The messages coming from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. on the first day of its European conference this week validated where many analysts believe the computing industry is headed — and it’s not all about the cloud. HPE’s focus on placing information technology where the data needs it, increased automation in the data center, and building intelligent applications at the edge are in direct conflict with rival Amazon’s view of the enterprise world.

“[Amazon Web Services Inc. CEO] Jassy doesn’t buy it. He flat-out says this is old guard thinking and you’re trying to hang on to the past,” said Dave Vellante (@dvellante, pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE,  SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “Our analysis suggests it’s not old-guard thinking; it’s customer thinking, because they can’t just move their business into the cloud.”

Vellante offered his observations during the HPE Discover EU event in Madrid, Spain. He was joined by co-host Peter Burris (@plburris, pictured, left), and they discussed recent moves by HPE in the private cloud, the role of intelligent edge networking, and the choices emerging for IT organizations.

HPE launches pay-per-use solutions

The move toward what Wikibon analysts have termed the “true private cloud” gained momentum with the announcement earlier this week that HPE would launch GreenLake, a suite of backup, big data, open database and edge computing solutions that will be available on a pay-per-use model. The announcement represents a shift from a product orientation to a service delivery model for the private cloud.

“Here’s what the cloud experience is, and now HPE is adding that you want that cloud experience whatever your data demands,” Burris said. “The data is pretty unassailable. You’re not going to move everything to a central location, but you’re going to want that cloud experience.”

Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of Aruba Networks Inc. for $3 billion in 2015 has given HPE a positive boost as demand grows for technology and services in intelligent edge networking. It also came at a time when the company was refocusing its efforts on the customer base and anticipating that not all information was going to be moved wholesale to the cloud.

“Aruba has always been a great customer story,” Burris said. “They had three or four concrete value propositions that just worked for customers.”

What has become clear is that IT organizations are looking at multiple choices now between public cloud providers such as AWS and hybrid IT infrastructure firms such as HPE. “Maybe it’s not the exact replica of the Amazon experience, but there are attributes of it which appeal to enterprise IT, which Amazon is not really interested in delivering,” Vellante said. “My assumption is that on-premises business will be here for a long, long time.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU 2017 Madrid event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE