If numbers tell the story, then the current narrative for Hewlett Packard Enterprise Inc. appears to be a tale of renewal and growth after a rocky stretch of revenue results over the past five years.

The company’s second quarter fiscal earnings reported this month included a return to revenue growth for the first time since 2018 and double-digit growth for the first time since 2015 when the firm split into two separate entities.

In addition to seeing its as-a-service pivot deliver a 40% rise in consumption-based services orders from one year ago, HPE also noted that Intelligent Edge revenue was up 17% from 2020. This spells potentially good news for HPE in the long-term because it has made big bets in both of these areas as part of its enterprise strategy.

HPE executives, customers, technology partners and industry analysts will discuss news and announcements surrounding the next wave of digital transformation during theCUBE’s coverage of “HPE Discover 2021: The Edge-to-Cloud Conference,” June 22-24.

Coverage will include interviews with HPE’s Antonio Neri, chief executive officer; Rashmi Kumar, chief information officer; and Arwa Kaddoura, vice president of worldwide sales and GTM Lead, HPE GreenLake Cloud Services. Plus, theCUBE will also speak with David Logan, VP, CTO Office at Aruba; David Harvey, VP of strategic alliances at Veeam; Scott Buchanan, VP of marketing at VMware, and Umashankar Lakshmipathy, senior VP and regional head, EMEA, for Infosys. (* Disclosure below.)

A bet on the edge

HPE’s focus on the edge as a key part of its overall business strategy was methodically outlined at its annual conference five years ago by current CEO Antonio Neri, who was HPE’s executive VP and general manager of the company’s Enterprise Group at the time.

“Now we are making a new bet, which is the edge,” said Neri, during an interview with theCUBE during Discover in 2016. “It’s not about connecting devices to the network edge, but to analyze data at the edge with the right compute, the right connectivity and the right big data analytics.”

A case could be made that HPE made its big bet on the edge a year earlier when it acquired Aruba Networks Inc. in 2015 for $3 billion. Aruba, a provider of SD-WAN solutions that leverage AI to automate and secure the network from edge to cloud has been central to HPE’s strategy for building the Intelligent Edge.

HPE defines the Intelligent Edge as analysis and solution development at sites where the data is generated. The goal is to reduce latency, cost and security risk while improving business efficiency.

Aruba’s campus networking and wireless LAN products offer the promise of future growth for HPE as 5G and Wi-Fi 6 technologies become more fully deployed globally. HPE’s business decisions around the Intelligent Edge reflect the company’s interest in positioning itself in what is likely to be a highly competitive field.

“It gives them first-mover advantage from my perspective with a keen focus on building out a robust ecosystem of partnerships,” said Will Townsend, senior analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, in an interview with theCUBE. “As the space gets crowded with fast followers, the company will have to continue to innovate to stay ahead.”

Leveraging Ezmeral and GreenLake

In addition to Aruba, HPE has been gradually unveiling other facets of its edge-to-cloud approach. The company introduced HPE Ezmeral one year ago as its edge to cloud software portfolio, with the capability to deploy and manage containerized apps across any infrastructure.

In March, HPE announced updates for its Ezmeral portfolio, which included Data Fabric as a standalone offering that spans multiple edge sites, clouds and hybrid environments.

HPE’s as-a-service GreenLake solution, which brings cloudlike flexibility to datacenters, has helped fuel customer interest in an edge-to-cloud consumption model. Earlier this year, the company reported its highest quarter of sales for GreenLake, an indication that HPE’s edge bet is starting to pay off.

“With the acceleration to digitization, HPE should continue to do well, and its enterprise business is undervalued,” said Scott Raynovich, founder and principal analyst at Futuriom, in an interview with theCUBE. “Its Intelligent Edge division is well-positioned to take part in growing enterprise networking and security needs, including Wi-Fi, SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), and SD-WAN.”

The wave that HPE is currently riding can be seen in the customer experiences of its channel partners. One such firm – Nth Generation Computing Inc. – has seen the distributed edge become a key priority for many enterprises in 2021.

“Customers are putting workloads where it makes sense for them,” said Dan Molina, chief technology officer at Nth Generation Computing, in a recent interview. “Some workloads are not suitable for the cloud, such as IoT where a lot of devices are collecting a lot of data. People want to process that data and need to do it at the edge. HPE GreenLake makes managing the edge easier.”

Supercomputer in space

Processing data at the edge has become the norm for many enterprises, where use cases range from oil platforms and manufacturing floors to patient monitoring and autonomous vehicles. But how does this work in an orbiting spaceship 250 miles above the surface of Earth?

Scientists are about to find out. HPE, in partnership with Microsoft and NASA, delivered a high-performance computer to the International Space Station in February. The Spaceborne Computer-2 ingests and processes data from satellites and cameras in real time. It is also designed to eliminate lag time that has hindered astronauts in sending data back to Earth.

“It’s like going from iPhone 1 to iPhone 12,” said Mark Fernandez, HPE’s principal investigator for Spaceborne Computer-2, in an interview about the space project. “There isn’t anything onboard the space station that has nearly the compute capability that we do.”

While the orbiting ISS may currently offer the ultimate edge case for HPE’s high-performance computer, there is a chance that it may one day be eclipsed by an even more significant challenge: sending a supercomputer 35 million miles away for data processing on Mars.

“I’ve got my eyes on the moon and Mars,” Fernandez said. “We’ve got to help humanity make it on those missions, succeed in their goals, and return safely. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it without modern supercomputers and GPU-enabled edge systems.”

Livestream of HPE Discover

HPE Discover is a livestream event, with additional interviews to be broadcasted on theCUBE. You can register for free here to access the live event. Plus, you can watch theCUBE interviews here live and on demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s live coverage of HPE Discover, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during HPE Discover include Guido Appenzeller, chief technology officer of Data Platforms Group at Intel; Jason Abrahamson, director of infrastructure engineering at The Walt Disney Co.; Terry Richardson, North American channel chief for AMD; and David Harvey, vice president of strategic alliances at Veeam.

TheCUBE will also speak with HPE’s Antonio Neri, CEO; Rashmi Kumar, senior VP and chief information officer; Omer Asad, VP and general manager of primary storage and data management services; Sandeep Singh, VP of storage marketing; Dr. Eng Lim Goh, VP and CTO of high-performance computing and AI; and Kirk Bresniker, chief architect, fellow and VP.

Stay tuned for a complete list of speakers.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE