The growing focus on automation is shifting the industry’s attention away from infrastructure to the increasingly sophisticated software running on top, but the underlying building blocks remain as important as ever, according to Hewlett-Packard Co. converged systems boss Brent Allen. The executive appeared on theCUBE for the first time at the company’s recent product event in Barcelona to share his insider’s perspective on how hardware needs to fit into the future of the data center.

“Customers see the opportunity enabled through greater and greater levels of orchestration and automation, but all too often, not enough attention is being paid to the actual infrastructure supporting the software,” Allen told hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante. “You have to have both pieces of that.” HP is directing its converged infrastructure strategy accordingly, placing as big of an emphasis on individual components as on the big picture of reducing the amount of manual work involved in managing infrastructure.

The company offers its integrated appliances in multiple configurations tailored for different requirements, whether it’s compatibility with existing networking devices or the freedom to spread out data over multiple types of media for more efficient access. That variety is compressed into standardized modules that Allen said provides a common foundation for organizations to build upon as their needs evolve with time.

Customers can start with the deployment of a simple service portal to simplify the provisioning of new capabilities for end-users and progress to the kind of automation capabilities typically found in major public clouds, he said, all on the same platform. That commonality is meant to help smoothe enterprises’ journey towards achieving the level of automation promised with the software-defined data center, a long and bumpy road that Allen argued has to be addressed one step at a time.

“We believe that by simplifying all those pieces, by taking more and more of the brunt of the work from the customers, we’re able to help ease that transition,” he elaborated. “But it does take time,” which why HP is positioning its portfolio in a way that accommodates pit stops along the path to fully programmable infrastructure.

For mid-sized companies with limited budgets but many of the same operational considerations as their larger enterprise peers, the vendor is offering the ConvergedSystem 200-HC, which Allen said makes its automation capabilities available in a compact package the size of a desktop tower. Organizations with more advanced requirements are accommodated as well with larger models that can scale to multiple racks, freedom of choice that he said sets HP apart from the competition. Underlying the whole value proposition is a focus on the entire stack, the hardware as well as the software.

“The software is always gonna be there, but it’s going to sit on top of something; you can’t run software on nothing,” Allen summarized. “The management of the infrastructure is critical. It’s what keeps the customers up and running, getting them all those things that allow them to have a high-availability environment inside their data centers.”

Watch the full interview (26:01)