Author: Kevin Kull, Senior Vice President, Global Accounts Sales

At HPE Discover 2024 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to join Alexia Clements, Vice President and Global Sales Leader for HPE GreenLake, and discuss the transformative power of the strategic alliance between Digital Realty and HPE. Our session underscored the importance of evolving enterprise IT infrastructures through our partnerships that leverage the strengths of both organizations.

1. A vision for the future

The session began with a celebration of Digital Realty’s award as HPE Colocation Momentum Partner of the year—an accolade that showcases the significant progress this partnership has made during 2023. This partnership is crucial as companies strive to become data and AI-ready, achieving new business outcomes through digital transformation.

2. The digital transformation opportunity

Alexia and I discussed the immense potential unlocked by digital transformation, citing the Digital Transformation Initiative by the World Economic Forum and Accenture which projects an opportunity worth $100 trillion.^¹ This potential comes from the end-to-end digitization of workflows across various industries, which can significantly accelerate growth through enhanced digitization strategies.

3. Enhanced connectivity with ServiceFabric™

Connectivity is a cornerstone of effective digital strategies. Digital Realty enhances this through its global interconnectivity platform, ServiceFabric™, which provides access to clouds, networks, and services across more than 500 Digital Realty and third-party data center locations worldwide. ServiceFabric™ is crucial for enterprises looking to reduce latency and improve performance by strategically positioning their IT infrastructure closer to data sources, partners, and customers.

4. HPE GreenLake: A game changer in hybrid cloud solutions

The benefits of HPE GreenLake were highlighted during our session as a pivotal aspect of the partnership. HPE GreenLake offers a hybrid cloud solution that brings the agility and economics of the public cloud to on-premises IT. This model allows businesses to pay for only what they use, scaling up or down to meet demand while maintaining compliance and control over sensitive data.

The flexibility and cost efficiency of HPE GreenLake, combined with the global reach of Digital Realty's data centers, alongside the flexible interconnectivity of ServiceFabric™, provide a compelling solution for enterprises looking to modernize their IT infrastructure without the heavy upfront costs.

5. Sustainability and compliance

A significant focus of our discussion was on sustainability — a key concern for modern enterprises. Digital Realty’s commitment to sustainability — as showcased in our recently published ESG report— is evident as we offer 100% renewable energy options at our U.S. colocation and all European data centers. This initiative not only supports enterprises in meeting their green objectives but also ensures compliance with environmental regulations within state-of-the-art facilities.

6. Why enterprises are leaving on-premise data centers

The shift from on-premise data centers to colocation facilities like those offered on PlatformDIGITAL® — Digital Realty’s global data center platform — is driven by the need for modern IT capabilities that traditional facilities can no longer support. Enterprises are moving to HPE GreenLake hosted on PlatformDIGITAL® to benefit from high-density solutions, simplified operations, one to many connectivity options on ServiceFabric™, in strategic locations.

Looking ahead

At the conclusion of our session, Alexia and I highlighted the ongoing commitment of both HPE and Digital Realty to innovate and support enterprises in their digital transformation journeys. This partnership not only addresses current IT and business needs but also strategically positions enterprises for future challenges and opportunities.

Looking to learn more about future-proofing your IT architecture? Download our eBook, Are You Data and AI-Ready?

^¹World Economic Forum, $100 Trillion by 2025: the Digital Dividend for Society and Business, January, 2016

Digital Realty and HPE Greenlake: Optimize your data and AI strategy - A holistic approach to hybrid cloud and colocation