While we don’t yet know the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we do know that it is a challenge unlike any we have faced in recent memory. I’ve learned that in volatile and uncertain times, we must focus on and prioritize the things that are within our control. This mindset is driving HPE’s response to COVID-19.
We have established a framework to assess the ongoing developments and their potential impacts, to address supporting our business operations and our people, and adapt our technologies and approaches to help organizations around the world navigate through the difficulty. Against this framework our priorities are clear: we must protect our team members and their families, we must prioritize innovation and efforts that deliver against what we call our “obsession” with our customers, and we must rise to the challenge of supporting the communities where we work and live.
When we first convened our Crisis Management Team nearly two months ago at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, taking decisive steps to ensure team member safety and wellbeing was at the top of our priority list. We’ve closed facilities where necessary. We’ve encouraged team members across all of our sites to work from home if they are able – and will continue to pay team members who aren’t able to do so. And we’re leveraging technologies and tools to allow support for and collaboration with team members, customers and partners in lieu of hosting physical meetings and events.
When it comes to our customers, we remain devoted to delivering technology that will powerfully enable both breakthrough and routine experiences. We are proud that our technology and teams are being called in to help organizations address the COVID-19 crisis. From enabling medical clinics to supporting telework and remote education to powering scientific research, we are focused on delivering for customers in bold new ways in these trying circumstances. Here are a few examples:
- In Vancouver, Washington, an area highly impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, Vancouver Clinic relies on HPE Aruba’s edge architecture to ensure their networks can support increased demand and critical care capabilities like telemedicine. Our Aruba Remote Access Points have seen a double-digit increase in demand because they allow organizations to extend their network and corporate resources to workers at home with secure, seamless connectivity.
- Our HPE Financial Services group is driving business continuity and financing for organizations having to manage their technology franchises differently. For example, one of the largest banks in the United States activated their business continuity plan for COVID-19 and determined they would need 40,000 laptops to move to full remote working protocol. The HPE Financial Services asset management team, which refurbishes a wide range of IT assets at end of use, was able to quickly provide most laptops, sourced from the bank’s recent lease returns and HPEFS pre-owned stock.
- We are supporting important work at some of the world’s leading research centers, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Our high-performance computing solutionsare enabling them to run simulations involving complex data and deep learningworkloads to better understand the new COVID-19 strain and develop drug treatments.
- Our HPE Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts are collaborating to support the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset – among several other COVID-19 initiatives for which AI can drive critical breakthroughs. They will develop AI tools to mine data across thousands of scholarly articles related to COVID-19 and related coronaviruses to help the medical community develop answers to high-priority scientific questions.
We know our customers and partners are relying on us to deliver HPE technologyand services that will help them adjust to new and emerging needs given the current environment. We are making it possible for employees around the world to effectively work from home through the rapid deployment of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. We are helping our customers address surging demand by quickly scaling operations to provide capacity. And we are providing different ways for organizations to consume and pay for IT as they need it, which helps them manage cash flow.
Beyond what our technology can enable, we are also banding together as HPE team members to direct financial resources that will aid the communities where we live and work. We’ve set up dollar-for-dollar donation matching to support the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund that will help the World Health Organization’s efforts with global health institutions and health workers to prevent, detect and respond to COVID-19. Donations will also support UNICEF’s global efforts to provide services like continuous education, healthcare, sanitation, and community engagement. And we’re actively engaging with our peers across the technology industry and in the backyard of our Silicon Valley headquarters to ensure we come together to maximize the impact we can make.
With the challenges we face today and those that lie ahead, we will need to continually adapt based on what is within our control. Embracing the HPE spirit of “yes, we can,” we will continue to support our team members, customers, partners and communities through this unprecedented period, and we will be there when all of our stakeholders need us to recover, evolve and thrive.