HPE Folds BlueData into AI Offerings

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is integrating its recently acquired BlueData software with its Apollo infrastructure and other services to offer new AI and analytics capabilities running on hybrid clouds.

HPE, which acquired AI and big data software vendor BlueData last November, said Tuesday (May 7) it is folding those machine learning capabilities into a new service that also runs on “multi-vendor infrastructure.” Among the goals is taking advantage of application portability via containers running on-premises and multi-cloud deployments.

The new machine learning and analytics capabilities will be merged with its Apollo server and storage offerings along with HPE Pointnext services that include IT consulting, hybrid cloud rollouts and financial services.

Container-based BlueData software is designed to automate deployment of AI and analytics tools, freeing data science teams to build machine learning models or data pipelines.

The integration targets growing enterprise adoption of machine learning and other AI workloads and the analytics tools used to churn through the resulting big data. HPE (NYSE: HPE) said the combination of BlueData software with Apollo infrastructure and Pointnext services would help reduce deployment complexity for distributed AI and analytics. Another selling point is helping customers overcome current shortages of data scientists and AI and machine learning developers.

The software-services-infrastructure combination targets financial services, healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing and retail sectors. HPE said use cases span credit risk analysis and fraud detection to genomics research and precision medicine.

HPE introduced a batch of AI offerings last year, including the latest version of its Apollo 6500 platform designed to help customers scale AI and deep learning development. The upgraded Apollo 6500 with the XL270d Gen10 server supports up to eight Pascal or Volta Nvidia GPUs — P40s, P100s and V100s (added last fall), but the new server enables NVLink-optimized configurations. It also ushered in Skylake with options for 6100 and 8100-series Intel Xeon processors, up to 28 cores.

Founded in 2012, privately-held BlueData was acquired by HPE last November. The acquisition closed at the end of January.

“Adding BlueData’s complementary software platform to HPE’s market-leading Apollo Systems and professional services is consistent with HPE’s data-first strategy and enables our customers to extract insights from data – whether on-premises, in the cloud,or in a hybrid architecture,” Milan Shetti, general manager of HPE’s Storage and Big Data Global Business Unit, said in announcing the deal.

This week’s announcement marks the full integration of BlueData’s container technology into HPE’s machine learning and big data analytics offerings.

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