Can The New HP Enterprise Dominate The Internet Of Things ?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's big launch event this week, Discover, has drawn to a close in London. You can read my initial thoughts from Day One here on Forbes, but here I'm going to concentrate on the IOT play.

Let's examine what they have already:

• Hardware solutions
• Infrastructure solutions
• DevOps solutions

These are parts of HPE which are their bread and butter and what they are known for best. Of course that's not all of it but even the way the Transformation Zone was split out was transparently obvious; the right half displayed what's been carried across from the old HP, the left half is where the future of HPE lies.

• Intelligent Workplace and Collaboration
• The Machine (IOT)
• Big Data Analytics
• CyberSecurity

There's significant investment being displayed in, for example;

• Graph analytics and performance improvements with Spark, citing enhancements up 10 15x faster, and in an Internet of Things scenario equating to handling a dataset generated by 1.7bn nodes and 11.4bn edge devices in 300s.
• SAP HANA performance improvements, doubling the speed and quadrupling the workload that can be handled
• HPE's own Vertica solutions

On Day Two, there were more IOT hardware announcements, where edge devices were unveiled as part of the early fruit from partnerships with Intel and Microsoft , which are certified with Azure IOT Cloud. There was also a strong indication of investment in Beacon technology (both announced and on display in the event) where they revealed a multi-vendor cloud-based beacon management solution. What remains to be seen is just how beacons will actually be used in anger in the field, as Apple's own iBeacon has failed to set the retail world alight and that's usually an indicator the technology is not fully understood from a real world use case point of view. This is where HPE could take the lead, assuming they can craft a story that resonates where others have failed.

HPE are also playing with photonics, investing in research and development for 1tbits/ps speeds to handle big data for The Machine (the term they are using to encompass their Internet Of Things solutions), which in turn becomes a more efficient solution for cabling itself in your basement server room (i.e. imagine 3 fibre optic cables between server racks instead of miles of CAT5/6).

Where HP Enterprise can really lead the field in IOT is with their strength in infrastructure solutions. While others concentrate on analytics or device solutions, infrastructure is the backbone for the Internet Of Things and is all too often given secondary consideration. Between the cybersecurity push and existing infrastructure capabilities, HPE could also dominate as the minimum requirement that supports any corporate IOT strategy. It's up to them to realise this.

In fact, at the heart of The Machine strategy beats the future direction of HPE, especially with a partner ecosystem that allies with the likes of Intel and Thingworx. HP Enterprise uses the same references other competitors do to explain machine data and IOT in familiar concepts, like predictive maintenance, threat detection, and targeted marketing but they really need to lift their game here to be different.

It's not all hardware and solutions, the talent in HPE is also a strong factor they must absolutely capitalise on. With industry names like Tom Bradicich at the helm of IOT Systems, and the enthused staff on the floor of the Transformation Zone, you could really sense they felt something was finally happening at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

It's the end of a week long journey with Hewlett Packard Enterprise at their Discover 2015 event and the company is certainly doubling down on its Internet Of Things strategy, but the challenge for Meg and her exec team is to join the dots across all their divisions; Infrastructure, Hardware, Solutions, Intelligent Workplace, Big Data, Business Consulting, CyberSecurity, The Machine, Marketing, the Partner ecosystem, and get them talking and collaborating with one another. There is a sense that this is a road untraveled as yet and there are many who want to get sprinting due to the competitive landscape they face.

The other challenge is creating a singular, cohesive story around it all that involves each of these parts of HPE that explains the business value from IOT that doesn't just reiterate the, frankly, tiresome examples of predictive maintenance in manufacturing or regurgitating analyst numbers about connected devices. To win the hearts and minds of the new CIO/ CTO (or whatever the latest Millennial c-suite acronym is today) they have to be forward thinking, not current. The demographic footfall during the event was quite apparent; a sea of suits in an age group that suggests a few years left in tenure. To win an IOT arms race HPE must start looking beyond who they currently target.

This is a unique opportunity for a refreshed Hewlett Packard Enterprise because in many senses it's like a startup emerging from the ashes of an old incumbent. What remains to be seen is what will happen in the next 12 months when they return to London in 2016 and how the messaging, positioning and success has changed. I can only sum this up with a Star Trek analogy:

Will this Enterprise simply be a refit of the old Constitution-class original, or can HPE create a Next-Generation stunt and emerge with a completely new model.

Make it so, Meg Whitman.