HPE this week announced updates to its private cloud, storage, and data-protection portfolio aimed at enterprise customers who are reevaluating their VMware strategies and looking to ready their infrastructure to handle AI workloads.

The updates are delivered through HPE GreenLake and focus on simplifying management across virtual machines, Kubernetes, and AI workloads while also expanding edge-ready storage and cyber-recovery capabilities. The product updates also come as many enterprises continue to reassess virtualization platforms in response to VMware/Broadcom licensing and pricing changes.

“Almost every large customer I speak with would like an option to move away from VMware/Broadcom,” says Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research. “Price hikes and reduced support are driving this.”

HPE is introducing HPE Private Cloud, which the company says will help enterprise organizations that are modernizing infrastructure and moving beyond traditional virtualization environments. The offering unifies infrastructure, operations, and data into a single-vendor solution to help customers reduce cost and manage risk, according to HPE. The platform also supports HPE Morpheus VM Essentials alongside VMware environments and integrates with HPE Zerto Software, Veeam, and HPE StoreOnce for backup, recovery, and migration, according to the company

“One operating model means one single pane of glass,” said Angel Penilla, vice president of private cloud engineering at HPE, in a press briefing. “You’re going to have one place where all of these organization actors can interact and do their workloads.”

HPE said the goal is to reduce operational complexity created by separate virtualization, container, and AI management tools. HPE is also trying to position the platform as a practical migration option for enterprises that do not want to immediately abandon VMware. HPE Private Cloud now offers:

• Unified management of virtual machines (VMs) and Kubernetes on a single platform
• A streamlined upgrade path to the enterprise edition of HPE Morpheus Software
• A foundation built on HPE ProLiant Compute Gen12
• Validations for HPE Private Cloud with HPE Zerto Software
• Integrations for the Veeam Data Platform
• Tight integrations of data protection solutions using HPE StoreOnce

For hyperconverged infrastructure in edge and distributed use cases, HPE SimpliVity now supports HPE Morpheus VM Essentials and extended resilience and backup with HPE StoreOnce Gen5 systems. 

Kerravala says HPE’s approach could appeal to customers because it allows VMware and HPE Morpheus VM Essentials environments to run side-by-side under one control plane rather than forcing a “rip and replace” migration.

“HPE now becomes a very realistic ‘landing zone’ by offering a native hypervisor (HPE Morpheus VM Essentials) and automated migration tools via HPE Zerto,” he says. “From a networking perspective, it simplifies the transition by supporting hybrid environments where customers can run VMware and HPE’s own hypervisor side-by-side under one control plane.”

In addition to the private cloud updates, HPE also announced it is expanding its storage portfolio with new features aimed at AI infrastructure deployments. The HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 Platform now supports both file and object storage on the same systems, scales to 23PB of raw capacity, and adds remote direct memory access (RDMA) support for file workloads, according to HPE. HPE said the updates are designed to support AI training, inference, and analytics workloads that increasingly run closer to where data is generated.

“A lot of the AI workloads are moving on-prem or at the edge,” Penilla said during the briefing.

HPE also updated HPE Data Fabric Software with policy-based data movement and conversational AI features designed to simplify data management across edge, core, and cloud environments. And HPE expanded HPE Zerto Software with AI-assisted recovery guidance and tighter integration with Microsoft Defender.

Kerravala said enterprises should pay attention to the HPE product updates because they address three key priorities: cost reduction, AI readiness, and operational simplicity.

“Organizations are looking to move beyond expensive virtualization stacks, support AI workloads at the edge, and simplify operations across distributed environments,” he said. “Over the next 12 to 18 months, customers will measure success through lower total cost of ownership, faster AI performance, and reduced operational overhead.”

The new fourth-generation HPE Private Cloud systems, along with integrated support for HPE StoreOnce, HPE Zerto Software, Veeam Data Platform, and updates to HPE Data Fabric Software, are available now. Support for unified management of VMs and containers on HPE Private Cloud and HPE SimpliVity integrations with HPE StoreOnce Gen5 systems are expected to become generally available in Q3 2026. HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 with file storage is scheduled for general availability in Q2 2026, while 16-node scale-out capabilities and RDMA support for file workloads are expected in Q3 2026. Enhancements to HPE Zerto Software are expected to become generally available in Q2 2026.