HPE Revamps Its SMB Flash Portfolio

Today Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced new and enhanced storage offerings aimed at the SMB markets. These enhancements run across storage, server, and hyperconverged offerings. The offerings intend to bring cost-effective performance as well as secure infrastructure while increasing application performance.

Businesses now realize that IT is not just a supporting role but also one that can help drive business and new revenue streams. However, the benefits that can be gained from IT are usually limited by budget. Meaning larger enterprises, with the budgets to afford more powerful gear with better services, are more likely to reap the benefits. While HPE may not be leveling the playing field today, they are making it easier for smaller and medium sized companies to more rapidly adapt and benefit from new technologies.

For midsized companies, HPE has updated its flash portfolio with a new, more powerful HPE MSA storage array, HPE Nimble Storage flash arrays, and an even more affordable all-flash HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen 10 hyperconverged system. To complement this new flash items and increase performance, HPE is also announcing new HPE StoreFabric M-Series switch for Ethernet-based storage network connectivity. Building off of the extremely secure servers announced in June of this year, HPE is extending this secure server line down to the midmarket with the HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen10, ProLiant ML350 Gen10 and ProLiant DL580 Gen10 Servers. And finally HPE introduced a secure, business wifi aimed at companies with 100 employees or less, the HPE OfficeConnect OC20.

All flash HCI can bring several benefits, but up until now its price has kept it out of the hands of mid to smaller markets. HPE is remedying this with the introduction of HPE SimpliVity 380, a lower cost all-flash HCI that can still bring all the performance benefits of the higher end models. Built-in capabilities — including data protection, disaster recovery, deduplication, and compression — uniquely address key requirements and provide additional opportunities for consolidation and savings. On this same note, HPE is taking its acquisition of Nimble and using it to release the HPE Nimble Storage Predictive Flash platform. According to the company, the InfoSight predictive analytics is capable of addressing over 86% of storage issues before they occur and deliving six-nines measured availability. The platform can scale as the company grows.

On the hybrid end of the spectrum (or middle of the spectrum I suppose) is the new MSA1050 hybrid storage array. This new array starts under $5,500 (HPE lowest price in its shared storage portfolio) and offers direct connectivity to ProLiant Gen10 servers, providing access to flash storage without any network infrastructure required.

A bottleneck for all-flash performance can fall into connectivity; smaller companies do not want to spend the resources to deploy dedicated fibre channel network infrastructure or deal with the ensuing complexity of it. HPE's new StoreFabric M-series switches, powered by Mellanox's Spectrum Ethernet Switch, will enable medium and smaller guys to achieve an affordable, high-performance network infrastructure built for flash. This new family of switches provide flash-optimized networking over standard iSCSI connections assuring customers of MSA, Nimble, 3PAR, and SimpliVity will have the maximum performance benefit for apps and users.

With news of security breaches in the headlines every other week, security stays at the forefront of many minds. HPE took major steps on the security front in its new ProLiant Gen 10 servers and now has extended this security to SMBs with the ProLiant ML110 Gen10, ProLiant ML350 Gen10, and ProLiant DL580 Gen10. These new servers provide what HPE is calling the ultimate protection against firmware attacks while also offering a balance of performance, capacity, and manageability. The new servers are ideal for SMBs and ROBOs. Benefits include:

The ML110 Gen10 Server is the best performing single processor tower for SMBs and ROBOs, delivering a 21% performance boost over the previous generation.
The ML350 Gen10 Server is ProLiant’s most powerful and versatile 2P tower, delivering a 71% performance boost and a 27% increase in cores over the previous generation.
The secure HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen10 provides storage expandability and performance scalability going from two to four processors to support business critical applications for midsize businesses.

More and more SMBs are embracing new technologies such as cloud, mobility and unified communications, however, they may not have dedicated IT resources. HPE is extending its Wifi capabilities to SMBs with HPE OfficeConnect OC20. This cost-effective Wifi solution provides easy to setup secure and reliable business-grade Wi-Fi. The whole thing can be set up with an intuitive mobile app.

All of the above sounds great to SMBs that can benefit from the options, but even though they are lower in price there may be some budget concerns coming down from top. HPE is aware of this and has created Consume IT for SMB. This program is designed to simplify the procurement process and enable customers to pay for their technology as they use it – over time. That means SMBs can look over what they need from the above options, choose the services and then only pay a predictable monthly subscription fee. Consume IT for SMB is one of the many options available from HPE Financial Services.

Availability and Pricing

HPE SimpliVity 380 hyperconverged infrastructure is currently available.
HPE Nimble Storage arrays are currently available with US street pricing starting at $20,000.
HPE MSA1050 is currently available with US street pricing starting at $5,500
HPE StoreFabric M-series switch is currently available with US street pricing starting at $7,990.
HPE ML110 is currently available with US street pricing starting at $1,299.
HPE ML350 is currently available with US street pricing starting at $1,899.
HPE DL580 is currently available with US street pricing starting at $15,449.
HPE OfficeConnect OC20 is currently available with US street pricing starting at $250.

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