Data Center

Cultivating Federal Flexibility: The Case for HPE GreenLake

Amid the uncertainty of the pandemic, agencies need to remain versatile in how they deploy IT resources.

Doug Bonderud is an award-winning writer capable of bridging the gap between complex and conversational across technology, innovation and the human condition.

Federal operations have fundamentally changed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. First came the rapid shift to remote work as offices closed their doors and staff stayed home. Then it was a gradual return to in-person work punctuated by occasional disruptions as public health measures shifted in response to changing conditions.

By December 2021, however, it seemed all but certain that staff would start returning to work en masse. But thanks to a new viral wave, many agencies — including the Defense Department, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Agriculture Department — have opted to once again delay their plans.

Even the best predictions don’t always match pandemic realities. As a result, federal agencies need flexible IT solutions capable of delivering performance and protection on-premises, in the cloud and at the edge. The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform is a solution that can help provide this kind of versatility.

DISCOVER: Find out how HPE can help transform your agency’s IT infrastructure.

Agencies Embrace As-a-Service Approaches

Federal agencies’ approach to IT spending has changed, says John Morello, public sector presales manager for HPE GreenLake Cloud Services.

“They’re now driven toward consumption-based solutions,” he says. “Previously, the government would allocate and approve funding every year. Now, they’re seeing the value in consumption-based offerings.”

With demand for IT access fluctuating in response to conditions that federal agencies can’t easily predict, as-a-service solutions make more sense than static budgets that could lead to overspending in some cases or not allocating enough resources in others.

HPE GreenLake Offers Feds the Best of Both Worlds

Where the cloud delivers compute on demand at a distance, HPE GreenLake moves this process closer to home.

“HPE GreenLake is Technology as a Service that’s comparable to public cloud,” Morello says.

He points to service providers as an example. “They’re off-premises, they provide a certain service-level agreement performance for a customer for a price per unit, per month that’s based on usage. HPE GreenLake uses a similar approach, but we put the equipment in the customer’s data center.”

In practice, this provides the best of both worlds for federal agencies worried about ensuring access without compromising security. With HPE GreenLake, both hardware and data are managed onsite, giving federal IT teams complete control over their local infrastructure environments.

This approach also empowers agencies to create secure access points for remote employees, Morello says. Instead of authenticating via federal security services to interact with protected data and leveraging offsite compute services to handle processing and analytics, both physical and digital resources remain onsite.

Pricing for HPE GreenLake typically includes a committed and variable capacity to help organizations scale as needed. “For example, we may base the storage on Nimble or Primera, install a base capacity and then project out growth,” Morello says.

This allows HPE to create “bands” of pricing based on potential need, giving agencies the data they need to effectively allocate IT budgets.

HPE GreenLake also makes it possible for federal agencies to embrace edge computing. Given the sheer amount of data now created, collected and processed by federal departments, any latency in accessing offsite cloud data centers can result in significant performance drops.

With HPE GreenLake, physical technology goes wherever agencies need it most, making it possible to close the gap between captured data and actionable insight.

EXPLORE: What are the key federal government IT trends to watch for in 2022?

Benefits of HPE GreenLake for Federal Flexibility

The flexibility of the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform offers several benefits for federal agencies, including:

Complete control: While in most cases HPE is responsible for regular maintenance and device upgrading, Morello says, agencies can also choose to handle these tasks themselves if security is paramount. He notes that in some cases, “agencies may de-install a piece of equipment for HPE engineers to repair in a secure space outside the data center, and then reinstall it.”
Scalable pricing: HPE GreenLake deployments can be customized to meet specific agency needs. Morello points to use cases such as virtual desktop infrastructure and disaster recovery as common frameworks, but also notes that, regardless of application, pricing per unit drops as agencies add more devices. And thanks to initial growth estimates, “if the customer grows, the pricing is set, and installing more capacity means better pricing.”
Maximum performance: The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform is designed to offer maximum performance. “The customer will have a minimum reservation,” says Morello. “If we install 100 terabytes, we can set up the minimum at 80TB based on the customer’s workloads, then sit with them and determine what their predicted usage will be and set them up so they can utilize up to 100 percent.”

As federal employees now generate and engage with data farther from the security of on-premises offerings, agencies need flexible solutions capable of striking a balance between protection and performance. HPE GreenLake offers the best of both worlds.

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