Bringing AI into your operations offers many benefits to your daily workflow, helping you save time and increase efficiency. But getting there isn’t always simple! A lot of organizations find out pretty quickly that their systems just aren’t set up for it. And public, cloud-based tools aren’t always the best fit, either.
One Canadian government ministry faced this challenge head-on. They recognized that AI had the potential to enhance their services. And as a public sector organization, they needed solutions that met strict security and compliance requirements. But building their own AI infrastructure from scratch would have been expensive, time-consuming, and far beyond their in-house capabilities.
Instead, they teamed up with the Enterprise Procurement team at PC Corp to deploy HPE Private Cloud AI. As one of the first in the country to adopt this new solution, they’re now positioned to innovate, without the burden of managing complex infrastructure on their own.
While this success story comes from the public sector, the same approach can benefit organizations across industries. In this post, we’ll explore what HPE Private Cloud AI is, how it works, and why you may want to include it in your IT procurement if you’re looking to tap into AI without the typical headaches.
The Challenges of Adopting AI
Deploying AI successfully requires a solid foundation of technology, expertise, and processes. Without these in place, the challenges add up quickly:
Infrastructure
Public AI tools usually run on cloud platforms that do most of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. If you’re trying to match that performance in-house, you may quickly run into limits with your own resources. Unless you already have the necessary systems in place that provide sufficient processing power, storage capacity, and specialized hardware, which is unlikely for most organizations beyond large-scale, well-equipped corporations.
Talent
There’s typically no clear roadmap to building your own AI tools, particularly if you want to use platforms that are customized to your operations, workflows, and core tasks. What’s more, developing, training, and maintaining private AI models demands a specialized skill set that many internal teams simply don’t have. Yet hiring or training staff to manage these custom systems takes time and racks up costs fast.
Integration
Combining custom AI tools into your existing systems is no small task. You’ll likely run into challenges like compatibility issues. And if you don’t already have a solid IT foundation that relies on data management best practices, you’ll struggle to get consistent, reliable results.
What is the HPE Private Cloud AI?
When it comes to AI, most organizations would prefer out-of-the-box functionality, rather than needing to navigate these complex challenges. HPE Private Cloud AI was designed to meet that demand.
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise developed this customizable platform together with NVIDIA, the U.S. tech giant you’ve probably heard of if you follow the stock market.
Here’s how it works: organizations receive a turnkey solution for running and managing generative AI applications on their own infrastructure, which they control. It bundles together hardware, software, and management tools to simplify AI deployment.
At the core is HPE AI Essentials, a software stack that gives you the infrastructure to support every step of an AI project, including data handling, model development, deployment, and system monitoring. The platform’s key features include:
- Optimized hardware: The system supports a range of operations, including model training, real-time inference, and fine-tuning across varying workloads. It incorporates specialized processors, such as the NVIDIA NIM™, a tool that uses powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) to handle complex calculations more efficiently.
- Built-in tools for data management and governance: The platform includes components for organizing, tagging, and controlling access to datasets used in AI projects. These features make it easier to maintain audit trails, manage versions, and comply with internal data handling policies.
- Flexible deployment options: The platform can be installed directly in an organization’s data center (on-premises), hosted in shared third-party facilities (colocation), or consumed as a managed service where infrastructure oversight is outsourced.
- Scalable resources: The system lets users increase or decrease processing power, storage space, and network capacity as needed.
- Enterprise-grade security: The system applies sophisticated features such as role-based access controls, encryption standards, and policy enforcement mechanisms.
The Key Benefits of the HPE Private Cloud AI
Yes, the sophisticated features behind HPE’s Private Cloud AI solution sound impressive! But you might be wondering, “What can this really do for me? Why should I care?”
This platform transforms how your organization deploys AI. Automation and innovation will be more manageable, secure, and useful in the context of your day-to-day operations. Here’s how it helps bridge the gap between AI potential and practical results:
Faster AI Development
The pre-integrated tools and optimized infrastructure will empower your teams to move from idea to production quickly. As a result, they can reduce the time-to-value for AI projects. Instead of spending weeks—or months—configuring systems and troubleshooting issues, teams can get faster insights and more room to experiment without getting bogged down by setup and overhead. And since developers can start using it with minimal setup, they can easily and quickly run AI models and connect them to other applications or platforms without having to build everything from scratch.
Different Sizes, Depending On Your Needs
Every organization is at a different stage of AI adoption, so a one-size-fits-all solution wouldn’t be helpful. You can deploy the HPE Private Cloud AI on one of four scalable starting points based on your needs:
- Developer System: This compact, cost-effective setup is built for early-stage AI development and validation. It’s ideal for developers or small teams who want to experiment with AI before committing to larger infrastructure.
- Small: Supports generative AI interference (basically, allows a trained model to produce responses, images, or other creative outputs based on new input)
- Medium: Supports generative AI interference and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) (a method where an AI model pulls in external information—like documents or databases—before generating a response, so it’s more accurate and up-to-date)
- Large: Supports inferencing, RAG and fine-tuning (the ability to teach a pre-trained AI new, targeted examples so it can perform a specific task more accurately and reliably.)
Bonus: organizations can add an Expansion Rack to scale existing configurations as AI workloads grow. No need to re-architect, so your initial investment stays protected!
Improved Cost Control
Many organizations love public cloud platforms for the subscription-based payment models. They are flexible and scalable, so it’s easy to adjust when your needs change. However, the costs can start to creep up, especially with compute-heavy AI workloads. What starts out looking affordable can become unpredictable as usage grows, and sticking to your budget gets harder.
With the HPE Private Cloud AI, you operate on dedicated infrastructure so it’s easier to know what you’re spending and plan ahead, without surprise fees catching you off guard.
That kind of cost stability makes it a lot simpler to commit to longer-term AI projects. The built-in scalability also means you can start with what you need now and expand over time. Thanks to its modular design, compute and storage resources can be scaled independently, so you can grow at your own pace without large upfront reinvestments.
Stronger Security & Compliance
Keeping data and models in this type of private environment located on-premises gives organizations more control and data sovereignty. It’s a way to get the benefits of cloud, like speed and scalability, without giving up ownership or oversight of sensitive systems. With the robust features available, you can more easily meet regulatory requirements and protect valuable intellectual property.
The HPE Private Cloud AI is particularly interesting for organizations in industries with strict privacy or compliance demands. The environment supports full traceability, recording every step of the AI process so it’s easier to track changes, understand decisions, and conduct audits when needed.
An air-gapped version is also available for organizations with the highest security needs. It runs completely offline, with no connection to the internet or external networks. This added layer of isolation and protection means your team can work efficiently while data remains within a secure, well-managed boundary.
Simplified Management
In certain environments, overseeing an organization’s AI infrastructure can be complex and time-consuming. HPE simplifies these tasks, with:
- Built-in automation and monitoring tools handle many routine tasks. Not only does this improve efficiency, but your team will also be free to focus on higher-value work.
- Support for popular AI frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, and JAX lets your team continue using familiar tools. No need to re-learn workflows or deal with the roadblocks that come from adopting new technology.
- End-to-end support from HPE and NVIDIA covers everything from infrastructure setup to AI model tuning. Your team can address issues more quickly and keep projects moving forward without unnecessary delays or setbacks.
Want to Bring AI into Your Operations? PC Corp is Here to Help
Getting the most out of AI doesn’t mean you have to give up control or security. That’s exactly what HPE Private Cloud AI offers. This ready-to-use solution is secure, scalable, and tailored to fit your organization’s needs.
If you’re a business in Alberta looking to bring AI or other new technologies into your operations, PC Corp’s IT procurement team can help guide you through the process. Whether it’s finding the right platform or building a modern, efficient IT setup, we’ll work with you to make your tech goals happen.
Interested in learning more? Get in touch with us today, and let’s see how we can support your AI plans and overall IT needs.
