A New HCI Platform for Retail Environments from StorMagic, HPE, and AMD

Bruce: Welcome to PodMagic. Real conversations about solving real IT problems. I’m Bruce Kornfeld, the host of this podcast. I’m the Chief Product Officer at StorMagic, and we are always looking to explore how simple, reliable technology can benefit you and the people that you serve, whether that’s retail stores, branch offices, or customers on the front line. My goal is always to bring interesting guests like we have today, deliver some value and have some fun along the way. So, let’s dig in.

Bruce: All right, so today we have three esteemed guests and colleagues. We have Susan Odle, the CEO of StorMagic. Karen Rhodes, North American Retail CTO from HPE. As well as Aaron Behman, who’s the Global Lead for Retail and Transportation Server Business Unit at AMD.

Bruce: So, there you go. We have three guests: AMD, HPE and StorMagic. And there’s some interesting things we want to talk about of a new solution that’s on the market. And I think we’ll start off with turning it over to Sue. Tell us what’s new and tell us what’s happening.

Susan: Well, I’m very excited about this partnership. You know, we’re really focused on addressing the financial challenges of customers that are running business critical applications and data at the edge. Everything needs to work. You know, things need to be reliable. And in most cases, large enterprises that have operations at the edge, there’s no IT staff at the edge to help keep things up and running. And, you know, these organizations are really focused on cost containment. Today, there are a number of market conditions that are putting additional financial pressure on these large enterprises. The big elephant in the room, obviously, is Broadcom acquiring VMware. And the inflationary nature of the licensing costs that are going up at the edge. We also know that tariffs are providing some economic uncertainty when we’re looking at hardware refresh and those types of things. And there’s a general economic slowdown and CIOs need to do much more with less. And so, when we think about retail, it’s even harder for customers to be able to manage these challenges.

Susan: So, this partnership, it’s very exciting. It specifically addresses these challenges head on. All three vendors, HPE, AMD and StorMagic have a deep understanding of the retail experience and we’re bringing to market an HCI solution that can go in production upon delivery and help customers manage these challenges.

Bruce: Sue there’s a lot of server vendors out there. How did you guys pick HPE over the others?

Susan: Well, we’ve been partners for a long time. I think Karen has been a champion of StorMagic for a very long time. I’d love for her to kind of talk about that.

Bruce: Yeah. Karen, tell us about StorMagic and tell us more about the product that you guys have put together. The solution that you guys have put together. Let’s hear about it.

Karen: Absolutely. I’m a huge fan of StorMagic. They’re one of our great partners and they have been for many, many years. And the customers love the two node solutions. They are reliable, they’re just rock solid. And whenever it comes to the edge, you don’t want to have to worry about the edge going down. So, whenever we created the DL145,  we built that in collaboration with retailers. We asked them, what do you need? We came up with a very different form factor, DDR5 memory so that they don’t have to buy as much memory. Air filters on the front, to filter out dust and debris. But that reliability is really where the StorMagic software shines. And they are the first go-to-market partner that I was, “yeah, I want to go with you”, because everybody at the edge loves StorMagic.

Bruce: Nice. Yeah. So, Karen, if you can keep going. So, I hear DL145, I hear HPE servers. Can you just talk a little bit more broadly about if I’m an end user? What’s included in this solution? What do I get?

Karen: Yeah. So, the system itself has two M.2 drives for the OS. Those are mirrored on that card itself. So, you don’t have to have a RAID card for that. And then you have multiple variants of drives. So, unlike most HCI platforms this is very flexible. You can change it around to kind of whatever you need. You can have one double-wide GPU or three single-wide GPUs in there, obviously amazing AMD technology. So, you’ve got one processor, very energy efficient, very quiet. And that was the key, the quietness of this server is unparalleled. And we know that this is going to run in somebody’s office or right at the self-checkout or right at the register, maybe mounted on a wall right next to customers, where the humans are. So, you want to be able to have a conversation like we’re having with the server running right there, and it’s not distracting your customers from their buying experience.

Bruce: Nice. And I assume that there is some kind of StorMagic software on there. Sue, is that right?

Susan: Oh, of course, of course. So last year we released SvHCI, which is our full hyperconverged infrastructure solution. It is a complete replacement for VMware and, two node as Karen mentioned, which means when the CIO is thinking about economics of scale, having two physical servers and that third node that can be in the data center, it could be on another smaller device. It gives you the flexibility to say, my fleet when I renew it, I’m going to go with the DL145, but now I could do two nodes instead of three nodes and not have any kind of concern about reliability. Our outage rate is 0.03%. And so, when you combine that with the reliability of the HPE servers and the AMD processor, it really is a win win win for customers. And it matters that we’ve all been in business a long time. You’re not dealing with an upstart that isn’t proven in market.

Bruce: I’m ready to write a check. Where do I send it? All right, so listen, if I worked at AMD and if I was Aaron, I would be chomping at the bit right now. Here’s Karen and Sue talking about a DL145 and I think I’m right that a 5 at the end of an HPE server means there’s an AMD processor in there. You’re here for a reason. Tell us what’s in the box as far as AMD is concerned.

Aaron: Excellent. Thank you, Bruce. Yes. So actually, the DL145 was developed in very close collaboration with HPE to make sure that there were hardware co-optimizations. And this platform, the DL145 is based off of the AMD’s EPYC 8004 series CPU. That’s codenamed Siena, which is actually built by AMD. It was purpose-built for the intelligent edge. Some of the key features of that particular CPU family or series include excellent energy efficiency, balanced performance, and leadership in performance per watt. We’ve also put a lot of thought around how we thermally optimize these processors. And again, co-optimized in very close collaboration with HPE.

Aaron: Additionally, because this is intelligent edge, security is a very big concern. And so, we have security features that are built into our processors. And again, we work very closely with HPE to enable that. Our Infinity Guard technology keeps all of the information that’s flying through the CPU or at rest, secure. So, it’s been a wonderful collaboration. Of course, just a continuation of AMD and HPEs long term collaboration.

Bruce: Nice. All right. So, I’m hearing high quality server, security, one of the best processors on the market. We’ve got HA from StorMagic. I think the listeners want to know how much this thing costs. What can you tell us about pricing or how to buy it? Let’s get into some commercials. Sue, what can you tell us?

Susan: Great question Bruce. So, the great news for our channel partners around the world is that our go-to-market strategy for this is through our partners. And so, we’ve been really busy training and enabling our partners to fully understand the technical aspects and the business value of this integrated solution. And so, we’d encourage you to reach out to any HPE-authorized reseller, understand your customer requirements, translate that into a request for quote, and you’ll find out what the price is specific to that customer.

Bruce: Okay. So, I heard the word global. So, this sounds like this is available anywhere around the world. Is that right?

Susan: That this is a global go to market? Absolutely.

Bruce: Okay. And then if I’m an end user and I’m getting excited here, all I have to do is reach out to my HPE reseller? I’m going to find my way to a price and a solution?

Susan: As simple as that.

Bruce: Sounds good.

Bruce: All right, so we heard the word channel. So, Karen, maybe I’ll turn to you to talk a little bit about how is this good for the channel?  If I’m a channel partner listening to this, What’s in this for me?

Karen: Absolutely. So, the channel partners are getting inundated with many different vendors that are out there. There are HCIs that have hardware lock-ins. And then the customer will say,  well I need this different thing. Or here’s my price point on VMware. Obviously, that’s been a little too big because of Broadcom. They’re looking for that easy button to migrate things over. This is all of those. And it hits the price point that you need for a retail environment, or an edge environment. Additionally, it’s got the security. So, Aaron talked about the CPU security, which is absolutely wonderful. HPE has an iLO (Integrated Lights-Out) platform that is a chip on the motherboard. It actually does a silicon root of trust all the way up through the processor, all the way up to the hardware stack. So, as you start hearing people say, “I’ve got security concerns at the edge”, channel partners can say, “this is going to be portable, it can move over from VMware, and it’s secure.” It’s just absolutely wonderful. It’s the easy button for our channel partners.

Susan: I’ll just add to that, I think it’s important that this is purpose-built for retail and for the edge. This is not an enterprise data center solution that is being marketed to the edge. Everything contained in this solution is purpose-built for the edge, with the retailer in mind. And so, for the channel, that matters. When they have a customer scenario that is asking to solve that problem, it’s going to shorten the time to a solution for that customer, and everything will be appropriate because it’s been designed from the ground up to meet their needs. So, I think that that is really important. And I can’t overemphasize the budget-friendly nature of what we’re trying to do here. At the end of the day, you can have the best architected solution, but if it doesn’t fit into the budget envelope of the intended buyer, it doesn’t matter. And so, I think we, as technologists, sometimes we can lose sight of the economic side of the story. And this is purpose-built with that in mind.

Aaron: Absolutely. I mean, Susan, we interface with a lot of our mutual end customers in the retail sector, and the expectation of these teams is to do more with less. This is a razor thin margin industry. Budgets continue to get constrained, as you’d spoken to. There’s a lot of uncertainty currently. And one of the things that we’re really excited about is just how economically productive this platform is for this industry. So, I’m just very excited to be collaborating here.

Bruce: Nice. There’s something that hasn’t been mentioned. I do think it’s part of the solution. So, I’ll just ask, something about, the software being pre-installed on hardware. Maybe Karen, is that something you can talk about? How does that work from a customer delivery perspective?

Karen: Yeah. So, whenever you get it from the HPE factory, the StorMagic software is on there. It is set up. Your channel partner ends up getting it and you have customizations – they can do those, if you wanted to have customizations. We can have it shipped directly to you. There’s lots of different options, but HPE is a channel-first company. So, we support our channel partners. We make sure that they get everything that they need. They are our representatives to our customers. So, anything the channel partners need, they can reach at HPE and we are here to help them. But yeah, that comes loaded from the factory.

Bruce: So, I can say this because I don’t think anyone on this call has marketing in their title, but this isn’t marketing fluff. This is a real solution. This has been validated and tested by both StorMagic and AMD and HPE. And it’s been factory installed by HPE and partners around the world. So, it’s pretty exciting.

Bruce: Okay, so listen, I’d like to transition a little bit into talking about customers, end users and pain points that we think that this solution could solve. And probably the reason why you all put this together. So, Karen, why don’t you start on a customer story or customer scenario. What kind of pain points does this solve?

Karen: Yeah. So, the main issue with retailers is that they do refreshes every five years. So, they usually refresh their entire fleet 20% at a time. Sometimes they have to sweat those assets even longer. So, looking at long lifecycle is critical. And that’s where this is very different from most of the other platforms, that are, kind of the data center systems that are being used at the edge. This is built for the edge. It’s got an incredibly long lifecycle. So, if you’ve got that five-year refresh, if you need to sweat it for additional years, that’s fine. That’s totally what we expect you to do with this system. If you need to add systems to it later, that’s fine. But customers are coming to us and saying, “I need to sweat my assets longer, I need to add a GPU and I’ve already done deployments for three years’ worth of systems. How do I do that easily?” Or, “I need to add more storage.” These are made so that you can add this. It is an extensible platform for that long lifecycle. So, we’re getting that request across the board. I was part of the team, big team within AMD and HPE making this box. The air filter on the front, that was built for those dirty dusty environments. People were running into problems where their systems were just dying, and it was because of the nature of the edge being so dirty. Fluff from clothing and cardboard and things like that would get sucked into the fan.

Karen: It’s a 2U box and it’s that way for a reason. If you did 1U you have to throw a lot more airflow through it. And that means that you’re going to suck in more debris. Making it 2U,  it’s quieter, low flow airflow. Customers were saying that they needed things quieter. That was also the whole reason for the 2U. So, lots of different uses. We’ve even seen people put this into self-checkout systems. So, you walk up to a self-checkout, this system may be inside that box that you’re standing in front of, it may be on the ceiling, it may be on a wall. I’ve got people mounting it all kinds of crazy places. We made it not so wide, because some of our customers are wanting to mount it underneath the cash register where, you throw your bag at the beginning of your shift. And we want to make sure it was very ruggedized, so the cables all come out one area,  the bezel goes over that. So, it’s locked in. So, people are going to go over there and mess with the cables and things like that. Really, we see all of the things that we designed it for. People are actively using it that way. And that’s always exciting, to see your vision become reality and the reality match the design. So, we did a lot of work, getting that input from the customers. But yeah, those are kind of some of the real-world use cases that people are using this for.

Bruce: Sue, you want to throw anything else out there in terms of the customer and customer pain?

Susan: It’s exciting, to have the vision for this Karen, manifesting in market and then the timing of the market right now solving such critical problems. There are few opportunities in a tech career.  There are like moments in time where you’re just solving such significant problems. And we’re in that moment. So, this is just a wonderful conversation, to be having as technologists, connecting what we do to where consumers walk into a brick and mortar building and just do things that are about life, and we’re enabling that to happen in real time. I think it’s incredibly exciting. It’s just great to be a part of it.

Susan: I will add one other thing, though, to the real-world pain points. And I think it’s important from a StorMagic point of view. So, every one of these solutions that is sold to market comes with 24/7 support. And we are taking on the front line support for the entire solution. And we’re very confident in that because of the reliability of our product and the HPE server and the AMD processor, we know that it’s going to be reliable because we’ve been reliable for 20 years. And I think it’s important to call that out, Bruce, because 24/7 that gets direct to an engineer is not common. That’s how we support customers. And that’s important, right? So, for retailers that need to operate, those margins are thin, everything needs to work so they can transact, the ability for the IT departments to be able to call frontline support and get resolution 24 hours a day, direct to an engineer is a big deal. And we’re very proud of it.

Karen: As you should be because any customer that’s looking at getting StorMagic, go contact somebody who’s already used StorMagic and you’re going to hear nothing but glowing reviews, from anybody who’s ever interacted with StorMagic. The reliability is amazing, but the engineers are off the chart. If you do have to call, you’re getting a real engineer. You’re not getting a call center. And that is a huge differentiation whenever you’re literally critical business.

Bruce: Thanks for the plug, Karen.

Karen: Yeah, no problem.

Susan: Bruce, it’s not marketing. Just as you said, there was no marketing fluff there.

Karen: I just really like the software. I know that I’m not going to get the call if StorMagic is on the system. StorMagic is going to get the call and they’re going to solve it, and the customer is going to be happy. And at the end of the day, their customers are going to be happy. That’s what we’re all in this for, is, make a solution that is going to solve our problems and make us all be able to sleep at night. That’s this. That’s this partnership.

Aaron: Sorry to interrupt. One of the things that I’m really excited about, about the partnership,  Susan, to your point, in our careers, we are at a major transition, right? The megatrend that is in front of us around AI and the application of AI at the edge, is really something I haven’t seen in my 25+ year career. And then add to that, the thoughtful hardware underneath this platform, around the extensibility curve, as you’ve mentioned. We’ve talked a lot, together, about our mutual customers that are not yet quite sure what they’re doing with AI at the edge. And in many cases, there are workloads that will run just fine in the CPU, but then having that futureproofed solution, that allows for the addition of additional acceleration as needed in time, along with such a robust virtualization platform with SvHCI. I mean, it’s a perfect combination. And then you layer on top of that, the cost effectiveness of the solution that is really purpose-built across multiple dimensions from a hardware perspective, from a software perspective, that’s really almost bespoke for this industry. That’s what I’m just so excited about. So yeah.

Bruce: Yeah. That’s awesome. Thanks for that.

Karen: And there are a lot of AI workloads that when customers go ahead and run it on this system, they realize that they don’t need a GPU. So, try your workloads out, see if you actually still need that. If you don’t, then don’t buy it, don’t buy the GPU. Just go ahead and buy the AMD processor and run it on that. Because there’s a lot of horsepower on this thing that can be used for those AI workloads. And more and more of those workloads at the edge are being optimized for CPU, because they realize that GPUs are just financially not viable for all these customers on the edge.

Aaron: Agreed.

Bruce: All right. So, I think we can start sprinting to a close here. But before we do that, I thought I’d ask each of you to do a quick roundtable on any closing remarks you could talk about, how the solution is different than the competition is one area, but anything you want to go for and I guess, I’ll start with Aaron.

Aaron: Sure. Yeah. I think that’s actually a really good topic. There’s been, I think a lot of nervousness in the industry around getting locked into a particular virtualization stack. And I think there’s a lot of contemplation that’s going on right now, looking at better ways to solve the virtualization problem. And I do believe that this collaboration is a tremendous enabler for our customers, our mutual customers in this space. So very excited about that.

Bruce: Alright, Karen, what about you?

Karen: Yeah. This is that easy button. For any customer that’s out there, this is not a fly-by-night. This is not a company that’s been in existence for six months. StorMagic has been around for yonks, right? Everybody knows them. They’ve been running at the edge. AMD has been around forever. They’re high performance. HPE is known for having servers that you just can’t kill, and this box is literally made for the edge. So, all three of us working together, you’re going to get that long life cycle, the high-end security. You’re going to get the reliability of the support across the board. This is the easy button to get off of the VMware platform. Move over to a new edge. Try it out. If you see it for yourself, I have yet to see a customer try this out, that didn’t go, “Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.” So, try it. I think you’re going to be impressed.

Bruce: Nice. Alright Sue, bring us home.

Susan: Yeah. Purpose-built. That’s the phrase that I would end on. Purpose-built in every way for the retail edge. And that’s technically, that’s economically, from a customer orientation, a customer success orientation, purpose-built  for the retail edge. And so, we would just love to have the conversations with our channel partners. I know that we are all 100% ready to bring our teams to the table in a supportive way with our channel partners, to have these conversations as well. So, the time is now, the market is now. And, yeah, very, very, very much, thrilled with our opportunity, looking forward.

Bruce: Awesome. That’s a wrap. So, listen, thanks so much. Sue. Karen. Aaron. It’s awesome having you. Good luck. It sounds like an amazing solution that’s going to take the industry by storm. And just as a reminder, I’m Bruce Kornfeld from StorMagic. This has been the PodMagic podcast. Real conversations about solving real IT problems. And if you enjoyed it, like it, share it. Tell your grandma, get us some more viewers. So, thanks very much. And until next time.

Karen: Thank you so much.

Aaron: Thank you.

Susan: Thank you, Bruce.