As customers adopt hybrid working practices, they are having to re-evaluate the needs of users and adapt the underlying IT infrastructure to support seamless collaborative working – that’s why it’s exactly the right time to be talking to them about HPE GreenLake says Steve Cant, Vice President, Europe, and Global Lead HPE at TD SYNNEX Advanced Solutions
For all kinds of businesses, the past year has largely been occupied with ‘keeping the lights on’. That has certainly been the focus of most IT managers and resellers. There has been little or no time for anyone to consider the way that they will run their businesses and their IT in the years ahead. To a certain extent, strategic thinking has been put on hold.
But we are now moving into a new phase and the end of the long tunnel does, finally, seem to be coming into sight. Of course, things could still change, but customers are now starting to turn their heads towards what the future might hold for them. They are starting to examine how the market and their needs have altered – and what they will need IT to deliver for the business.
Enabling innovation
Gartner recently forecast that worldwide IT spending would rise 8.4 percent this year $4.1 trillion with one of the key drivers being the need for organisations to shift their focus to providing ‘a more comfortable, innovative, and productive environment for their workforce’. The focus for CIOs in 2021 will be completing digital transformation plans with the aim of enhancing and extending value propositions. As hybrid work takes hold, CIOs will focus their spending to enable innovation, rather than simply completing tasks.
Much of that innovation will be directed at making it possible for teams to work efficiently and effectively in a hybrid environment – one in which some workers are in the office and others are at home or working remotely.
To do that successfully, they will also need to adopt a hybrid approach to IT. They will need to build a different kind of infrastructure. Rather than being constructed around a data centre, where key line of business applications are deployed, they will need to focus on the needs of users to collaborate and communicate, and to access applications, services, and ready-to-use capacity, at any time and from anywhere.
Open discussion
This is why it’s exactly the right time to approach customers and open up discussions about their future infrastructure needs. Right now, they may not have a clear vision of the full extent of transformation required, but it’s almost certain that they will want to adopt a more flexible, agile, and scalable approach. One that will enable them to serve the needs of remote workers as well as those who are located in the office.
For many organisations, HPE GreenLake will be the ideal solution. It can provide the mix of granular control and assurance that you get with on-premises systems, alongside the agility and elasticity of infrastructure-as-a-service. It enables customers to stay in full control of their key systems and security, while also delivering a consistent and unified experience, and meeting the needs of a much more distributed workforce.
Smooth transition
There are already some good examples of how HPE GreenLake has been used by organisations to transform for a new way of working. Kern County – the third largest administrative area in California – is using HPE’s solutions to support more than 75 percent of its departments and leveraging GreenLake’s VDI capabilities to keep operations running smoothly during the pandemic. The ability to quickly increase capacity for remote work has enabled the local government there to carry on providing vital support and services to the community. As HPE’s video interview with Kern County’s CIO highlights, using a traditional IT approach, this would have been much more challenging.
You may have already had some exposure to HPE GreenLake, or it may be entirely new to you. Whatever stage you have reached on your own particular journey into the cloud and hybrid infrastructures, HPE GreenLake is one of the options you should be exploring. It represents a tremendous opportunity for the channel. The TD SYNNEX team is ready to help you to understand the HPE GreenLake proposition, how to position it with customers, and how to deliver the wide-ranging, long-term benefits it brings to organisations that are now looking to support new, hybrid working practices.
If you’d like to find our more, please contact the HPE GreenLake team at TD SYNNEX.