Increasing complexity in the information technology world is leading companies such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. to focus its efforts on moving customers to a simpler place. Automation, artificial intelligence, and multicloud management tools are key elements in HPE’s approach to handling big data demands.

“You’ve got to make a lot of decisions to be able to organize around a pretty complex set of places, physical and virtual, where your data is going to lie,” said Patrick Osborne (pictured), vice president and general manager of big data and secondary storage at HPE. “We’ve been helping customers get off the complexity train and providing them with flexibility and elasticity.”

Osborne spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Boston, Massachusetts, to discuss the company’s focus on edge computing technologies, its multicloud management service, and an elastic platform for multitenant workloads. (* Disclosure below.)

Aruba supports edge computing

HPE’s concentration on the intelligent edge has become clearer following its acquisition of Aruba Networks for $3 billion in 2015. Aruba’s technology to enable connectivity for mobile and internet of things devices created new edge computing opportunities for HPE.

At the same time, HPE has been expanding its Edgeline converged systems portfolio to provide control and computing power at the edge. Earlier this month, the company announced new Edgeline servers to run workloads in Azure and SAP Hana at the edge.

“It’s been enabled by fantastic growth with our Aruba products in the networking space and our Edgeline systems to be able to take compute and get it as far out to the edge as possible,” Osborne said.

HPE has also been focused on simplifying the process of managing public cloud and on-premises infrastructures through OneSphere, its multicloud management service introduced in November.

“Most people are embracing a hybrid cloud model very quickly,” Osborne said. “We want to provide a very flexible, easy-to-deploy set of infrastructures for big data and AI workloads.”

HPE has developed a tool to help IT managers simplify the process of wrangling with the hybrid cloud. The HPE Elastic Platform for Analytics enables independent scaling of storage and compute using building blocks that can help run different workloads.

“When it comes to complex, multitenant workloads, what we try to do is take the mystery out of that for our customers,” Osborne said. “It’s not only a set of products; it’s reference architecture.”

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE