Lenovo Group Ltd. threw a birthday party for itself today by announcing a significant expansion of the company’s server portfolio on the 25th anniversary of the x86 introduction by IBM Corp. (Lenovo acquired the x86 server portfolio in 2014.) The news was accompanied by the creation of two brands — ThinkAgile and ThinkSystem — which are designed to significantly enhance Lenovo’s data center offerings.

“Today we are launching the largest portfolio in our data center history. We are fundamentally changing the nature of business,” said Yang Yuanqing (pictured), chairman and chief executive officer of Lenovo.

Yang delivered his remarks earlier today during Lenovo Transform in New York. In addition to the two new brands, the company announced 14 new servers, five networking systems and seven storage products. Lenovo also showcased what it deemed as one of the world’s fastest next-generation supercomputers, which was officially unveiled yesterday in Barcelona, Spain.

Major commitment to be data center service provider

Lenovo is clearly focused on transforming itself into an end-to-end solutions provider for the data center infrastructure. This is an important step for the company as it competes with Dell EMC, Dell Technology Inc.’s infrastructure group, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. to drive success in the enterprise market.

“We are transforming Lenovo to the next phase of our data center growth,” said Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president and president of Lenovo’s Data Center Group.

The new ThinkSystem brand is the data center product portfolio, which includes Lenovo’s high-performance servers, storage and cloud-enabled switches. It is the first major reconfiguration of Lenovo’s product line since it acquired the x86 server portfolio in 2014.

ThinkAgile is a “white glove” bundle of turnkey software and support solutions that will be included with Lenovo’s system offerings and can be unboxed on premises.

In his keynote remarks this morning, Skaugen emphasized that interest in Lenovo’s data center portfolio will not be hampered by legacy network and storage solutions. “We are being embraced by our customers because of our lack of legacy,” said the Lenovo executive.

“Significant joint ventures” in software-defined offerings will be coming soon, according to Skaugen, but he did not provide any specifics on what these potential announcements might include. Earlier this year, Lenovo formed a joint venture with Kopin Corp. to develop new augmented reality applications for the enterprise. Lenovo has also co-engineered with Microsoft in the past, and the new ThinkAgile offering includes hybrid and private cloud solutions for Microsoft’s Azure Stack.

An important sidebar story to Lenovo’s news in New York is its key relationship with Intel. At one point during today’s Transform keynote, Skaugen (who previously worked for Intel) was joined on stage by Rupal Shah, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Global Data Center Group Sales. The Intel executive emphasized that her company’s Xeon processor “has a history of being built for the data center specifically” and commended Lenovo on the announcement of its two new brand offerings. “Both of our companies really stand behind the fact that it’s an increasingly hybrid world,” Shah said.

Lenovo also announced the implementation and delivery of what it calls the world’s largest, Intel-based supercomputer for the Barcelona Supercomputer Center in Spain. The MareNostrum 4 system uses 3,400 Lenovo server nodes and is interconnected with Intel’s Omni-Path architecture. It is the third High-Performance Computing system that Lenovo has installed for the scientific community in Europe and will be used for human genome research, bioinformatics and weather forecasting.

“Intel believes in Lenovo’s ability to not only succeed in the data center, but lead in the data center,” said Shah during her appearance at Transform.

By transforming its data center portfolio, Lenovo is also seeking to capitalize on growing interest in the use of artificial intelligence for the enterprise. The company has already made a $1.2-billion investment in research and development of AI.

“Data intelligence is embedded in everything we do,” said Yang during his remarks today. “It’s no longer information technology; it’s intelligent technology.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the Lenovo Transform event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Lenovo Transform. Neither Lenovo Group Ltd. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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