The hybrid cloud offers the potential for security compliance, design, governance and performance in information technology, where customers can pick and choose their services. But hybrid IT is not your average experience in data transformation — it’s more about providing the right fit for the organization and what it wants to achieve, according to Parvesh Sethi (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of global client services, Pointnext, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

“Hybrid IT is not just the infrastructure cloud. You really have to take a look at the full spectrum of the services … to be delivered. It could be as a service provider … subscribing to a platform, and hosting on-prem, off-prem, private dedicated infrastructure, or public cloud,” Sethi said.

HPE conducts more than 10,000 client engagements a year, and developing a workload strategy for clients is key to preparing the right fit for the hybrid IT environment, according to Sethi, who spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover EU event conference in Madrid. Sethi discussed how understanding the alignment of operations and IT helps HPE clients reach their data and business goals. (* Disclosure below.)

Aligning workload strategy

HPE made significant strides to boosting its client services during 2017. In fact, the company is holding steady at the number 2 position within the enterprise storage systems market, at 20.3 percent — behind Dell Inc., which accounts for 21.5 percent of spending, according to International Data Corp.

HPE’s acquisition of Cloud Technology Partners Inc. in September 2017 and the unveiling of HPE OneSphere in November 2017 has boosted HPE’s cloud consulting expertise, according to Sethi. OneSphere, a multicloud management solution, provides a unified experience across public clouds, on-premises private clouds and software-defined infrastructure. Through its software as a service portal, OneSphere provides customers access to a pool of IT resources that spans the public cloud services they subscribe to, as well as their on-premises environments.

“They [CTP] are the premier partner to AWS and the premiere partner to Google, silver partner to Microsoft Azure, and so having that kind of credibility and the recognition in the U.S. and North America certainly gives us more credibility with our partners,” Sethi said.

The tools and tactics HPE uses to help guide clients to hybrid IT include workshops, assessments and performance criteria. The company uses a Unified Transitional Framework to take clients through the hybrid cloud journey. Currently, more than 70 percent of HPE’s clients aren’t using the full potential of hybrid IT because of “lack of focus on management of change” and organizational incompetencies that create a barrier to transformation, S­­ethi explained.

“We want to make sure that as part of the UTF framework, IT is just one of the main principles. And of the other domains, management of change is one of the key elements that we see, which is common across all the client base we talk to,” Sethi concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover EU event. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE