HPE unveils VM Essentials for hybrid cloud virtualisation

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched HPE VM Essentials, a new virtualisation solution aimed at simplifying and streamlining hybrid cloud infrastructure.

HPE has announced that its latest offering, HPE VM Essentials, will be made available globally through its partner network to bolster its hybrid cloud virtualisation strategies. This solution is designed to ease the transition of businesses to a more flexible and cost-effective virtualised infrastructure.

HPE VM Essentials is introduced as a standalone solution capable of managing virtual machines across existing VMware hypervisors and HPE VM Essentials hypervisors, which are based on KVM technology. The distribution of the solution exclusively through HPE's channel ecosystem is meant to empower partners in assisting customers with evolving their virtualisation strategies.

This new solution supports HPE ProLiant Compute Gen11 servers and the recently announced Gen12 servers, offering benefits such as reduced costs and complexity in virtualised environments. HPE has also indicated plans to expand this support to include third-party systems, potentially broadening the application of the solution.

Simon Ewington, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channel & Partner Ecosystem at HPE, commented on the approach: "A 'Channel-only' sales motion for the standalone HPE VM Essentials Software capitalises on the excitement of partners and the opportunity in the virtualisation market, by providing customer choice and reduced total cost of ownership. It also reinforces the criticality of our channel and partner ecosystem to the success of bringing HPE's edge-to-cloud strategy to life."

HPE VM Essentials aims to address several challenges commonly encountered by organisations, such as unexpected cost increases in virtualisation, the demand for more affordable enterprise-supported virtualisation options, and concerns related to vendor lock-in. The solution offers socket-based pricing to ensure cost predictability, integration with HPE and VMware hypervisors, and an upgrade path to the Morpheus cloud management solution to facilitate hybrid cloud deployment.

By maintaining a Channel-only sales strategy, HPE aims to position its partners at the forefront of delivering HPE VM Essentials to customers, thus allowing them to offer more choices and develop value-added services around the solution. This strategy is expected to help partners in deepening customer relationships and reducing total cost of ownership for organisations seeking viable virtualisation solutions.