Enterprises struggle to manage their hybrid cloud environments because public cloud services remain largely proprietary and don’t always offer the flexibility they have on-premises.
Companies benefit from public clouds while keeping some workloads on-premises, but connecting these two environments remains a challenge for them, said Joseph Yang, general manager of HPE Singapore.
He noted that with hyperscalers no longer just cloud infrastructure providers, offering various application services as well as APIs, it has become easy for enterprise customers to build and deploy applications on public clouds. .
However, these are largely proprietary, making it difficult to navigate applications developed to run on a cloud in an on-premises environment. This makes it difficult to run a hybrid cloud model effectively.
“When customers think of hybrid, it’s about being able to move their workloads between on-premises cloud and public cloud, as well as between [different] cloud platforms,” Yang said in an interview with ZDNET.
Cloud and software vendors have taken various approaches to solving this problem, such as running an on-premises stack in a public cloud, on a bare metal environment. However, this locks customers into the software vendor’s infrastructure and the cost of running bare-metal on a public cloud is high.
The solutions currently offered by cloud providers to handle hybrid workloads are also often limited in capabilities and flexibility, compared to what enterprises are used to with their on-premises environment, Yang said.
He said HPE was looking to fill the gaps and deliver a “unified” experience through Greenlake, a pay-as-you-go offering that includes the hardware and software needed to help enterprise customers better manage their hybrid environments.
The technology provider launches its LacVert as a cloud management platform that enables enterprises to manage their workloads and data across multiple public clouds, data centers, and edge networks. Its GreenLake Central provides a single integrated control plane and self-service portal, from which customers get a unified view of their IT operations in hybrid environments and monitor various metrics including usage, security, cost and compliance.
Private 5G networks can give businesses more autonomy
In addition to the ability to better manage their hybrid cloud environments, organizations could also benefit from greater control over the applications they plan to deploy on 5G networks.
As one of the first countries to have national 5G coverageSingapore should consider how it can facilitate this and drive adoption by local businesses, Yang said.
Specifically, he stressed the need to consider how policies can be changed to allow for more experimentation around 5G. As spectrum is currently distributed to telecom operators, this can be burdensome for companies that do not wish to depend on a telecom operator’s infrastructure for various reasons, such as security and availability issues.
Telcos may also not be as willing to invest to scale where needed to support on-premises deployment. For example, 5G mmWave signals are transmitted at higher frequencies with shorter wavelengths and easily blocked by walls. This means that more access points are needed to provide the necessary coverage and connectivity. Telcos may be unwilling to make the necessary investment, which can pose challenges for businesses if they are forced to rely on a telco’s 5G infrastructure.
Yang added that there are also other issues companies would like to address, such as the business model that supports these service contracts as well as how their corporate data will flow over the company’s public 5G infrastructure. the telecommunications operator. These can be better managed with private 5G networks, which will give organizations control over their data flow and network performance.
In his written comments to industry regulator IMDA, Singapore’s IT services provider Arete M also recommended the opening of the frequency spectrum for deployments of private 5G networks. This would ensure that guaranteed quality of service (QoS) could be achieved with minimal interference from adjacent deployments, where some coordination between 5G licensees might be needed, Arete wrote.
HPE offers private 5G products and services in its 5G portfolio, which run on its native 5G Core Stack, an autonomous 5G core network platform based on cloud containers.
For now, Yang said, HPE’s strategy in Singapore revolves around GreenLake alongside data and artificial intelligence (AI), so customers can get the insights they need to better manage. their IT and cloud operations.
Asked about the potential of generative AI such as ChatGPT, he stressed the need to look beyond the hype and assess its ability to scale. He noted that the computing and storage power that supports ChatGPT is significant, so there is still work to be done around sustainability and optimization before it can be scaled.
There should also be a focus on how the data and content that powers ChatGPT can be secured, he added.