Interview with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Ranganath Sadasiva

Ranganath Sadasiva, Chief Technology Officer, Hybrid IT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

1. Dear Ranganath, thank you for taking out time to chat with us. To begin with, how HPE plays a significant role in enabling enterprises to have a seamless experience in their complex infrastructures?
   Ranganath Sadasiva:
   • • • Greetings.

   At HPE, our purpose and promise are to advance the way people live and work. Our strategy is to accelerate enterprises with edge-centric and cloud-enabled solutions that are workload-optimized and delivered as-a-service. We have a vision that the enterprise of the future will be edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven. 

   Edge-centric: The edge is where the explosion of data is happening. The intersection of billions of people and places and trillions of things is generating unimaginable amounts of data. This gives the opportunity to bridge digital and physical worlds, to personalize shopping experiences for customers, automate the workplace experience for employees, digitally-enabled classrooms for students, and more. 

   Cloud-enabled: Underlying all these data are clouds in many shapes and sizes in a hybrid cloud reality. As computing moves closer to the edge, we see a world with millions of clouds everywhere.

   Data-driven: We believe enterprises will be able to instantly extract outcomes from all their data, whether it is on the edge or in the cloud. The key lies in gaining visibility, access to data, the ability to manage and act on data everywhere – with security and governance in place.

2. What is your opinion are the most pressing challenges faced by enterprises in terms of infrastructure cloud automation and how does HPE help them?
   Ranganath Sadasiva:

   Enterprises are struggling to get a consistent cloud experience everywhere. We believe the cloud is an experience, not a destination. We’re helping enterprises deliver consistent cloud experiences everywhere, bringing the cloud experience to your data center with our Hybrid Cloud solutions and HPE GreenLake. 

   Our strategy is to accelerate Enterprises with cloud-enabled solutions. We ignite innovation with cloud and accelerate enterprises in a multi-cloud reality.

   HPE’s cloud strategy is open to any cloud, giving choice and flexibility to place apps and data where it makes the most sense. We believe in an unbiased approach to cloud transformation, neutral without an agenda. With HPE Pointnext Services, we guide our customers with a holistic strategy which includes technology, people, and economics. 

3. In a pandemic like Covid-19, what are the most important developments in your field of business that you believe will have the biggest impact on the industry? How has HPE helped their customers to overcome such obstacles?Ranganath Sadasiva:

   Around the world, COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging life, livelihood, businesses, and communities. As a company whose purpose is to advance the way people live and work, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is responding with initiatives to stabilize communities, support customers tackling the challenges of this pandemic, and technology to help organizations adapt to this unpreceded situation and accelerate recovery, evolve and thrive. 

   With a comprehensive plan to support customer across all fronts HPE has organized its efforts around 3 pillars: 

   KEEP IT GOING: EXPERTS & PEOPLE ON THE GROUND TO ENSURE CUSTOMER BUSINESS CONTINUITY – HPE supported Customer Businesses to KEEP IT GOING with its People, Systems and Resources. HPE provided services, spares, and inventory along with training and enablement needed to self-help to its customers. Some of our engineers have braved to travel during lockdown periods and been physically present to provide support. Our efforts had a lot of appreciation but as mentioned earlier “We are HERE TO HELP”.

   MOVE FORWARD: BUSINESS FLEXIBILITY TO KEEP CUSTOMER OPERATIONS MOVING FORWARD – HPE provided for Over $2B in financing to help our customers with COVID-19 challenges with financial options like a) Defer or reduce Expense b) Match payment to use c) Generate Cash from Assets and a few other options 

   SOLVE CHALLENGES: EDGE TO CLOUD SOLUTIONS AND TECHNOLOGY TO HELP SOLVE CUSTOMER’S IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES AND DEMANDS – HPE worked on several solutions and solutions bundles to Secure, reliable remote connectivity and access, Remote work solutions, Data security and ransomware protection, Capacity for mission-critical data and Industry Solutions for Healthcare, Education and SMB

   We also saw important developments in our field of business, which we believe will have the biggest impact on the industry. 

   We will see that Organizations would look at building Intelligent Enterprises with attributes like Always ON, Always FAST, AUTOMATED on Demand, HYBRID by Design, and built with Global INTELLIGENCE.  The need for agility and focus on Innovation will drive the needs of customers.

4. Can you tell us about your involvement & experience as a leader in the Indian technological space? How do you see it shaping in the next 3-5 years?
   Ranganath Sadasiva:

   Time flies! With twenty-five-plus years of leadership, technology & sales experience across IT Products & Services (Server, Storage, Software, Cloud, AI & Emerging technologies) & India ICT research, I believe that Technology can provide solutions to solve many challenges in the world, I d look to connect the dots as quickly as possible to ensure we have the right answers at the shortest possible time. 

   In the next few years, Technology will help ‘Innovation’ accelerate; we will notice that the adoption time for new-age solutions will shrink. Embracing technology will see new frontiers with boundaries shrinking and the power of the Data will unravel new insights. 

5. You have attended a lot of conferences in the past on this topic. Trescon has created a niche online virtual format that only brings an elite group of pre-qualified CIOs, offering them hands-on learning experience, and an opportunity to learn from technologies at the showcase. How do you see this format helping the industry in the region?
   Ranganath Sadasiva:

   Being my first experience with Trescon, this conference has been interesting and differentiated. The format and topics of this conference are very relevant to the needs of the Industry. Interacting with CIO’s and understating their real-life challenges will provide opportunities for the industry to team up with them to help solve these challenges. This virtual conference is also in line with the new norms during these COVID times! 

   With the niche elite group, the interest-based participation of all attendees will help accelerate meeting objectives during this conference. I am looking forward to the interactions.

   
   

6. Tell us about your session that you are hosting and how this can be instrumental in creating a comprehensive Network, Cloud, data security & AI roadmap for our attendees?Ranganath Sadasiva:

   HPE’s presentation will focus on the need for an Intelligent Enterprise and discuss how HPE Technology and solutions help to build Intelligent Enterprises.  

   Composability and Intelligence are now the fulcrum for building Intelligent Enterprises helping enterprises meet their agile demands like DevOps, Containers, Intelligent Data Strategy, and Big Data Analytics with AI and ML. With HPE’s “Here to Help” campaign during Covid19 we are enabling customers to realize their Intelligent Enterprises now. 

Thank you, Ranganath. It’s always a pleasure speaking with you. We look forward to welcoming you at Big CIO Show on 21 July 2020!