“Majority of Businesses will have All-Flash Data Center in Five Years”

In a brief conversation, Vikram K, Senior Director, Data Center and Hybrid Cloud, HPE India, told Amit Singh why flash will become critical for businesses and how AI and HPC will play an important role in digital transformation in 2018

What are the technologies which will be in high demand in 2018 and why?

The adoption of flash storage will continue to gain pace, with a majority of businesses predicting that they will have an all-flash data center within the next five years. As flash permeates the data center it has become critical for companies to move beyond the array that is from predictive analytics to data protection to investment strategies. Additionally, not just large enterprises but smaller organizations too will adopt flash as prices reduce. Simultaneously, IT teams will seek a deeper integration across servers, storage, networks, and automation tools to maximize value from investments.

We will also see AI coupled with HPC to play an increasingly important role in digital transformation. These technologies will enable businesses to leverage modeling, simulation and deep learning to drive business innovation in areas like financial trading; computer-aided design and engineering; video surveillance and text analytics. As a result, adoption of advanced AI techniques such as deep learning will increase across various sectors including financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, energy, government and retail.

HPE is also committed to bring memory-driven computing technologies to the marketplace as we believe memory will replace the processor at the center of all technologies including data center, edge, micro-systems, and supercomputers. This move will benefit various areas of computing such as analytics, AI, and machine learning. We will continue to advance memory-driven computing through scaled prototypes and technologies and also bring component technologies into next-generation products, creating advanced solutions for customers seeking real-time insights.

Recently, we unveiled HPE Superdome Flex, the world’s most scalable and modular in-memory computing platform. This platform enables enterprises of any size to process and analyze massive amounts of data and turn it into real-time business insights. In fact, Stephen Hawking’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology will leverage HPE Superdome Flex to search for clues that could unlock the secrets of the early universe.

How is edge computing changing the IT landscape of the businesses?

With the proliferation of IoT devices generating petabytes of data each day, organizations across sectors are challenged to process and analyze the resultant data in real-time. This trend can pose a challenge for businesses leveraging industrial IoT, such as oil and gas, manufacturing and telecommunications, who require to harness data in remote environments to drive timely business decisions.

Until now, the remote data would have to be transported to a data center or cloud for analysis, which can be a slow, risky and inefficient process. To enable customers to collect and analyze critical, heavy-duty data analytics and insights at the edge, we unveiled the industry’s first converged systems for IoT – the HPE Edgeline EL1000 and Edgeline EL4000. These systems integrate compute, storage, data capture, control and enterprise-class systems and device management built to thrive in hardened environments and handle shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures.

How are you enabling customers to enhance decision making and remake customer experience through AI?

Today’s organizations can no longer afford any disruptions or delays to their applications as these are increasingly driving the business. This makes it necessary for companies to move towards a self-managing IT model. However, the complexity of infrastructure causes an app-data gap that impacts businesses and wastes time.

To address these challenges, we recently enhanced HPE InfoSight, our industry-leading predictive analytics platform, with a new AI recommendation engine to offer an autonomous data center experience for our customers. This self-healing data center solution can preemptively advise businesses on how to avoid issues, improve performance, and optimize available resources. As a result, the businesses’ IT functions can spend more time on projects that add value to the business rather than on troubleshooting issues.