newsroom

Attended by more than 10,000 IT professionals, the popularity of the recent Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover event speaks for itself.

And three days packed full of insightful and thought provoking presentations, panel discussions and digital executive interviews certainly didn’t disappoint. Whether an end user, consultant, partner or supplier like ABB, there was a fantastic range of topics on offer with something to suit all interests.

Regardless of where you were or what you saw, ranging from ‘Innovative ecosystems’, ‘Making hybrid IT simple and driving enterprise through a right-mix multi-cloud strategy’ to ‘How to innovate fearlessly in the age of digital disruption’, you couldn’t escape the event’s overarching theme of ‘Transformation’.

And as a supplier of mission critical power infrastructure and automation solutions to HPE, I felt both excited and proud to have an ABB presence at the event, where we showcased the story of our new concept ABB Ability; a fully integrated digital offering across all customer segments.

Nicola Scarpelli, global product manager for ABB’s Connectivity & System Solutions, was there to showcase Ekip SmartVision technology as a concrete example of ABB Ability.

But more than that, I couldn’t help get caught up in the wave of positivity and excitement at every seminar, discussion and speech I attended – all of which addressed the ways in which IT can be the key differentiator for organizations and consumers around the globe.

The days when IT was simply a support function are long past. We have now entered a new age in which IT can transform how a business operates, the ways in which we interact, and the service and experience provided to customers.

Never was this clearer than in the key note speech given by HPE CEO Meg Whitman. What really resonated with me, as one of the several thousand delegates fortunate to hear her thoughts on Digital Transformation, were the real life examples she gave of how IT is changing our daily lives.

Everything from transforming the experience of fans at a baseball stadium in San Francisco, where WIFI provides the opportunity for more than 50,000 people to order food and drink and have it delivered to their seats or the use of an app to calculate the shortest route to the toilet, right through to an example of a compressor manufacturer in Germany, which has reshaped their business model and operational efficiency through IT solutions.

Both are very different yet equally stark examples of how HPE is industrialising IT, none of which would be possible without the ecosystem of knowledge, support and infrastructure, which comes from this partnership working.

ABB has a key role to play in such eco-systems, leveraging our industrial expertise and knowledge to enable the provision of sector leading IT solutions. And, having worked as a lead partner with HPE for the previous 20 years, we are delighted to have helped facilitate significant advances across the sector and look forward to many more years of collaboration and innovation to come.

Click here to find out more about what ABB has to offer