Item 1. Business
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Item 1. Business
We are a global technology leader focused on developing intelligent solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze and act upon data seamlessly from edge to cloud. We enable customers to accelerate business outcomes by driving new business models, creating new customer and employee experiences, and increasing operational efficiency today and into the future. Our customers range from small-and-medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”) to large global enterprises and governmental entities. Our legacy dates back to a partnership founded in 1939 by William R. Hewlett and David Packard, and we strive every day to uphold and enhance that legacy through our dedication to providing innovative technological solutions to our customers.
We use the terms “Hewlett Packard Enterprise,” “HPE,” “the Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” to refer to Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company.
Our Strategy
Over the last several years, new megatrends around edge, cloud, data, and artificial intelligence (“AI”) have emerged to shape customer expectations for enterprise technology. First, data at the edge is increasing exponentially, driven by the proliferation of devices that require secure connectivity to enable reliable digital experiences. Second, enterprises need a cloud experience everywhere to manage data and workloads wherever they live across a distributed enterprise. Third, data growth is creating countless new opportunities to generate meaningful business insights. Finally, HPE is seeing an immense demand shift in AI as customers realize the fundamental potential of the technology to deliver business transformation. Customer response to these megatrends was accelerated by the pandemic and the increasing pace of technological innovation.
In concert with these trends, enterprises are consuming their technology differently. Increasingly, customers want to digitally transform while preserving capital and eliminating operating expense by paying only for the information technology (“IT”) they use.
The megatrends are ushering in long-lasting changes to IT, including accelerating hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Customers across industry verticals are interested in unifying all the applications and data with a consistent cloud experience.
Customers also want to better extract value from their growing stores of rapidly evolving data, knowing that actionable insights from data are critical to deliver business transformations. Data is becoming more unstructured, more time-sensitive and more distributed. Frequently, data is siloed and spread across different multi-gen IT systems, often trapped in critical legacy architecture. Many organizations cannot adequately gain insights from their data at the edge or face cloud migration challenges because of their legacy applications. Customers need a data-first modernization approach across edge to data center to cloud.
HPE has deployed an edge-to-cloud strategy that capitalizes on emergent megatrends and delivers a data-first modernization approach for customers. Our vision to be the edge-to-cloud company has led us to innovate our solutions across connectivity, cloud, and data. We have shifted our mix of products and services, and how we deliver that mix to customers. HPE has evolved to a platform-based model, fueled by a portfolio richer in software and services. Our HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform is a centerpiece of our strategy; it accelerates multi-generation IT transformation through a unified cloud services experience that empowers customers to access, analyze, and extract value from their data across public clouds, data centers, colocation facilities, and at the edge.
Our solutions across connectivity, cloud, and data are delivered as-a-service (“aaS”) through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform across our Intelligent Edge, Compute, High Performance Computing & Artificial Intelligence (“HPC & AI”), and Storage business segments. Financial Services complements our solution offerings by helping customers unlock financial capacity.
We recognize the AI market will be driven by computational capability, data-intensive workloads, and the need for specialized architecture; thus, we are targeting three areas: supercomputing, AI infrastructure, and AI platform software. We believe that we are differentiated from our competition in the ability to capture significant value from the growing AI market through our intellectual property portfolio, trusted expertise, and long-term sustained market leadership in supercomputing.
Human Capital Resources
At HPE we are united by our purpose, which is to advance the way people live and work. We believe technology’s greatest promise lies in its potential for positive change. This is the guidepost for each decision we make at HPE. We believe it not only helps guide our contribution to society, but also makes good business sense. Our company always strives to be an engine of innovation, and our approximately 62,000 employees as of October 31, 2023, are proud of the ways our technology enables our customers to achieve meaningful outcomes like curing disease, modernizing farming, addressing world-hunger, and democratizing transportation through autonomous vehicles.
Our Culture - We recognize the critical importance of talent and culture to the success of HPE and our ability to fulfill our purpose. We are passionate about the values that drive our success, which is why we believe in investing in our team members and in the communities where we live and work. We have identified four key cultural beliefs that guide how we lead on a daily basis: accelerating what’s next, bold moves, the “power of yes we can,” and being a force for good. We embed these beliefs in a deep-rooted DNA that puts customers first, enabling us to partner, innovate, and act with integrity. HPE has remained committed to its focus on internalizing these values into a vibrant culture that creates a superior team member experience and a highly engaged workforce, driving improvements across our communications, our reward programs, our talent/performance programs, and our work environment. Through such efforts, we aim to foster a collaborative, inclusive, and inspiring experience for all our team members and to make HPE a destination for talent while driving high-performance and growth opportunities for our team members, and innovation and excellence for our customers. In the midst of the above, we continually seek feedback from our team members to better understand and improve their experiences and identify opportunities to continually strengthen our culture. Our most recent global engagement survey shows how these intentional efforts are making a difference, with an 86% response rate and our overall Employee Engagement Index, an index designed to capture team member engagement, measuring 83%. More than 84% of those who responded would recommend HPE as a great place to work, and 88% say they are proud to work for HPE.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) - We are committed to creating an unconditionally inclusive workplace and to capturing the ideas and perspectives that advance the way we live and work by enabling our workforce, customers, and communities to succeed in the digital age. This is because, by harnessing the potential of our technologies and our team members, we can fuel innovation, drive transformational changes, and be a force for good. Annual aspirational goals are set to drive consistent representation in the recruiting pipeline in line with market availability across all demographics. At the close of fiscal 2023, the representation of worldwide female executives in our workforce had increased 1.9 percentage points since the prior year, with increased representation at every level in worldwide female team members. We also increased our year-over-year representation of underrepresented minorities in the U.S. by 2.3 percentage points overall. We are committed to delivering on our focus on equity, as well, by taking a data-led approach at various points across the team member lifecycle to evaluate and improve our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The DEI index within our annual global engagement survey continued to reveal strong engagement scores across our ethnically diverse team members. The leadership standards clearly articulate that all people leaders are expected to continuously develop their inclusive leadership acumen. Our Board, Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”), and Executive Committee are expected to, and do in fact, model high standards for DEI and are leading sustainable change through strong governance and oversight. We have also been committed to advancing transparency, by publicly disclosing further information and data on diversity, equity, and inclusion at HPE, including the Equal Employment Opportunity report data, since 2018.
Talent - We invest heavily in an effort to attract, develop, and retain the best talent. We are committed to developing team members at all stages of their careers, and we do this by communicating a clear purpose and strategy; setting transparent goals; driving accountability; continuously assessing, developing, and advancing talent; and advancing a leadership-driven talent strategy. The dynamism of our industry and our company enables team members to grow in their current roles and build new skills. Over the past year, our approximately 62,000 team members completed over 820,700 online and instructor-led courses across a broad range of categories – leadership; inclusion and diversity; professional skills; technical; and compliance. HPE is deeply committed to identifying and developing the next generation of top-tier leadership with a special focus on diverse and technical talent. We conduct an in-depth annual talent and succession review with our CEO and Executive Committee members. The process focuses on accelerating talent development, strengthening succession pipelines, and advancing diversity representation for our most critical roles.
Pay Equity - We believe people should be paid equitably for what they do and how they do it, regardless of their gender, race, or other personal characteristics. We maintain policies to promote equal pay, and we regularly review our global pay practices with an aim to pay team members in similar roles and locations commensurately with their experience and responsibilities. We partner with independent third-party experts to conduct annual pay assessments and identify unexplained gaps between our present state and our goal of equitable pay treatment for all team members. Where these reviews identify such gaps at a country-wide level, we adjust compensation to eliminate the gap. As a result of our efforts, our most recent pay equity review demonstrated that we have achieved pay parity for base compensation and bonus targets between male and female team
members in the U.S. (including among underrepresented ethnicities), U.K., and India, when accounting for job title, time-in-role, experience, and location. We conduct a number of compensation analyses in other countries to provide competitive and equitable pay and, where permissible, we intend to incorporate similar third-party pay assessments into our existing processes.
Work That Fits Your Life - This global initiative, which was launched in 2019, is an important example of how HPE is investing in our culture and creating a team member experience that aims to make HPE a destination of choice for the best talent in the industry. It includes an industry-leading paid parental leave program (minimum 6 months), part-time work opportunities for new parents or team members transitioning to retirement, and “Wellness Fridays” that allows team members a full Friday off four times per year to focus on their well-being. The HPE Global Wellness Program is a comprehensive program that promotes overall health and well-being by providing team members with programs and resources that offer flexibility built around team member needs while continuing to deliver on critical business results. The program consists of four pillars: physical health, financial well-being, mental and emotional health, and community well-being. Additionally, we offer a hybrid work environment for the majority of our team members, encouraging two days in the office per week for collaboration.
Total Rewards - HPE requires a uniquely talented workforce and is committed to providing total rewards that are market-competitive and performance based, designed to drive innovation and operational excellence. Our compensation programs, practices, and policies reflect our commitment to reward short- and long-term performance that aligns with, and drives stockholder value. Total direct compensation is generally positioned within a competitive range of the market median, with differentiation based on tenure, skills, proficiency, and performance to attract and retain key talent.
Board Oversight - Our Board of Directors plays an active role in overseeing our human capital management strategy and programs. Our HR and Compensation Committee provides oversight of our human resources and workforce management programs, including but not limited to those related to corporate culture; compensation plans and policies; diversity and inclusion; and talent acquisition, development, and retention.
HPE’s strong and healthy culture is critical to accelerating what’s next for our customers and partners – and the success of our company. We believe that a workforce that is energized and more engaged will fuel our ability to pivot and grow, which will, in turn, power the next chapter at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Our Business Segments, Products and Services
Our operations are organized into six reportable business segments: Compute, HPC & AI, Storage, Intelligent Edge, Financial Services, and Corporate Investments and Other. The class of similar product categories within each segment which accounted for more than 10% of our consolidated net revenue in each of the past three years was as follows:
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Fiscal 2023 - Compute products, Intelligent Edge products, HPC & AI products
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Fiscal 2022 - Compute products, Compute services, Intelligent Edge products
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Fiscal 2021 - Compute products, Compute services, Storage products
The Company has one customer which represented 11% of the Company's total net revenue in fiscal 2023, primarily within the Intelligent Edge and Compute segments.
A summary of our net revenue, earnings from operations and assets for our segments can be found in Note 2, “Segment Information,” to our Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II. A discussion of certain factors potentially affecting our operations is set forth in Item 1A, “Risk Factors.”
Compute
Our Compute portfolio consists of both general-purpose servers for multi-workload computing and workload-optimized servers to deliver the best performance and value for demanding applications. This portfolio of products includes our secure and versatile HPE ProLiant rack and tower servers and HPE Synergy, a composable infrastructure for traditional and cloud-native applications. HPE ProLiant servers are the compute foundation for the fastest growing workloads in the industry including AI Inferencing, hyperconverged infrastructure (“HCI”), virtual workspaces, and data management. Compute offerings also include operational and support services and HPE GreenLake for Compute. HPE GreenLake for Compute provides flexible Compute as-a-service IT infrastructure on a consumption basis through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.
HPC & AI
Our HPC & AI business offers integrated systems comprised of software and hardware designed to address High-Performance Computing (“HPC”), Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), Data Analytics, and Transaction Processing workloads for government, research institutions and commercial customers globally.
Our solutions are segmented into the following categories: HPC and Data Solutions. The HPC portfolio of products includes HPE Cray EX, HPE Cray XD (formerly known as HPE Apollo), and Converged Edge Systems (formerly known as Edge Compute) hardware, software, and data management appliances that are often sold as supercomputing systems, including exascale supercomputers (systems that can process 1018 floating point calculations per second), that support data-intensive simulations and large-scale AI applications. The Data Solutions portfolio includes the mission critical compute portfolio and HPE NonStop. The mission critical compute portfolio includes the HPE Superdome Flex and HPE Integrity product lines for critical applications, including large enterprise software applications and data analytics platforms. The HPE NonStop portfolio includes high-availability, fault-tolerant software and appliances that power applications, such as credit card transaction processing that require large scale and high availability. As part of our systems are aligned to the convergence of HPC and AI-at-scale across our industry, HPE offers a suite of software products, including AI-powered technologies designed to play a critical role in turning data into readily available, actionable information to fuel growth and innovation for our customers. Our solutions are focused on enabling customers to develop and deploy AI models, such as Large Language Models (“LLMs”) across training, tuning, and inferencing. These include a software stack needed to prepare data for AI models and then to train those AI models using our open-source machine learning platform.
HPC & AI offerings also include operational and support services, whether sold with our systems or as standalone services. We also offer most of our solutions aaS through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, including HPE GreenLake for LLMs. With offerings that are AI-driven and built for hybrid cloud environments with HPE GreenLake consumption models, we provide the right workload optimized destinations for data and insights development for our customers.
A portion of HPC & AI revenue is generated by sales to government entities, which are subject to the terms and rights for the convenience of the government entity. These terms and rights include in some instances a dependence on the appropriation of future funding and also termination rights contingent upon not achieving certain milestones. For a discussion of certain risks related to contracts with government entities, see “Risk Factors—Contracts with federal, state, provincial, and local governments are subject to a number of challenges and risks that may adversely impact our business” in Item 1A.
Storage
HPE Storage is transforming the customer experience with storage as-a-service and cloud data services through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform and data infrastructure to enable customers to simplify IT and unlock greater levels of agility with a cloud operational experience. The customer experience transformation also includes AI and data-driven intelligence with HPE InfoSight and HPE CloudPhysics. Customers can store and serve their data with speed and high availability to applications, further secure and protect their data across hybrid clouds from ransomware and cyber threats, and gain data mobility across private cloud, public cloud, and multi-cloud environments.
Storage provides data storage and data management offerings, which include cloud-native primary storage with the HPE Alletra Storage portfolio, self-service private cloud on-demand with HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition; data storage and data management services with HPE GreenLake for Block Storage, and HPE GreenLake for File Storage; disaster recovery and ransomware recovery with Zerto; data protection services with HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery; and big data solutions running on the family of HPE Alletra 4000 Data Storage Servers. Storage also provides solutions for unstructured data and analytics workloads, along with traditional tape, disk products, and storage networking. Storage also provides data-driven intelligence with HPE InfoSight and HPE CloudPhysics, along with operational and support services and data management solutions delivered through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.
Intelligent Edge
The Intelligent Edge business is comprised of a portfolio of secure edge-to-cloud solutions operating under the Aruba brand that includes wired and wireless local area network (“LAN”), campus, branch, and data center switching, software-defined wide-area networking, network security, and associated services that enable secure connectivity for businesses of any size. The primary business drivers for Intelligent Edge solutions are work from anywhere environments, mobility, and connectivity for internet-of-things (“IoT”) devices. The insights from data generated at the edge are key to driving new business outcomes and experiences.
The HPE Aruba Networking product portfolio includes hardware products, such as Wi-Fi access points, switches, and gateways. The HPE Aruba Networking software and services portfolio includes cloud-based management, network management, network access control, software-defined wide-area networking, network security, analytics and assurance, location services software, and professional and support services, as well as aaS and consumption models through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform for the Intelligent Edge portfolio of products.
We also offer Aruba ESP (or Edge Services Platform), which takes a cloud-native approach to helping customers meet their connectivity, security, and financial requirements across campus, branch, data center, and remote worker environments, covering all aspects of wired, wireless LAN, and wide-area networking.
Financial Services
Financial Services (“FS”) provides flexible investment solutions, such as leasing, financing, IT consumption, utility programs, and asset management services for customers that facilitate unique technology deployment models and the acquisition of complete IT solutions, including hardware, software, and services from Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others. FS also supports financial solutions for on-premise flexible consumption models, such as our HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform. In order to provide flexible services and capabilities that support the entire IT life cycle, FS partners with customers globally to help build investment strategies that enhance their business agility and support their business transformation. FS offers a wide selection of investment solution capabilities for large enterprise customers and channel partners, along with an array of financial options to SMBs and educational and governmental entities.
Corporate Investments and Other
Corporate Investments and Other includes the Advisory and Professional Services (“A & PS”) business, which primarily offers consultative-led services, HPE and partner technology expertise and advice, implementation services as well as complex solution engagement capabilities; the Communications and Media Solutions business (“CMS”), which primarily offers software and related services to the telecommunications industry and includes Athonet, which provides private mobile core networks to enterprises and communication services providers; the HPE Software business, which offers the HPE Ezmeral Software Container Platform and HPE Ezmeral Software Data Fabric; OpsRamp which provides a software-as-a-service platform for managed service providers and enterprise IT teams to monitor and manage their cloud and on-premises (“hybrid”) infrastructure; and Hewlett Packard Labs, which is responsible for research and development.
Segment Realignments
Effective November 1, 2023, in order to align our segment financial reporting more closely with our current business structure, we established a new reportable segment, Hybrid Cloud, which includes our historical Storage segment, HPE GreenLake Flex Solutions (which provides flexible as-a-service IT infrastructure through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform and was previously reported under Compute and HPC & AI segments), Private Cloud, and Software (previously reported under Corporate Investments and Other segment). Additionally, certain products and services reported in the financial results for the HPC & AI segment through the end of fiscal 2023 will be reported in the Compute and Hybrid Cloud segments, and the recently acquired Athonet business and certain components of our CMS business reported in the financial results for Corporate Investments and Other through the end of fiscal 2023 will be reported in the Intelligent Edge segment. Beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, we will report our results under the realigned six reportable segments.
Our Strengths
We believe that we possess a number of competitive advantages that distinguish us from our competitors, including:
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Edge-to-cloud strategy and solutions uniquely solve customer challenges. As data grows and evolves and enterprises become increasingly distributed, HPE’s edge-to-cloud strategy is uniquely designed to enable customers to securely access, control, and maximize the value of all their workloads and data assets to accelerate business outcomes. The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform is an open, secure, fully integrated platform that brings a unified experience across the edge, data center, colocation, and cloud. It is automated and easy to consume with capacity available to scale up and down on demand. It offers true pay per use consumption so customers only pay for what they use, and they can have the entire hybrid cloud experience managed for them through our HPE Managed Services offerings.
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Comprehensive portfolio. We have a distinctive and industry leading portfolio of edge-to-cloud solutions and capabilities to help accelerate our customers' digital transformations. We combine our software-defined infrastructure and services capabilities to provide what we believe is the strongest portfolio of enterprise solutions in the IT industry. Our ability to deliver a comprehensive IT strategy and connect our customers' data from edge to cloud, through our high-quality products and high-value consulting and support services in a single package, is one of our principal differentiators.
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Differentiated consumption-based IT solutions for a growing opportunity. Enterprises of all sizes are looking to digitally transform in order to develop next-generation cloud-native applications, create actionable insights from their data, and drive business growth, but they face many challenges including lack of in-house IT skills, limited budgets and options for financing, and lack of flexibility to choose the technology foundation that best meets their needs. Consumption-based IT offers solutions to these challenges by providing greater agility, which empowers people to shift from managing infrastructure to driving innovation by leveraging insights from their data, while also eliminating
capital and operating expenses tied to infrastructure over-provisioning. HPE is distinctly differentiated in delivering a true consumption-based IT experience.
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Open platforms. The world is shifting from centralized and closed approaches in large data centers to a future of centers of data everywhere, which are highly decentralized and distributed. This shift demands a unified cloud platform that can put the agility and intelligence close to customers’ data sources to create real-time insights everywhere. We believe the cloud experience should be open and seamless across all our customers' clouds, rather than requiring customers to be locked into a cloud stack.
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Multi-year innovation roadmap and strong balance sheet. We have been in the technology and innovation business for over 80 years. Our vast intellectual property portfolio and global research and development capabilities are part of a broader innovation roadmap designed to help organizations take advantage of the expanding amount of data available and leverage the latest technology developments such as cloud, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, and cybersecurity to drive business transformations now and in the future. We also have a strong balance sheet and liquidity profile that provide the financial flexibility and speed to take advantage of acquisition opportunities.
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Global distribution and partner ecosystem. We are experts in delivering innovative technological solutions to our customers in complex multi-country, multi-vendor, and/or multi-language environments. We have one of the largest go-to-market capabilities in our industry, including a large ecosystem of channel partners, which enables us to market and deliver our product offerings to customers located virtually anywhere in the world. Our HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform provides open cloud application programming interfaces to our partners, enabling them to better offer their unique solutions to customers.
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Custom financial solutions. Through our FS segment, we help customers create investment capacity to accelerate their transformations by helping them free up capital, capture value from older assets, achieve sustainability goals, invest in new technologies as-a-service, and weather financial volatility. FS is also an enabler of our consumption-based IT models by helping spread our upfront solution costs over the duration of the customer contract. Through Financial Services' Technology Renewal Centers, we are helping customers achieve their own sustainability goals by recovering over 3 million IT assets in fiscal 2022 and refurbishing more than 82% for reuse.
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Experienced leadership team. Our management team has an extensive track record of performance and execution. We are led by our President and Chief Executive Officer, Antonio Neri, who has proven experience in developing transformative business models, building global brands, and driving sustained growth and expansion in the technology industry. Mr. Neri's experience includes more than 25 years combined at HPE and Hewlett-Packard Company (“HP Co.”) in various leadership positions. Our senior management team has many years of experience in our industry and possesses extensive knowledge of and experience in the enterprise IT business and the markets in which we compete.
Sales, Marketing, and Distribution
We manage our business and report our financial results based on the segments described above. Our customers are organized by commercial and large enterprise groups, including business and public sector enterprises, and purchases of our products, solutions and services may be fulfilled directly by us or indirectly through a variety of partners, including:
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resellers that sell our products and services, frequently with their own value-added products or services, to targeted customer groups;
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distribution partners that supply our solutions to resellers;
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original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) that integrate our products and services with their own products and services, and sell the integrated solution;
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independent software vendors that provide their clients with specialized software products and often assist us in selling our products and services to clients purchasing their products;
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systems integrators that provide expertise in designing and implementing custom IT solutions and often partner with us to extend their expertise or influence the sale of our products and services; and
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advisory firms that provide various levels of management and IT consulting, including some systems integration work, and typically partner with us on client solutions that require our unique products and services.
The mix of our business conducted by direct sales or channel differs substantially by business and region. We believe that customer buying patterns and different regional market conditions require us to tailor our sales, marketing, and distribution efforts accordingly. We are focused on driving the depth and breadth of our coverage, in addition to identifying efficiencies and productivity gains, in both our direct and indirect businesses. This has resulted in a combined go-to-market model, in which we have a direct sales presence in a number of countries, while we sell and deliver our products, solutions, and services through a channel-only model in the remaining countries. In those countries where we have a direct sales presence, we follow a bifurcated sales operational model with separate go-to-market routes for high-velocity, transactional hardware sales, on the one hand and
for services and solutions, on the other hand. Also, we typically assign an account manager to manage relationships across our business with large enterprise customers as well as with large public sector accounts. The account manager is supported by a team of specialists with product and services expertise. For other customers, our businesses collaborate to manage relationships with commercial resellers targeting smaller accounts, both in the commercial and public sector space.
Manufacturing and Materials
We utilize a significant number of outsourced and contract manufacturers around the world to manufacture products that we design. The use of outsourced and contract manufacturers is intended to generate cost efficiencies and reduce time to market for our products as well as create manufacturing flexibility in our supply chain and processes. In some circumstances, third-party OEMs produce products that we purchase and resell under our brand. In addition to our use of outsourced and contract manufacturers, we currently manufacture a limited number of finished products from components and subassemblies that we acquire from a wide range of vendors.
Historically, we have utilized two primary methods of fulfilling demand for products: building products to order and configuring products to order. We build products to order to maximize manufacturing and logistics efficiencies by producing high volumes of basic product configurations. Alternatively, configuring products to order enables units to match a customer's particular hardware and software customization requirements. Our inventory management and distribution practices in both building products to order and configuring products to order seek to minimize inventory holding periods by taking delivery of the inventory and manufacturing shortly before the sale or distribution of products to our customers.
We purchase materials, supplies, and product subassemblies from a substantial number of vendors. For most of our products, we have existing alternate sources of supply or such alternate sources of supply are readily available. However, we do rely on single-source suppliers for certain customized parts (although some of these sources have operations in multiple locations in the event of a disruption) and a disruption or loss of a single-source supplier could delay production of some products. In some instances, our single-source suppliers (e.g., Intel and AMD as suppliers of certain x86 processors) are also the single-source suppliers for the entire market; disruptions with these suppliers would result in industry-wide dislocations and therefore would not disproportionately disadvantage us relative to our competitors.
Like other participants in the IT industry, we ordinarily acquire materials and components through a combination of blanket and scheduled purchase orders to support our demand requirements for periods averaging 90 to 120 days. From time to time, we experience significant price volatility or supply constraints for certain components that are not available from multiple sources due to certain events taking place where our suppliers are geographically concentrated. When necessary, we are often able to obtain scarce components for somewhat higher prices on the open market, which may have an impact on our gross margin, but does not generally disrupt production. We also acquire component inventory in anticipation of supply constraints, or enter into longer-term pricing commitments with vendors to improve the priority, price, and availability of supply. See “Risk Factors—We depend on third-party suppliers, and our financial results could suffer if we fail to manage our supplier relationships properly” in Item 1A.
As a result of the pandemic, worldwide demand for electronic components spiked in many different technology sectors, causing industry-wide shortages for many electronic components. While availability for many components is now recovering, some shortages are nevertheless anticipated to persist, primarily as a result of new demand for certain components arising in more diverse sectors without corresponding capacity investments by suppliers to meet the new demand. We continue to rely on proactive inventory buffering measures in order to position ourselves well for availability of those components. We intend to take additional inventory actions as appropriate in alignment to the market demand, and plan to continue leveraging strong partnerships and long-term agreements with our suppliers.
Backlog
Backlog represents the price of orders related to current or prior periods for which work has not been performed or goods have not been delivered as of the reporting period.
The global pandemic resulted in an unprecedented demand for electronic devices, which, coupled with related industry-wide supply constraints and inflationary pressures, led to a challenging supply chain environment. Additionally, the lasting effects of the pandemic continued to play a role with ongoing delays to the global logistics environment. The elevated order book levels we experienced in fiscal 2022 have generally been declining throughout fiscal 2023, as supply chain constraints eased (though challenges still remain) and demand softened unevenly across our portfolio (as a result of improving supply chain dynamics and as customers have been digesting their prior larger orders). Mild improvements to industry-wide supply constraints have helped to ease certain supply chain challenges we encountered in the recent past, including the increased availability of supply and lower material and logistics costs. Material cost trends are dependent on the strength or weakness of actual end-user demand and supply dynamics, which will continue to evolve and ultimately impact the translation of the cost
environment to our pricing actions and, consequently, our operating results. Logistics costs continued to decrease from previously elevated levels as a result of declines in both expedited shipments and overall rate costs in the freight network.
International
Our products and services are available worldwide. We believe geographic diversity allows us to meet demand on a worldwide basis for our customers, draws on business and technical expertise from a worldwide workforce, provides stability to our operations, provides revenue streams that may offset geographic economic trends, and offers us an opportunity to access new markets for maturing products.
A summary of our domestic and international results is set forth in Note 2, “Segment Information,” to our Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II. Approximately 64% of our overall net revenue in fiscal 2023 came from sales outside the United States.
For a discussion of certain risks attendant to our international operations, see “Risk Factors—Due to the international nature of our business, political or economic changes and the laws and regulatory regimes applying to international transactions or other factors could harm our future revenue, costs and expenses, and financial condition,” and “Risk Factors—We are exposed to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates” in Item 1A of Part I, “Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosure about Market Risk” in Item 7A of Part II, and Note 13, “Financial Instruments,” to our Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II.
Research and Development
Innovation is a key element of our culture and critical to our success. Our research and development efforts (“R&D”) are focused on designing and developing products, services, and solutions that anticipate customers' changing needs and desires and emerging technological trends. Our efforts also are focused on identifying the areas where we believe we can make a unique contribution and where partnering with other leading technology companies will leverage our cost structure and maximize our customers' experiences.
Expenditures for R&D were $2.3 billion in fiscal 2023 and $2.0 billion in fiscal 2022 and 2021, respectively. We anticipate that we will continue to have significant R&D expenditures in the future to support the design and development of innovative, high-quality products, services, and solutions to maintain and enhance our competitive position.
Included in the R&D work currently taking place at the Company are the following initiatives:
In Compute, we are developing high quality next-generation compute solutions (servers, server attached options, and software) that integrate the latest industry technology, which coupled with other innovations from HPE are aligned to the requirements of our customers. In the area of software-as-a-service, we are developing cloud-native, cloud-based server management solutions to complement our existing portfolio.
In HPC & AI, our R&D investments are focused on developing new technology in high-performance networking, liquid cooling, artificial intelligence platforms and its application to LLMs, scalable memory systems, and high-performance storage and data solutions that underpin our differentiated offerings. We also develop high-performance computing and artificial intelligence developer tools and software, cloud-native and scalable cluster management software, and transaction processing software. These R&D efforts are critical to our competitive advantage and enabled our successful delivery of the first exascale supercomputer in the world. HPC & AI also collaborates with an applied research group, Hewlett Packard Labs, where we invest in long-term technological advancements, including artificial intelligence software, advanced systems architectures, networking, and photonics. We also collaborate with government and commercial research institutions and co-invest in many of these areas. The work of Hewlett Packard Labs contributes to a pipeline of technologies we consider for future commercialization, including quantum computing and its relation to high performance computing. All our products are being developed to be delivered in a consumption model, including integration into our HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, such as the HPE GreenLake for LLMs offering.
In the Storage and data management domains, we continue to evolve the portfolio to bring the cloud operational experience to customers across their hybrid cloud deployment. HPE is focused on helping customers simplify how they manage storage and protect their data and workloads on-premises, at the edge, and in the public cloud. By leveraging the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform for unified cloud-based management, we have transformed the way customers consume and manage storage, while offering robust data protection and private cloud solutions. In fiscal 2023, we have expanded our storage portfolio to offer software-defined disaggregated storage services that include HPE GreenLake for Block Storage and HPE GreenLake for File Storage. With an increased emphasis on simplifying day-to-day management and cloud data protection, HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition delivers unified virtual machine-to-infrastructure management for both on-
premises and public cloud environments. With the addition of HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery alongside HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery, customers have access to a complete suite of offerings providing cloud data protection.
In Intelligent Edge, we are investing in a broad portfolio of networking and security capabilities, addressing remote-user, branch, campus, data-center, and cloud use-cases. We are expanding our wireless access portfolio to include 4G, LTE, and 5G cellular to complement our leadership position in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee, with an emphasis on hybrid deployments. We have expanded our security investments with the recent acquisition of Security Service Edge provider Axis Security and are integrating security with our software-defined wide area network (“SD-WAN”) capabilities to deliver a single vendor Secure Access Services Edge solution. Within our Ethernet Switch portfolio, we are investing in new Data Center Networking platforms and features to expand our total addressable market within our core market. We are leveraging the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to provide consistent access to our aaS capabilities and to enable new network-as-a-service business models. We are also investing in automation, machine learning, and AI-based network operations to optimize user experience and improve operator efficiency, as exemplified by our cloud-native Aruba Central cloud service that provides manageability for our entire portfolio, including Wireless LAN, Campus & Data Center Switches, and SD-Branch.
In Hewlett Packard Labs, in addition to the aforementioned HPC & AI-related work, we are focused on disruptive innovation and applied research in collaboration with other HPE business groups to deliver differentiated intellectual property. Our innovation agenda is focused on developing technologies in the areas of system architecture, networking, AI, accelerators, quantum computing, silicon photonics, and sustainability. We also continue to invest in our silicon design capability to accelerate the development and delivery of our technology.
For a discussion of risks attendant to our R&D activities, see “Risk Factors—If we cannot successfully execute our go-to-market strategy, including our ongoing transition to an aaS consumption-based business model, our business, and financial performance may suffer” in Item 1A.
Patents
Our general policy is to seek patent protection for those inventions likely to be incorporated into our products and services or where obtaining such proprietary rights will improve our competitive position. As of October 31, 2023, our worldwide patent portfolio included approximately 13,000 issued and pending patents.
Patents generally have a term of up to 20 years from the date they are filed. As our patent portfolio has been built over time, the remaining terms of the individual patents across our patent portfolio vary. We believe that our patents and patent applications are important for maintaining the competitive differentiation of our products and services, enhancing our freedom of action to sell our products and services in markets in which we choose to participate, and maximizing our return on research and development investments. No single patent is in itself essential to our company as a whole or to any of our business segments.
In addition to developing our patent portfolio, we license intellectual property from third parties as we deem appropriate. We have also granted and continue to grant to others licenses and other rights under our patents when we consider these arrangements to be in our interest. These license arrangements include a number of cross-licenses with third parties.
For a discussion of risks attendant to intellectual property rights, see “Risk Factors—Our financial performance may suffer if we cannot continue to develop, license or enforce the intellectual property rights on which our businesses depend” and “—Our products and services depend in part on intellectual property and technology licensed from third parties” in Item 1A.
Seasonality
From time to time, the markets in which we sell our products, services, and solutions experience weak economic conditions that may negatively affect sales. We experience some seasonal trends in the sale of our products and services. For example, European sales are often weaker in the summer months. See “Risk Factors—Our uneven sales cycle and supply chain disruptions make planning and inventory management difficult and future financial results less predictable” in Item 1A.
Competition
We have a broad technology portfolio of enterprise IT infrastructure products, solutions, and services which includes our as-a-service offerings. We encounter strong competition in all areas of our business. We compete primarily on the basis of technology, innovation, performance, price, quality, reliability, brand, reputation, distribution, range of products and services, ease of use of our products, account relationships, customer training, service and support, security, and the availability of our IT infrastructure offerings.
The markets in which we compete are characterized by strong competition among major corporations with long-established positions and a large number of new and rapidly growing firms. Most product life cycles are relatively short, and to
remain competitive we must develop new products and services, continuously enhance our existing products and services and compete effectively on the basis of the factors listed above, among others. In addition, we compete with many of our current and potential partners, including OEMs that design, manufacture, and market their products under their own brand names. Our successful management of these competitive partner relationships is critical to our future success. Moreover, we anticipate that we will have to continue to adjust prices on many of our products and services to stay competitive.
The competitive environments in which our segments operate are described below:
Compute and Storage businesses operate in the highly competitive enterprise data center infrastructure market, which is characterized by rapid and ongoing technological innovation and price competition. Our primary competitors are technology vendors, such as Dell Technologies Inc., Super Micro Computer, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”), and NetApp Inc. In certain regions, we also experience competition from local companies and from generically branded or “white-box” manufacturers. Our strategy is to deliver superior products, high-value technology support services, and differentiated integrated solutions that combine our infrastructure, software, and services capabilities. Our competitive advantages include our broad end-to-end solutions portfolio, supported by our strong intellectual property portfolio and research and development capabilities, coupled with our global reach and partner ecosystem.
HPC & AI predominantly operates in the market for data-intensive super-computing, analytics, and artificial intelligence. Our primary competitors are compute technology vendors that can design and build solutions that deliver performance scalability and connectivity necessary to handle super-compute and AI workloads, including Dell Technologies Inc., Super Micro Computer, Inc,, Lenovo Group Ltd., IBM, Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc., and Atos Information Technology Incorporated. In our software platform for AI model development and deployment, we both compete and cooperate with cloud service providers and start-up companies that deliver platforms for AI model training, tuning, and inferencing. Similar to the compute space, our strategy is to deliver superior products, high-value technology support services, and differentiated integrated solutions that combine our infrastructure, software, and services capabilities. Our competitive advantages include our deep expertise and capabilities designing and delivering these solutions, broad end-to-end heterogeneous and open solutions portfolio, supported by our strong intellectual property portfolio and research and development capabilities, coupled with our global reach and partner ecosystem.
Intelligent Edge operates in the highly competitive networking and connectivity infrastructure market, which is characterized by rapid and ongoing technological innovation and price competition. Our primary competitors are technology vendors, such as Cisco Systems, Inc., Extreme Networks, Inc., Arista Networks Inc, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Juniper Networks, Inc. Our strategy is to deliver superior enterprise wired and wireless local-area networking components and software, high-value technology support services, and differentiated integrated solutions that combine our infrastructure, software, and services capabilities. Our competitive advantage includes our broad end-to-end solutions portfolio, supported by our strong intellectual property portfolio and research and development capabilities, coupled with our global reach and partner ecosystem.
Financial Services. In our financing business, our primary competitors are captive financing companies, such as IBM Global Financing, Dell Financial Services, and Cisco Capital, as well as banks and other financial institutions. Our primary IT Asset Disposition (“ITAD”) competitors are ERI, Ingram Micro, Sage Sustainable Electronics, and Sims Recycling Solutions. We believe our competitive advantage over banks, other financial institutions, and ITAD providers is our ability to bring together our investment solutions with our expertise in managing technology assets. Not only are we able to deliver investment solutions that help customers create unique technology deployments based on specific business needs, but we also help them extract value from existing IT investments while more efficiently managing the retirement of those assets. All of these solutions can help customers accelerate digital transformation, create new budget streams, and meet Circular Economy objectives.
For a discussion of certain risks attendant to these competitive environments, see “Risk Factors—We operate in an intensely competitive industry, and competitive pressures could harm our business and financial performance” in Item 1A.
Environmental Sustainability
Living Progress - Living Progress is our business strategy for creating sustainable IT solutions that meet the technology demands of the future, while advancing the way people live and work. This strategy underpins our commitment to the environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) factors most important to stakeholders. Our edge-to-cloud strategy helps our customers transform and digitize their business while reducing the environmental footprint of HPE and our customers. A legacy of ESG leadership increases our competitiveness and differentiates us in the marketplace by helping our customers achieve not only their business objectives, but also their sustainability goals. The HPE Board of Directors, including through its committees, provides oversight of our ESG strategy, risks, practices, policies, and disclosures, to support integration with our core business strategy.
Sustainable Value Creation - Sustainability performance is a core business discipline within HPE. Our Living Progress strategy and sustainability programs are key to our lasting relationships with our customers, and our sustainability credentials
provide us with a competitive advantage in the market, support talent acquisition and retention, and enable ongoing access to global markets.
HPE has committed to becoming a net-zero enterprise by 2040, with intermediate targets set across our value chain for 2030. These climate targets are approved by the Science Based Target initiative and align with the latest climate science. Our commitment is supported by our Net-Zero Roadmap, which defines the levers we plan to prioritize to enable us to deliver on our near- and long-term carbon emissions reduction targets and outlines key assumptions with respect to our reduction targets.
In 2023, the majority of our greenhouse gas emissions (“GHG”) resulted from our customers' use of our products and solutions. We recognize the opportunity to innovate technologies for a carbon-constrained world and are committed to delivering products and services that empower our customers to reduce the carbon footprints of their IT estates while also gaining maximum productivity from their IT investments and reducing costs. For instance, in 2023, HPE launched a portfolio of new and enhanced sustainable IT services to enable IT to run more sustainably from the data center to the workload.
To enable market access across the globe and aid customers in selecting more sustainable IT solutions, many of our products are certified by eco-labels such as Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool, TCO Certified, Energy STAR, China SEPA and the China Energy Conservation Program.
Supply Chain Responsibility and Human Rights
We manage our supply chain to help reduce risk, improve product quality, achieve environmental and social goals, and improve overall performance and value creation for our customers, partners, and suppliers. Building upon the successful launch of our supply chain data management software, we have granted access to suppliers representing 80% by production spend to visualize their company-specific emissions data and the ability to track progress toward their publicly stated emissions reduction goals. In 2023, we participated in the Responsible Business Alliance pilot of an Environmental Management Tool (“EMT”) to request primary GHG emissions data from a small number of our suppliers using third-party software. The EMT enables all suppliers to disclose their GHG emissions, reduction targets, and reporting and verification statuses to their customers in a consolidated, industry-standard survey, increasing ESG transparency, maturity, and data availability.
We are conscious of the importance of the responsible use of our products. In an effort to prevent intended and unintended harm, we continue to consider who purchases our offerings and how they are used by, among other things, limiting features, including responsible use clauses, monitoring for risk of alternate end uses, and promoting deployment of AI with safeguards, such as user training and ongoing checks and refinement to mitigate bias and improve accuracy.
Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion extends beyond our workforce and to our suppliers, as well. We believe a diverse supply chain and equity in sourcing not only creates opportunities for underrepresented and underserved communities, but also contributes to the resiliency of our supply chain and of our communities.
Human rights principles are embedded in how we do business, and we are committed to holding our entire value chain to high ethical standards that respect such principles. We have processes in place to enable the early detection of forced labor and have implemented due diligence procedures to monitor and help prevent human rights violations or abuses at our suppliers and in our operations. Additionally, through our Responsible Minerals Program, we work to advance the responsible sourcing of minerals used in our products and within our supply chain.
We are also committed to the responsible and ethical development and deployment of new technologies to advance how we live and work, and we continue to build on our existing responsible development work, particularly in relation to AI. We have an executive level AI Ethics Responsibility Committee and an operational AI Ethics Working Group, through which we aim to align the development, deployment, and use of AI with HPE's AI Ethical Principles, promoting privacy-enabled and secure, human focused, inclusive, robust, and responsible use of AI.
In 2022, we refined our approach to assessing ethical AI and rolled out AI Ethical Principles training. In 2023, we further advanced this initiative by launching three new sub-committees to help us operationalize our principles for: Products (AI we develop), Processes (AI we source to use), and Partnerships (AI we source to incorporate into our solutions).
While the HPE Board of Directors and all of its committees take an integrated, rather than siloed, approach to providing oversight of ESG matters, including environmental sustainability, supply chain responsibility, and human rights, our Nominating, Governance and Social Responsibility Committee is primarily responsible for oversight of our broader ESG strategy, initiatives, risks, policies, and disclosures.
Material Government Regulations
Our business activities are subject to various federal, state, local, and foreign laws and our products and services are governed by a number of rules and regulations. Costs and accruals incurred to comply with these governmental regulations are
presently not material to our capital expenditures, results of operations and competitive position. Although there is no assurance that existing or future government laws applicable to our operations, services or products will not have a material adverse effect on our capital expenditures, results of operations and competitive position, we do not currently anticipate material expenditures for government regulations. Nonetheless, as discussed below, we believe that global trade and certain environmental regulations could potentially materially impact our business.
Environment
Our products and operations are, or may in the future be, subject to various federal, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations concerning the environment, including, among others, laws addressing the discharge of pollutants into the air and water; supply chain due diligence, and sustainability, environment and emissions-related reporting; the management, movement, and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes and the clean-up of contaminated sites; product compliance and safety, such as repairability, chemical composition, packaging and labeling; energy consumption of our products and services; and the manufacture and distribution of chemical substances. We proactively evaluate, and at times replace materials in our products and supply chain, taking into account, among other things, published lists of substances of concern, new and upcoming legal requirements, customer preferences and scientific analysis that indicates a potential impact to human health or the environment. We are also subject to legislation in an increasing number of jurisdictions that makes producers of electrical goods, including servers and networking equipment, subject to certain repairability requirements or financially responsible for specified collection, recycling, treatment, and disposal of past and future covered products (sometimes referred to as “product take-back legislation”). We are also subject to standards set by public and private entities related to sustainability issues such as energy consumption, carbon emissions, reusing or recycling. Finally, as climate change and other environmental-related laws, regulations, treaties, and similar initiatives and programs are adopted and implemented throughout the world, we will be required to comply or potentially face market access limitations or other sanctions, including fines. In the event our products are impacted by these laws or standards, our products could be restricted from entering certain jurisdictions or from being procured by certain governments or private companies, and we could face other sanctions, including fines. However, we believe that technology will be fundamental to finding solutions to achieve compliance with and manage those requirements, and we are collaborating with industry, business groups and governments to find and promote ways that our technology can be used to address climate change and other environmental-related issues, and to facilitate compliance with related laws, regulations and treaties. We are committed to maintaining compliance with all environmental and environmental-related laws applicable to our operations, products and services, and to reducing our environmental impact across all aspects of our business. We support this commitment with a range of comprehensive policies, including relating to environmental, health and safety, climate, water, and electronic waste; a strict environmental management of our operations and worldwide environmental programs and services; an extensive supply chain responsibility program; and an approach to ethical standards and strong governance that are the foundations of our business.
Global Trade
As a global company, the import and export of our products and services are subject to laws and regulations including international treaties, U.S. export controls and sanctions laws, customs regulations, and local trade rules around the world. Such laws, rules, and regulations may delay the introduction of some of our products or impact our competitiveness through restricting our ability to do business in certain places or with certain entities and individuals, or the need to comply with domestic preference programs, laws concerning transfer and disclosure of sensitive or controlled technology or source code, unique technical standards, localization mandates, and duplicative in-country testing and inspection requirements. The consequences of any failure to comply with domestic and foreign trade regulations could limit our ability to conduct business globally. We continue to support open trade policies that recognize the importance of integrated cross-border supply chains that will continue to contribute to the growth of the global economy and measures that standardize compliance for manufacturers to ensure that products comply with safety and security requirements.
For a discussion of the risks associated with government regulations that may materially impact us, see “Regulatory and Government Risks” within “Risk Factors” in Item 1A.
Additional Information
Itanium is a trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Information about our Executive Officers
The following are our current executive officers:
| Name | Age | Position | ||||||
| Antonio Neri | 56 | President and Chief Executive Officer | ||||||
| John F. Schultz | 59 | Executive Vice President, Chief Operating and Legal Officer | ||||||
| Alan May | 65 | Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer | ||||||
| Gerri A. Gold | 65 | Executive Vice President, President and Chief Executive Officer, HPE Financial Services | ||||||
| Fidelma Russo | 60 | Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, and General Manager of Hybrid Cloud | ||||||
| Justin Hotard | 49 | Executive Vice President, General Manager of HPC & AI | ||||||
| Neil B. MacDonald | 55 | Executive Vice President, General Manager of Compute | ||||||
| Philip J. Mottram | 55 | Executive Vice President, General Manager of Intelligent Edge | ||||||
| Jeremy K. Cox | 46 | Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Controller, Chief Tax Officer, and Principal Accounting Officer | ||||||
| Kirt P. Karros | 54 | Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations |
Antonio Neri; President and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Neri has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer since June 2017 and February 2018, respectively. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of our Enterprise Group from November 2015 to June 2017. Prior to that, Mr. Neri served in a similar role for HP Co.'s Enterprise Group from October 2014 to November 2015. Mr. Neri served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the HP Servers business unit from September 2013 to October 2014 and concurrently as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the HP Networking business unit from May 2014 to October 2014. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the HP Technology Services business unit from August 2011 to September 2013 and as Vice President, Customer Services for the HP Personal Systems Group from 2007 to August 2011, having first joined HP Co. in 1996. Since December 2017, Mr. Neri has served as a director of Elevance Health, Inc. (formerly Anthem, Inc.), a health insurance provider in the U.S. From March 2012 to February 2013, he served as a director of MphasiS Limited, an India-based technology company.
John F. Schultz; Executive Vice President, Chief Operating and Legal Officer
Mr. Schultz has served as our Executive Vice President, Chief Operating and Legal Officer since July 2020. Prior to that, he served as Executive Vice President, Chief Legal and Administrative Officer and Secretary from December 2017 to July 2020. Mr. Schultz previously served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary from November 2015 to December 2017, performing a similar role at HP Co. from April 2012 to November 2015. Prior to that, Mr. Schultz served as Deputy General Counsel for Litigation, Investigations and Global Functions at HP Co. from September 2008 to April 2012. Before joining HP Co., Mr. Schultz was a partner in the litigation practice at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, a law firm, from March 2005 to September 2008, where, among other clients, he supported HP Co. as external counsel on a variety of litigation and regulatory matters.
Alan May; Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer
Mr. May has served as our Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer since June 2015. At Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he leads a global HR function, driving business growth and transformation through employee engagement; diversity, equity and inclusion; talent management; rewards; and culture development. Before joining Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he served as Vice President, Human Resources at Boeing Commercial Aircraft, a division of The Boeing Company, from April 2013 to June 2015. Prior to that, Mr. May served as Vice President, Human Resources for Boeing Defense, Space and Security at Boeing from June 2010 to April 2013 and as Vice President, Compensation, Benefits and Strategy at Boeing from August 2007 to June 2010. Mr. May has also served in senior human resources roles at Cerberus Capital Management and PepsiCo. He serves on the Board of Governors for the San Francisco Symphony.
Gerri A. Gold; Executive Vice President, President and Chief Executive Officer, HPE Financial Services
Ms. Gold has served as Executive Vice President, President and Chief Executive Officer of HPE Financial Services since February 2023. In this role, she leads HPE Financial Services, the global financing and asset management organization that supports HPE’s edge-to-cloud strategy, and helps customers and partners accelerate their transformation. From May 2018 to February 2023, she served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of HPE Financial Services, and from
August 2015 to May 2018, as the Vice President Global Accounts, Sales, Marketing and Managing Director Asset Management of HPE Financial Services. Prior to that, Ms. Gold held a variety of leadership roles at HP Co., Compaq Financial Services, and AT&T, and was one of the founding members of AT&T Capital Corp.
Fidelma Russo; Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Hybrid Cloud
Ms. Russo has served as our Executive Vice President, General Manager of our Hybrid Cloud business segment, and Chief Technology Officer since November 2023. Prior to that, Ms. Russo served as Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer from September 2021 to October 2023. Prior to joining Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ms. Russo was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Cloud Services business unit at VMware from May 2020 to September 2021, the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Technology & Operations at Iron Mountain, Inc. from March 2017 to May 2020, and Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage and Software at EMC Corp. from January 2011 to January 2017. Prior to such roles, she also held several leadership positions at HP Co. and Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Justin Hotard; Executive Vice President, General Manager of HPC & AI
Mr. Hotard has served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of our HPC & AI global business, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Labs, our applied research group, since March 2022, and as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the same group from March 2021 to March 2022. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President, Corporate Transformation from September 2020 to March 2021, where he led our transformation efforts to accelerate our pivot to as-a-service offerings. Prior to that, Mr. Hotard served as President and Managing Director of HPE Japan from October 2019 to September 2020, as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Compute Global Business Unit from January 2017 to October 2019 and as Vice President of Strategy, Planning and Operations in the Data Center Infrastructure Group from August 2015 to January 2017. Before joining Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Mr. Hotard was President of NCR Small Business from July 2013 to November 2014 and Vice President of Corporate Development of NCR Corporation from July 2012 to July 2013. Prior to that, Mr. Hotard served in various corporate development and operational roles at Symbol Technologies and Motorola, Inc.
Neil B. MacDonald; Executive Vice President, General Manager of Compute
Mr. MacDonald has served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of our Compute business since March 2022, and as Senior Vice President and General Manager of our Compute business from February 2020 to March 2022. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Compute Solutions group of the then Hybrid IT business segment, from November 2018 to February 2020. Mr. MacDonald previously served as Vice President and General Manager of BladeSystem from August 2015 to October 2018, having first joined HP Co. in 1996.
Philip J. Mottram; Executive Vice President, General Manager of Intelligent Edge
Mr. Mottram has served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of our Intelligent Edge business since March 2022. Previously, he served as the President of our Intelligent Edge business from June 2021 to March 2022. Prior to that, Mr. Mottram served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Communications Technology Group from April 2019 to June 2021. Before joining Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he served as the Chief Revenue Officer of Zayo Group, a communications infrastructure provider, from November 2017 to February 2019, where he was responsible for all customer-facing functions. Prior to that, Mr. Mottram served as Director of the Enterprise Business Unit of Vodafone from May 2014 to November 2017, the Chief Executive Officer of Hong Kong CSL from September 2012 to May 2014, and Executive Director of Global Sales at Telstra International from September 2010 to September 2012, as well as a variety of different operational roles at other telecommunications companies.
Jeremy K. Cox; Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Controller, Chief Tax Officer, and Principal Account Officer
Mr. Cox has served as our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Controller, Chief Tax Officer, and Principal Accounting Officer since August 2023. Prior to that, he served as our Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller, Chief Tax Officer, and Principal Accounting Officer from July 2022 to August 2023. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Global Tax and Head of Products and Services Finance from May 2021 to July 2022. Prior to that, Mr. Cox served as Senior Vice President, Global Tax, Financial Planning and Analysis, and Global Functions Finance from November 2018 to May 2021, Senior Vice President, Global Tax and Internal Audit from September 2017 to November 2018, Senior Vice President, Global Tax from September 2012 to September 2017 and Vice President and Senior Tax Counsel of HP Tax Research and Planning and APJ Taxes from 2008 to 2012. Prior to joining HP Inc. in 2008, Mr. Cox was Senior Tax Counsel for Electronic Data Systems.
Kirt P. Karros; Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations
Mr. Karros has served as our Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations since May 2022. Previously, he served as our Senior Vice President, Finance and Treasurer from November 2015 to May 2022. Prior to that, Mr. Karros served in a similar role at HP Co., leading its Treasury and Investor Relations from May 2015 to October 2015. He also has served as the Executive Chairman of H3C Technologies since August 2022. Mr. Karros previously served as a director of InnerWorkings, Inc. from August 2019 to October 2020, as a director of PMC-Sierra, a semiconductor company, from August 2013 to May 2015, and as Principal and Managing Director of Research for Relational Investors LLC, an investment fund, from 2001 to May 2015.
Available Information
Our website is located at www.hpe.com. Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available on our website at http://investors.hpe.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such reports with, or furnish those reports to, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Corporate Governance Guidelines, Board of Directors' committee charters (including the charters of the Audit Committee, Finance and Investment Committee, HR and Compensation Committee, Technology Committee, and Nominating, Governance and Social Responsibility Committee) and code of ethics entitled “Standards of Business Conduct” are also available at that same location on our website. Stockholders may request free printed copies of these documents from:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company
Attention: Investor Relations
1701 East Mossy Oaks Road,
Spring, Texas 77389
http://investors.hpe.com/financial/requested-printed-reports
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