Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Definition

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is an American company that designs and sells servers, storage systems, networking gear, and hybrid-cloud software for data centers and enterprise IT departments. It was formed when the original Hewlett-Packard split its enterprise technology business from its personal-computer and printer business, and it now focuses on infrastructure that businesses use to run applications, store data, and connect networks rather than consumer devices.

Overview

HPE was created in 2015 when Hewlett-Packard divided itself into two independent companies: HP Inc., which kept the PC and printer lines, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which took over servers, storage, networking, and enterprise services. The split let each half focus on a distinct customer base, since selling laptops to consumers and selling rack-scale infrastructure to IT departments require very different sales motions, support models, and product cycles. HPE inherited decades of engineering from the original HP, including its ProLiant server line and its enterprise services division. Mechanically, HPE's business rests on a few product families. ProLiant and Superdome servers provide compute for data centers, ranging from standard rack units to high-end mission-critical systems. Storage comes through the Alletra and Nimble lines, which combine flash arrays with software for data protection and tiering. Aruba, acquired in 2015, supplies wired and wireless networking hardware for campuses and branch offices. HPE also runs GreenLake, a consumption-based platform that lets customers rent on-premises infrastructure with cloud-like billing and management, rather than buying hardware outright and managing capacity themselves. HPE sits among a small group of enterprise infrastructure vendors that includes Dell Technologies, Lenovo, and Cisco, each competing for the same data-center budgets. Where Dell leans on scale and a broad consumer-to-enterprise portfolio, and Cisco leans on networking and security, HPE differentiates through GreenLake's as-a-service model and through partnerships that bundle its hardware with software from companies like VMware and Nvidia for AI workloads. It is not a public cloud provider in the sense of AWS or Azure; instead it sells the physical and virtual infrastructure that IT teams deploy in their own data centers or colocation facilities, sometimes to build private or hybrid clouds that interconnect with public cloud services. In practice, enterprises buy HPE hardware and services when they need on-premises or hybrid infrastructure for regulatory, latency, or cost reasons that make full public-cloud migration impractical. A bank might run core transaction processing on ProLiant servers in its own data center while using public cloud for less sensitive workloads. HPE's professional services and support contracts matter here, since large infrastructure deployments require ongoing maintenance, firmware updates, and capacity planning that vendors like HPE are staffed to provide over multi-year contracts. The trade-off with HPE's model is that on-premises and hybrid infrastructure generally costs more to operate at small scale than renting equivalent capacity from a hyperscale cloud provider, and GreenLake's subscription pricing, while flexible, still requires long-term commitments to get favorable rates. Organizations with highly variable or bursty workloads, or without dedicated IT operations staff, often find pure public cloud simpler and cheaper. HPE tends to make the most sense for organizations with steady, predictable workloads, strict data-residency or compliance requirements, or existing capital investment in data-center facilities that they want to keep utilizing rather than abandon for a cloud-only strategy.

Key Features

• ProLiant and Superdome server lines for general-purpose and mission-critical compute
• Alletra and Nimble storage arrays with built-in data protection and tiering
• Aruba networking hardware for wired and wireless enterprise connectivity
• GreenLake consumption-based platform for cloud-like billing on owned infrastructure
• Hybrid-cloud management software spanning on-premises and public cloud resources
• Enterprise support and professional services contracts for large deployments
• Partnerships with Nvidia and VMware for AI and virtualization workloads
• Focus on regulated industries needing on-premises or hybrid data placement

Use Cases

Alternatives

Frequently Asked Questions

Related in AI Tools