deployment and migration to Azure along with ongoing support and managed services. The service also includes security, backup and DR, configuration management and capacity planning. A few months back, HPE partnered with Microsoft and introduced managed services for on-premise deployments of Azure stack and consulting for organizations that want to deploy hybrid scenarios (a combination of on-premise or cloud-based environments). The Azure Stack environments will run on the HP ProLiant DL380 server and use the management platform HPE Operations Bridge. HPE is also offering the hybrid services to service providers.
Angle: HPE made a well-documented play in the cloud market that did not meet with success. To its credit, it saw the writing on the wall and is pivoting to the managed third party model as quickly as it can. The service provider strategy is not getting as much attention, but could have some potential. There are plenty of MSPs and SIs that HP works with that aren’t yet enabled for cloud, but are looking for help. HPE presents a relatively turnkey solution. The big challenge is the operation and management capabilities. It is unclear if HPE is getting involved here, or if it just sticking to supplying technology, but that is what favours end-to-end wholesale cloud providers.