Once upon a time, not so long ago, a team of innovators at Cisco Systems Inc. unified compute, network, storage and virtualization. Now, that same team is putting the focus on innovation for cloud infrastructure.

“The technology and the innovation that Pensando brings to the market is unlike anything else that’s available today, that anybody else can do,” said Steve Hershkowitz (pictured), vice president and general manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

Hershkowitz spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event. They discussed HPE’s partnership with Pensando, how Pensando’s solutions fit into the HPE product line, and some customer use-case examples. (* Disclosure below.)

HPE and Pensando locked in on combined roadmap

HPE is evolving to become “absolutely the edge to cloud platform-as-a-service company,” Hershkowitz stated. And Pensando is the key behind helping HPE’s legacy customers move to distributed services in the cloud.

“This solution combined with what HPE has the ability to deliver and support will absolutely help our customers simplify their environments, reduce a lot of operational complexity, thereby reducing significant cost as they look to rearchitect and build their next-generation data-center networks,” Hershkowitz said. It will also improve security, reduce risk, and “exponentially improve their application performance,” he added.

The Pensando and HPE partnership is a step deeper than normal cooperative relationships, with departments within the companies working together on every level, according to Hershkowitz. “When you hear [Pensando’s chairman John Chambers and HPE CEO Antonio Neri] speak, they talk about being partners for life,” he stated. “We are completely locked and aligned on the combined roadmap.”

Pensando’s solutions will be available under HPE’s GreenLake information technology-as-a-service offering, and the company is also building “a whole host of differentiated services” around the Pensando distributed services platform, according to Hershkowitz. “Things like professional services, training services, security assessment … we’ll be able to bring those to our customers in the form of services that they can use as they look to migrate and modernize these legacy networks,” he stated.

Attendees at the upcoming HP Discover Virtual Experience 2020, will be able to gain firsthand experience of these new services and edge solutions, giving them the help they need to “make their data-center networks look a lot more like what the hyperscalers have built, but only a lot better and a lot faster and a lot more secure,” Hershkowitz concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Future Proof Your Enterprise event. Neither Pensando Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE