HPE CEO Antonio Neri told partners that the AI revolution is leading to a renaissance for on-premise computing.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri Monday told partners that the AI revolution is leading to a renaissance for on-premise computing.

In fact, he said, AI opens up the “opportunity to bring more infrastructure on premise than ever before.”

The AI revolution is going to spark customers to rethink their data strategy: where they store it and how they maintain it and how they ensure regulatory compliance, said Neri (pictured above left) in a brief appearance at the Partner Growth Summit ahead of his HPE Discover keynote with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the circular Sphere arena on Tuesday.

“The opportunity here is to reignite our on-premise opportunity by delivering a cloud native solution that is able to run these unique AI models and do it in a way that is sustainable,” said Neri.

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Neri urged partners to stay focused on the AI server business opportunity. “AI has given a triple shot in the arm to the server business,” he said. “The move to accelerated computing is going to accelerate and we need to be ahead of the game.”

Neri said the AI opportunity is not a monolithic workload but is a data-intensive distributed workload that will also require the right networking fabric and storage.

Neri urged partners to use GreenLake as the starting point for bringing customers the power of AI. “You can deploy the right architecture for networking, you can deploy the right solution for AI,” he said.

Furthermore, Neri said, partners must make sure the storage piece of the AI solution is “well understood because that data component is going to play a massive role in this AI driven world.”

Neri urged partners to go faster and be more assertive as they tackle the big market opportunities ahead including the AI server opportunity.

“Shame on us if we don’t take the opportunity that we have ahead of us,” said Neri. “I always argue that we need to go faster. We need to be more assertive. We need to hold ourselves both ways accountable.”

Neri also rallied partners to move customers on legacy storage systems to the next generation HPE Alletra MP storage platform. “HPE Alletra gives peace of mind with an evergreen type of approach that ultimately delivers the most spectacular platform we have ever engineered,” he said. “Kudos to (HPE CTO) Fidelma (Russo) and the entire storage team for advancing that. There are no excuses anymore. We have all the features and functionality we need to make that transition.”

With HPE set to close its blockbuster $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks later this year or early in 2025, Neri said partners need to stay focused on selling the HPE Aruba networking platform and not become distracted by the acquisition.

“We need to stay focused as we close the transaction with Juniper,” he said. “Stay focused on the business. Don’t delay anything. Keep going! The Aruba platform is phenomenal. In fact one of the biggest neighborhoods you are going to see here on the (show) floor is actually the edge networking neighborhood. The innovation is beyond amazing!”

With GreenLake at the center of the HPE strategy, “we can actually beat anybody,” said Neri.

HPE’s partner program announcements show that HPE is “more than committed to the channel,” said Neri.

“We have been, we are and we continue to be a partner-led company. Period. End of story,” said Neri. “We have never deviated and we are not going to deviate from that strategy. And that is why I always reinforce it every time I am here on stage with you. Unlike some of our competitors who sometimes they are in, sometimes they are not. We don’t do that because many of you have built businesses with us. That is the unwavering commitment we have as a company.”

HPE Vice President of Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem Simon Ewington (pictured above right), who hosted Neri in the brief Q and A session at Partner Summit, said HPE is determined to gain share and increase its relevance in the market.

“We want to make sure we are crystal clear and that you understand that HPE is extremely motivated to take share and grow,” he said.

To drive that share growth, HPE has invested in specialized compute and storage sales specialists in the field to help partners hunt for new deals, said Ewington.

HPE, in fact, has added 167 compute specialists globally and has doubled the number of storage specialists working with partners.

Felise Katz, the CEO of PKA Technologies, Montvale, New Jersey, one of HPE’s top enterprise partners, said the additional compute and storage specialists is big investment in the success of channel partners.

Katz said she also sees a swing back to on-premise computing from the cloud in large part because of security concerns from customers. “The on-premise compute opportunity is a huge market,” she said. “We see customers coming back from the cloud.”

Katz also sees a big opportunity in storage with the HPE Alletra MP platform. “HPE is getting more aggressive in storage,” she said. “It’s a refuse to lose attitude.”

Katz credited Neri for maintaining an unwavering commitment to partners over his seven years as CEO. “We wouldn’t be here as a partner without Antonio,” she said.