HPE’s GreenLake intelligence brings agentic AI to IT operations

In case you haven’t heard, GenAI is old news. Now, it’s all about agentic AI. At least, that certainly seems to be the theme based on the latest announcements from the major tech industry vendors. All of them are focused on driving the story of more autonomous actions enabled by AI.

That said, there’s still a tremendous amount of activity and advancement happening in the “traditional” era of generative AI – particularly around integrating the technology into businesses and their internal IT operations.

To its credit, HPE was among the first to actively discuss and demonstrate the potential for running GenAI-powered applications within the confines of a corporate data center or private cloud. At last year’s Discover event, the company unveiled Private Cloud AI, offering organizations the ability to build solutions on their own GPU-equipped servers.

At this year’s show, HPE showed real-world progress in those applications, and took the next step toward enabling AI-powered agents as part of those solutions. Built on a framework the company calls GreenLake Intelligence, HPE introduced a suite of multi-part agents that can automate a wide range of IT operations, including storage, networking, configuration, observability, and more.

In fact, the company delivered one of the most compelling and comprehensive stories around agent-based IT development I’ve seen from any vendor. HPE emphasized that these systems are still designed to keep humans in the loop, a key consideration given how impactful autonomous agents could become.

Building on the company’s long-established GreenLake private cloud platform, GreenLake Intelligence leverages both LLMs and traditional machine learning models trained specifically to address IT-related issues using decades of data HPE has accumulated.

A new chatbot-style GreenLake Copilot interface sits on top of these models, allowing IT professionals to ask questions, troubleshoot issues, and explore solutions in plain English. From FinOps and workload optimization to sustainability metrics and network troubleshooting, the goal is to simplify the complexity IT teams face every day.

All GreenLake Intelligence offerings begin with the concept of a multi-agent orchestrator, which manages a variety of more task- or content-specific sub-agents capable of identifying issues or walking through processes. These tools can provide step-by-step guidance on resolving issues, performing tasks, or even do them on their own in an autonomous fashion (again, with human confirmation if desired).

A strong example is HPE’s Aruba Central network management application, which uses its own version of the GreenLake Copilot interface. It can quickly detect and help resolve complex problems using AI and ML model data accessed through what HPE calls an agentic mesh. Like other GreenLake Intelligence services, it can also generate visual dashboards from incoming log data, making it easier to spot potential issues in real time.

Another key part of HPE’s updated portfolio is its new CloudOps software suite, which combines an enhanced version of the OpsRamp observability platform, Morpheus virtualization and cloud management tools, and Zerto data management and security software.

OpsRamp, in particular, now features expanded GenAI-powered capabilities designed to monitor, manage, and fix various components of an organization’s IT infrastructure, including compute, storage, and networking.

Of course, figuring out exactly what tools and infrastructure to adopt can be challenging for many organizations. To help, HPE also introduced an upgraded CloudPhysics Plus assessment tool to aid companies in planning their migration to more modern hybrid and AI-powered operations.

Beyond software and services, HPE also debuted a series of new hardware offerings at Discover, including additions to its ProLiant Gen12 line using AMD’s latest Epyc CPUs. That’s great news for companies looking for greater choice in CPU suppliers.

Building on last year’s launch of Nvidia GPU-equipped servers for Private Cloud AI, HPE also introduced the second generation of its AI factories, including systems featuring Nvidia’s new Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 GPUs – designed specifically for enterprise AI use cases. Notably, the company confirmed that these new systems are backward- and forward-compatible, meaning they can work alongside both first-generation models and future releases. HPE also announced that its OpsRamp software is now certified for use with any Nvidia AI Factory-based compute system, including those made by competitors.

On the storage side, HPE unveiled the Alletra Storage MP X10000 system, designed specifically for AI workloads. The all-flash, software-defined device integrates with GreenLake platform tools to manage the large data sets required for AI, and can be optimized through GreenLake Intelligence.

One especially interesting feature of the MP X10000 is its built-in support for MCP (Media Context Protocol) servers, which allow it to communicate across the entire IT stack – including servers, networks, observability tools, storage components, and more. MCP is rapidly gaining adoption as a standard for enabling connections between LLMs and digital agent platforms, so it’s encouraging to see HPE proactively embracing it.

Taken as a whole, the Discover announcements show HPE is focused squarely on the future. At the same time, the company balanced that vision with a pragmatic message, highlighting the efficiency and performance gains organizations can realize by upgrading aging infrastructure. That may not be as flashy, but it reflects the reality of today’s mixed IT environments.

Looking ahead, the agentic vision for IT that HPE presented at Discover is undeniably compelling, but it’s important to remember that we’re still very much in the early stages of AgenticOps. For most organizations it’s likely going to be a multi-year process to reach that vision, but it’s great for companies to have a roadmap towards where they need to go.

Bob O’Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on X @bobodtech

Image credit: Philip Oroni