What to watch for at HP Discover this week

This week marks HP’s annual Discover conference in Las Vegas. HP has come a long way in the past couple of years and this year should prove interesting in a number of ways. Here is a list of items to watch in the coming couple of days:

Announcements: There are a couple of significant announcements planned this week. While the announcement itself is interesting, the long term impact should prove a more interesting opportunity for HP’s strategy post-split. Watch the keynotes for more details Tuesday and Wednesday.

Split Update: News about the HP split into two companies is not new. Look for more details on the progress of the split and what it means for each of the two entities. On the surface and through a number of ‘hallway conversations’ I’ve had, it seems that the split is bringing greater focus to the enterprise teams. This is good for HP and for customers.

Software: The HP Software team is a large and diverse bunch. The areas I’m particularly interested in are the progress around HAVEn, Vertica and Autonomy. Initial conversations point to some really interesting progress for customers. As BigData, Analytics and data (in general) become front-and-center for organizations, look for this area to explode. We have only scratched the surface with more opportunities abound. I’m looking at ways HP is educating customers on the value opportunities in a way they can consume. While there are themes, we are moving to a ‘market of one‘.

Cloud: The HP Helion Cloud has a number of things happening at the conference. I’m particularly interested in the progress they’ve made around commercial offerings of OpenStack and private cloud. Overall, cloud adoption is still very anemic (not just for HP). I’m looking for ways HP is creating the onramps to cloud to reduce apprehension and increase adoption rates. Many of the challenges span greater than the technology itself. Look for ways HP is engaging customers in new and different ways. In addition, watch for changes in how the solutions are shifting from supporting enterprises directly to supporting service providers. Bridging the gap here is key and the needs are very different.

Infrastructure: Many enterprise customers still maintain a large infrastructure presence. Even if their strategy is to shift toward a cloud-first methodology, there are reasons to support internal infrastructure. Look for ways HP is evolving their infrastructure offerings to support today’s enterprise along with its evolution to a cloud-first model. As the sophistication of data increases, so will storage solutions to meet the ever-changing requirements. Similarly, the complexity from networking that solutions like Software Defined Networking (SDN) address will be interesting to watch for.

Wild Cards: There are a number of wild cards to watch for as well. The first is DevOps. DevOps is critical to today’s IT organization and moving forward. It applies differently to different orgs. Watch for the subject addressed in Keynotes. The second wild card is an update from HP Labs. HP Labs has a number of really interesting…and innovative solutions in the works. Look for an update on where things stand and how HP sees innovation changing.

Finally, I have a number of video interviews scheduled over the next couple of days where I dive deeper into each of these areas. Plus, will cover an update on the state of the CIO. Look for links to those either using the #HPDiscover hashtag or on the blog after the show.

As always, feel free to comment and join the conversation on Twitter. The hashtag to follow is: #HPDiscover