As the enterprise embraces hybrid cloud, it must also come to understand the impact of hybrid storage.

In today’s world of enterprise computing, data is stored in many different environments — on-premises, in public clouds and private clouds. This means information technology vendors must ensure underlying storage architectures have an increasingly robust set of services close to where the data resides, for quicker access and reduced latency. Modern hybrid computing means moving cloud services to the data and not always moving data into the public cloud.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has been working on this issue, developing a software-driven, automated and workload-aware Composable Fabric and recently introducing a new storage platform called Primera.

“We have a single layer between the on-prem and off-prem resources that allows us to move data as needed depending on the application needs and user needs,” said Sundip Arora (pictured), director of North American storage and big data solutions at HPE. “It’s about applying the right performance level to the right set of applications. It’s the ability to understand which application is creating the data, allowing us how to understand how that data needs to be accessed, which in turn means we know where it needs to reside.”

Arora spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Boston, Massachusetts. Also included in this Digital Community Event was an interview with Wikibon analyst David Floyer (@dfloyer) who spoke with co-host Peter Burris (@plburris). Discussion focused on the use of automation tools in a hybrid storage strategy and the role of multiple HPE solutions to facilitate an easier-to-manage infrastructure. (* Disclosure below.)

Support through AIOps

The need for hybrid storage has placed vendors in a position where they must meet the need among enterprise customers for simplicity, in both an overall view of data resources and the ability to take action with that information.

“One of the key things vendors have to do is be able to learn from the usage by their customers across as broad a number as they can,” Floyer said. “Learn what works, what doesn’t work; learn so they can put automation into their own software.”

This is one of the paths that HPE has followed. HPE Primera, announced in June, is a new storage platform that leverages artificial intelligence from the company’s InfoSight solution.

“To get to a simpler support model we use AIOps,” Arora said. “InfoSight is a product that uses deep learning and machine learning algorithms to look at a wide net of call-home data from physical resources and then is able to take that data and make it actionable. It’s creating and closing automated support tickets without anybody having to pick up a phone and call IT support.”

Leveraging GreenLake

A simpler support model also involves being able to consume hybrid cloud services in an easy-to-use manner. HPE GreenLake is a consumption-based infrastructure service designed to be leveraged across the HPE portfolio, including products such as all-flash 3PAR StoreServ.

“For us, ease of use translates back to how to map to a simpler operating and support model,” Arora said. “The ability to use and consume data on demand, consume compute on demand, across the entire portfolio of products HPE has, essentially is what our GreenLake journey looks like.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither HPE nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE