In a world increasingly captivated by the potential of generative artificial intelligence, the direction tech giants are charting for the future is becoming more clear, more focused and undoubtedly more competitive.

During this week’s HPE Discover event, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. unveiled its strategic maneuvers in this space. And several intriguing aspects of HPE’s GenAI initiative stood out to theCUBE’s Day 2 keynote analyst panel.

“This is a public cloud service of offering generative AI,” said Bob O’Donnell (pictured, second from left), chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. “That’s not necessarily what you would expect HPE to do. More important is the manner with which they’re offering it … the supercomputing stuff. They have that heritage — they bought Cray in 2019. They’ve got this history of working with supercomputing.”

O’Donnell spoke theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante, Lisa Martin and Rob Strechay at HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They dissected HPE’s approach to entering the GenAI market, its unique differentiators and how it intends to redefine the hybrid multicloud narrative. (* Disclosure below.)

Capitalizing on supercomputing: HPE’s unique GenAI strategy

HPE’s approach to GenAI capitalizes on the advanced physical architecture and superior speed of supercomputers, leading to improved performance and better price performance. Key to the company’s approach is its robust supercomputer software and the improved reliability of job completion with supercomputing.

“Real-world tests will be the ultimate benchmark for how that difference works. But it’s an intriguing story, and it certainly differentiates them from everybody else out there,” O’Donnell said.

HPE’s move into the GenAI space is interesting, especially its Slingshot interconnect strategy, which redefines performance for HPC clusters, and its potential to bring new total addressable market to the company, the analysts pointed out.

“They were looking at new personas, and the fact they’re out there running data scientist-based marketing groups and having these discussions … I think they’re definitely leaning into the LLM space,” Strechay said.

HPE’s positioning in the GenAI market is distinctive, with a specific focus on supercomputing as a service, which the analysts believe differentiates them from competitors.

“This was kind of downplayed, but really what they developed was supercomputing as a service. But they didn’t launch that,” O’Donnell said. “What they launched was an application sitting on top of supercomputing as a service.”

The analysts also discussed HPE’s messaging around its hybrid by design approach, which contrasts with Dell’s hybrid by default strategy. The adoption of hybrid cloud technology is often accidental, but HPE aims to make it intentional and structured.

“The reality is it’s a hybrid multicloud world, and people are all excited about GenAI,” O’Donnell stated. “How do we get hybrid, multicloud, GenAI all together in one place and yet do it in a unique twist.”

Navigating the hybrid multicloud world is a challenge everyone is grappling with, and HPE’s unique approach could provide a competitive edge, the analysts concluded.

“Everybody is trying to figure out sort of the easy button for GenAI,” O’Donnell added. “The real trick is, if I am an enterprise, I have this base of data; how do I actually import that data and actually train from that? How hard is that to do? What sort of skillsets do I need in-house to be able to do this? That’s a huge question mark.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover:

(* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Intel Corp. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE