Monetization of data and making decisions from data are among needs driving a requirement by organizations to get to grips with what’s happening across their entire environment.

That’s coupled, though, with a desire to get out of physical data center management, according to one Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. executive. HPE reckons the way to approach the puzzle is to provide a cloud-like experience for businesses in their own data center or co-location, or at the edge.

“’We don’t want to run our data center anymore,’” said Keith White (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of HPE GreenLake at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., quoting plastics manufacturer LyondellBasell Industries N.V., an HPE customer.

White says most customers are telling him they want to concentrate on other things. “’Let me free up resources to go focus on things that really can drive additional value for our customers instead of keeping the lights on, patching [servers],’” he said they routinely tell him.

White spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover event. They discussed how GreenLake was positioning itself in the exploding cloud services market. (* Disclosure below.)

As-a-service model

Simplifying IT and freeing up resources are principal reasons behind the abandonment of data center management and a shift to as-a-service, according to White. “What’s happening is customers are no longer trying to buy component parts. We’re running the data center for them now,” White said.

That’s a different model from traditional cloud, and it’s what differentiates GreenLake from many others, including upstart hybrids, White added.

“It’s not so much about what are the speeds and feeds and this and that?” he said. Rather, the idea is more about allowing the customer to focus on business growth. Yet it still allows for apps and data on-premises. “Give me that [cloud] experience on-prem,” he said.

Containers-as-a-service, bare metal-as-a-service and machine learning operations can all be incorporated, “all managed for me,” White said. Plus, it can be all on top of other cloud solutions, like Azure, AWS and others “and govern that hybrid estate.” That’s hybrid that the enterprise has already got going. Control and security are two additional must-haves that are prompting this shift, he added.

Optimization

Automation plays a big part in making it all work. It helps with the optimizing and understanding of the customer environment, according to White. In particular, it allows for multiple workloads to be run at the same time. GreenLake Lighthouse is a new product geared toward the multiple workloads functioning simultaneously idea that White mentioned.

As an example of an operation where machine learning speeds up capabilities, White references a company in the medical diagnostics field that runs GreenLake. HPE is announcing a machine learning product for GreenLake at the Discover event this year, along with SAP private cloud integration and a secure virtual desktop product.

Costs

Pay-per-use allows for freeing up of capital, according to White. That includes not having to pay to get data out, as is the case with much cloud. GreenLake charges for customers are at “a much lower cost than what it would cost them to do that in the cloud,” he added.

Along with technology modernization in the enterprise comes a desire to gain environmental savings, according to White. “They have also been able to drop their carbon footprint,” he said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither HPE, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE