Despite its global operating status, HPE is keen on working with small businesses, too. One of its most recent efforts to do so came in the form of a new Diversity Startup Program announced at its Discover 2023 event last month. The program is designed to promote equitable cloud-service access for women-owned and minority-owned startups.
HPE CEO Antonio Neri said during a press Q&A at Discover that the company’s effort to expand its edge-to-cloud GreenLake platform to the SMB market segment primarily relies on its partner ecosystem. “As we integrate our partner ecosystem through APIs and then open up their marketplace, then we will be able to expand into SMBs together. We want the customer to maintain their relationship with their partner of choice but then consume additional services as we go.”
Neri noted the SMB market as one of the most profitable and one that needs “the most help” because of lacking resources, “especially at the pace that we’re going with these technologies.”
The Diversity Startup Program is a paradigm for HPE’s partner approach. HPE developed the initiative with Alpha3 Cloud, a hybrid-cloud company offering infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings to “organizations of all sizes,” according to a press release. The program offers cloud service vouchers to women-owned and minority-owned startups through HPE service provider partners — giving them access to GreenLake services. HPE told Silverlinings that the value of the vouchers is evaluated by Alpha3 Cloud and approved by HPE, and they are typically cover 6-12 months of service.
Digital health company Joyuus was named as the initial startup joining HPE’s new program. Joyuus is backed by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and is currently developing a web app to bring well-being resources to new mothers. According to the release, the company needed a hybrid-cloud strategy to support not only business operations but collaboration among developers, clinicians, designers and content experts.
One of Joyuus’ founders, Lisa Marceau, commended the program in a statement, noting that the commitment to supporting underrepresented groups “is something that the rest of the corporate and investment world is failing to do.”
Taking a ‘horizontal’ approach to diversity, equity and inclusion
The Diversity Startup Program’s focus on equity of access is part of a three-pillared approach to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) at HPE, according to Aisha Washington, HPE’s Global Chief DE&I Officer. Advancement, inclusion and equity are a triad of values that, while always a part of its mission, became highlighted as the company looked to “revamp” its DE&I strategy in 2022, she explained.
On Juneteenth of last year, Washington released a “DE&I report card” that highlighted both “points of pride” within the company — like closing the gender pay gap in the U.S., the U.K., and India and expanding management by objectives (MBO) around DE&I to hold VPs and C-suites accountable — as well as an acknowledgment for the needed work moving forward.
“When we released that report, it was about us taking a real look at who we are as an organization, what progress we had made. We were very clear in that we did not want to be that organization that put out a performative DEI strategy,” Washington explained to Silverlinings.
She added that many companies are using strategies with limited accountability and broad messaging, and recent mass layoffs have exposed many organizations backing off of their commitments.
Part of this issue is not taking what Washington refers to as a “horizontal approach” to DE&I. “A lot of times DE&I is considered to be vertical,” she explained. “When it's vertical, it doesn't touch all parts of the organization. It's not fully integrated into the business and the lifecycle.” It needs to start “from potential customers and [go] all the way to shareholders.”
And part of moving the needle with a horizontal approach “starts with data.” From engagement surveys to exit data collected, making data-driven decisions is key in DE&I, and that will only grow with the expansion of AI.
With AI being a clear focus for HPE moving forward, Washington noted that she attended a meeting on how DE&I will be involved in the work at HPE.
“It was a huge opportunity for us not only to be invited to the table but to actually come to the table with a robust set of ideas around how we best think that we can use AI across the organization.”
All AI abilities rely on the data it’s being fed: “Bad data in, bad data out,” she concluded. “The key is still creating space for who sits around that table. We can’t advance the way we live and work if we don't have that diversity of thought around the table.”