HPE has been actively pursuing its edge compute, hybrid cloud and as-a-service strategies, all brought into sharp focus during HPE Discover 2021, which ran from June 22–24.

As part of its coverage of the event, theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, conducted over 20 interviews with HPE executives, partners, customers and analysts before and during the virtual conference. While many key themes were closely examined, there were a few topics discussed that deserve another look.

Here are five additional insights from the HPE Discover 2021 event. (* Disclosure below.)

1. New chip development is becoming part of the plan for non-semiconductor companies.

Through carefully planned announcements during Discover, HPE made it clear it has a strategy for silicon.

In June, HPE announced a Silicon-On-Demand feature as part of enhancements for GreenLake. By leveraging Intel Corp.’s Optane technology, HPE GreenLake users can gain processor core capacity with a few clicks. HPE also extended its ProLiant Server Systems portfolio through integration of the latest 3rd Gen EPYC processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

HPE has shown a distinct interest in chip startups as well. The company participated in the latest funding round earlier this year for Mythic Inc., which makes artificial intelligence chips for IoT devices. And HPE announced during Discover that proprietary chip startup Pensando Inc. will have its card installed on HPE servers.

HPE’s silicon-related activity highlights a trend worth watching as enterprise computing moves forward. Well-capitalized firms such as HPE, Amazon Web Services Inc. and Apple Inc. are diving into the custom chip world, which will add a new level of “coopetition” for existing chip providers.

“AWS has created no less than 15 semiconductors, with networking and Nitro, building out an edge that surrounded the general compute, and then you’ve got Apple,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, during an interview with theCUBE. “The industries on CPU started to stagnate when Intel had no competition. So, bring it on, this is going to be great for enterprise and customers too.”

2. CNCF security initiatives get a boost from HPE’s Project Aurora.

As part of its enhancements for HPE GreenLake during Discover, the company also announced Project Aurora as a foundation for cloud native, zero-trust security. The project is tailored to work with two of CNCF’s key initiatives – SPIFFE, or Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone, and SPIRE, or SPIFFE Runtime Environment.

These CNCF projects are viewed as two of the foundation’s top security initiatives. They provide a standard and tooling for establishing trust between software services by using a “dial tone” API across heterogeneous environments.

SPIFFE was originally conceived by Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda in 2016 as a way to support developers in building secure applications. HPE has become the lead contributor for these two CNCF projects, with the goal of building a chain of trust from the workload all the way to the silicon level.

“It was designed to provide a platform agnostic way to assign identity to anything that runs in a network,” said Sunil James, senior director for security engineering at HPE, during an interview with theCUBE. “What SPIFFE does is provide that mechanism so you can actually use frameworks like Project Aurora to verify the underpinning infrastructure on top of which software workloads run to be able to verify those SPIFFE identities even better than before.”

3. Self-healing IT offers potential protection against costly downtime.

A survey in 2020 found that the cost per hour of enterprise infrastructure downtime averaged $300,000 to $400,000. That can become an expensive proposition if the outage lasts half a day or more.

Data points such as these provide reason enough for organizations to seek solutions that dramatically lessen the chance of downtime occurring, giving rise to technologies for self-healing IT. One of the leaders in self-healing IT is Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., which was recently recognized for its role in this growing field.

TCS provides self-healing IT through its AI-driven Cognix, a collaboration suite designed to accelerate digital transformation using an ecosystem of pre-fashioned solutions. Self-healing infrastructure has attracted the attention of major cloud native players such as Red Hat Inc., and it is being positioned as a key tool in overall infrastructure management.

“Cognix basically brings together value builders for customers to be able to integrate their environments, to manage the whole infrastructure of the landscape in a completely automated and analytics-driven manner,” said Manav Sadana, global head of sales and market development, Cognitive Business Services, at TCS, during a Discover interview with theCUBE. “What that really means is bringing together the capabilities from analytics to AI with our machine first principles … from edge right up to cloud.”

4. Companies are building above the silos for a more accurate and insightful data picture.

On May 6, 2010, the U.S. stock market suddenly dropped 9% in minutes, wiping out billions of dollars of value for major corporations in what became known as “The Flash Crash.” Could it happen again?

This was the tantalizing question raised by Eng Lim Goh in his interview with theCUBE. The senior vice president and CTO for high-performance computing and AI at HPE offered his views on the subject, centered around the critical question of whether systems can provide vital insight in a world awash in unstructured data.

In the case of the “Flash Crash,” insight was in short supply. It took regulatory authorities five years to pinpoint the origin of the meltdown, ultimately arresting a solitary trader who lived with his parents in the U.K. The man allegedly engaged in “spoofing,” a practice in which huge orders would be placed and then cancelled prior to execution, thus manipulating the market.

The need for insight within financial markets may soon get the acid test with the growth in cryptocurrencies which, unlike the stock market, are based on a completely decentralized model. Ultimately, the key is to build systems that can intelligently and rapidly process vast amounts of data, regardless of how raw or siloed that information may be.

“For that particular May 6 event, it took a long time to get insight,” Goh noted. “There’s a major effort ongoing in many corporations to build a federated layer above all those silos so that when you build applications above they can be more intelligent.”

5. HPE bets on Open RAN and a complete stack solution to entice telco providers.

HPE continues to make significant investments in technology solutions for the telco market and the early returns look promising.

A year ago, the company introduced Edge Orchestrator for telecom carriers to bundle and resell connectivity and apps to vertical industries. In February, HPE unveiled a new business unit specifically chartered to help telcos and other companies take advantage of 5G opportunities. And the company used that occasion to roll out software and hardware solutions for the 5G open radio access network, or RAN market.

HPE’s Communications and Media Solutions software unit alone, which was merged into the newly formed telco group, generated over $500 million in revenue during fiscal 2020, a growth rate of 18%. HPE chief executive Antonio Neri recently noted that telco operators want a full stack solution and this is clearly shaping the company’s strategy.

HPE is taking aim at becoming a catalyst for the coming 5G economy, and it has a solid base of telco customers to use as a springboard. This is especially notable in areas such as Western Europe, where prominent customers include Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange SA and the BT Group.

“HPE actually has a full stack that Western European carriers use,” said Moorhead in his recent interview. “They’re now extending that to 5G, becoming more horizontal and vertical.”

Be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover event. (* 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.)

Image: Dilok Klaisataporn