Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. will invest $4 billion over the next four years into a new initiative focused on addressing the rise of edge computing.

HPE Chief Executive Officer Antonio Neri (pictured), who took the helm last year, announced the plan at the company’s Discover conference on Tuesday afternoon. Edge computing, or Intelligent Edge as HPE refers to it, describes the emerging practice of processing information where it’s created rather than in a traditional data center.

This trend encompasses many of the most new disruptive technologies that are starting to enter the market. Self-driving cars, for example, process readings from their sensors locally to avoid the delays associated with sending information to a remote data center. Manufacturers and other industrial companies, meanwhile, are taking a similar approach with equipment logs to help their technicians spot technical issues faster.

“The next evolution in enterprise technology will be in edge-to-cloud architecture,” Neri said in a statement. “Enterprises will require millions of distributed clouds that enable real-time insights and personalized experiences exactly where the action is happening.”

HPE’s $4 billion plan aims to address the trend in multiple ways. The company pledged to invest in the development of new offerings across several technology domains key to edge computing, including cybersecurity, automation and artificial intelligence.

The initiative may end up placing a particular emphasis on the latter area, since AI is the driving force behind some of the most promising applications of edge computing. Late last year, for instance, Nvidia Corp. partnered with Japanese industrial giant Komatsu Ltd. to develop computer vision systems that can detect potential hazards on construction sites and warn workers. 

HPE didn’t go into much detail about what kind of offerings it plans to develop as part of the effort. However, the company did divulge that the plan is to bring to market a mix of new products and professional services.

The offerings set to come out of the project will complement HPE’s already sizable edge computing lineup. The company offers a line of appliances called Edgeline that is specifically designed for onsite data processing, while its Aruba division offers wireless networking gear and related solutions aimed at similar use cases.

The edge computing initiative is one of several announcements that HPE made at Discover. The company also introduced a set of new professional services and revealed that it’s building what will be the most powerful supercomputer in the world to use an ARM chip architecture. After reviewing the news from the event, Morgan Stanley raised its projection for HPE’s second-quarter revenue growth by 80 basis points, to 1.6 percent.

Photo: HPE