The servers that will power the modern cloud-first public sector of 2023

Cloud computing, predictive analytics and open government data are three of the up-and-coming digital tools that will define e-governments in the near future, according to the 2022 United Nations’ e-government survey.

And these tools will continue to define how public services will evolve in the coming years, from personalised learning in education and healthcare, to rapid disaster response. In fact, consulting firm Gartner forecasts that governments’ IT spend will rise by nearly 7 per cent (6.8 per cent) in 2023, totalling US$588.9 billion.

“The expectations of the citizens are rapidly changing. As a result, [the public sector needs] to transform into efficient and resilient data-powered innovation engines,” says Amit Krishna, General Manager of High Velocity and Compute at IT provider Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), in an interview with GovInsider.

This is precisely what HPE hopes to enable with its solutions, including the launch of the Gen 11 ProLiant Server and edge-to-cloud platform HPE GreenLake, which promise the best performance, security, flexibility and power efficiency for cloud-native and hybrid cloud strategies in the public service and beyond.

GovInsider sat down with Krishna and Jason Shao, APJ Enterprise Group Regional Category Manager from HPE to better understand how their services can support the public sector in their work.

Ensuring resilience, speed, and security for cloud-first strategies

Modernising legacy systems will be a key priority for governments in 2023, according to the Gartner report. Instead of rigid legacy systems, organisations today are looking for something “more modern, more flexible, and more dynamic”, said Sandeep Kapoor, Vice President and General Manager, Compute and Core Modernization, APAC, HPE during a summit held by HPE at the end of January.

They’re doing so through cloud migration, he adds. But rather than shifting completely to public clouds, many organisations are retaining a hybrid cloud approach to enjoy the both of both worlds – flexibility and security. For example, Singapore’s government has set a goal to migrate 70 per cent of its less sensitive systems onto the commercial cloud by 2023, but is also developing a sovereign cloud for Home Team operations.

A cloud-native server which can help to store, send and receive data in a hybrid cloud environment will be necessary to support these shifts. To better support the public sector in its modernisation efforts, HPE’s new ProLiant RL300 Gen11 server aims to help governments achieve better security and performance in three ways.

First, it simplifies the cloud experience.

The Gen 11 integrates AI capabilities that enables it to automatically detect if some components of the server are malfunctioning, Kapoor shared at the launch event during HPE’s summit event. The AI software will then automatically flag the issue, allowing organisations to send for an engineer without having to call a customer service centre to first diagnose the issue, he explained.

Next, the Gen 11 server “provides optimised performance for hybrid workloads,” Krishna says. It can, for instance, support virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs) – a technology that was particularly popular during pandemic-mandated work-from-home arrangements. VDIs involve desktop operating systems such as Microsoft Windows being run and managed in a data centre and delivered over a network as opposed to being run on a physical CPU on site.

Besides VDIs, the new server also comprises an increased number of GPUs, allowing for a 33 per cent increase in GPU workload. This will help to speed up data processing and enable the use of AI and machine learning for organisations, Shao says.

Finally, the new server places a large emphasis on security. “Security is core to our DNA,” Krishna says. Beyond just securing the server, HPE has also integrated security software into all the different components within the server like the network and GPUs (Graphic Processor Units), Shao explains.

Driving sustainable digital transformation

“The world is becoming increasingly urbanised and that has a major impact on the environment,” says Krishna. In response, governments are paying greater heed to carbon reduction. For example, the Singapore government has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

HPE will be supporting this decarbonisation efforts in two ways – by improving the energy efficiency of its services, and to support carbon reduction efforts through the monitoring of an organisation’s carbon footprint.

The HPE GreenLake is an edge-to-cloud platform is an IT platform that is able to help store and process data across hybrid cloud environments. The platform’s pay-per-use and easily scalable model means that organisations are able to purchase only the storage they need and not overprovision resources, Terence Teo, Sales Director at HPE, had previously told GovInsider.

This prevents wasted electrical consumption which would have been used to support the databases that were underutilised. For example, chemical firm Lyondellbasell managed to reduce carbon emissions by over 2,000 times and cut their electrical consumption by 70 per cent when they migrated their data over to the HPE GreenLake platform.

The HPE GreenLake platform also incorporates carbon footprint reporting, Shao shares. “You can easily go into the carbon footprint reporting tab and get an instant report on your carbon footprint usage for your data centre.”

Additionally, HPE has a sustainability team that works closely with customers to help them understand their current carbon usage, Shao adds. “We provide information to our customers from not just the operations of the service itself, but also from the manufacturing aspect of the supply chain all the way to repurposing and recycling of the server [after its lifespan],” he explains.