Google, HPE Team In Hybrid IT Pact To Put Google Cloud On HPE GreenLake

Google and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Tuesday unveiled a landmark hybrid IT pact that puts Google Cloud on premise in an HPE GreenLake pay-per-use model.

Under the pact, HPE said it will offer validated on-premises Google Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service through HPE GreenLake. That offering will allow customers to run applications as a service in a Google Kubernetes Engine environment on premises, said the two companies.

HPE and Google said the deal will allow customers to benefit from the same container based system across their hybrid infrastructure.

As part of the "initial strategic agreement" between the two companies, HPE said it will offer two HPE Validated Designs for Google Cloud's Anthos multicloud management platform based on HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure and HPE Nimble Storage and HPE ProLiant servers.

“By partnering with Google Cloud and leveraging a container-based approach, HPE can offer a seamless hybrid cloud experience with the unique option to do it all as-a-service," said HPE President of Hybrid IT Phil Davis in a prepared statement. "This approach, powered by Anthos and HPE GreenLake, gives our customers the freedom to modernize at their own pace with the HPE infrastructure of their choice."

The deal packs a powerful partner punch for Google which will now be able to tap into the sales muscle of HPE's robust partner ecosystem and Partner Ready channel program.

"Tapping into HPE's partner ecosystem gives Google Cloud access to HPE partners, integration points, pre-negotiated contracts, and customers that are willing to pilot and test a cloud solution," said a top sales executive for one of the top MSPs in the country.

The Google Cloud GreenLake offering will be especially attractive to customers looking to capitalize on Google's prowess around massive data sets with highly scalable search and natural language capabilities, the partner said.

"Google's strength is ingesting massive amounts of data with natural language search and high intensity workloads that stay available," said the partner. "Think about the scaling that goes into running YouTube and Gmail. If Google can ingest massive amounts of unstructured data and then allow customers to do natural language search on top of it that has big value to HPE partners and customers."

Paul Cohen, vice president of sales for New York-based PKA Technologies Inc., one of HPE's top Platinum partners, said the deal provides HPE partners with another hybrid cloud offering to add to their portfolio.

"This gives us another weapon to add to our arsenal to offer customers a hybrid solution that maps to their cloud strategy," he said. "Combining the scale of Google with HPE's channel is going to make this a very successful offering."

Cohen said the deal hammers home HPE's position as the leader in hybrid cloud. "HPE was on the leading edge of hybrid cloud long before other vendors who have followed HPE's lead," he said.

Raymond Tuchman, CEO of Experis Technology Group, Potomac, Md., another top HPE enterprise partner, said the ability to offer SimpliVity with Google opens the door for partners to archive data on Google cloud with HPE servers and storage."This is a way to get the data physically out of SimpliVity on to Google cloud," he said.

As for the pact to put both Google Cloud and Nutanix on HPE GreenLake, Tuchman said that is just another example of filling out the GreenLake ecosystem. "HPE is filling out GreenLake as the holistic umbrella for pay per use infrastructure as a service,” he said.

Tuchman said he is most excited about the ability to offer Nutanix as an option for customers. "This shows HPE's commitment to providing the right solution fit for any and all customers," he said.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, for his part, has committed to stepping up the support for hybrid cloud in data centers with enterprise ecosystem partners.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Pointnext Cloud Technology Partners consulting business is already doing projects with Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and AWS.

What's more, HPE's GreenLake model is gaining traction with partners. In the most recent quarter, HPE GreenLake channel sales were up 300 percent.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri has singled out GreenLake as a big competitive differentiator for HPE. "We have recently seen competitors try to compare their offerings to Greenlake, but our solution, which is enabled by software and backed by HPE Financial Services, is the only on-prem consumption-driven offering in the market," said Neri during HPE's recent annual shareholder meeting.