In this episode of HPE’s “Unleash AI Momentum,” Robin Braun, vice president of AI Business Development at HPE, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay to unpack the strategy behind the Unleash AI partner program. Braun details how HPE is addressing the critical transition from AI pilots to production-ready enterprise deployments by combining HPE Private Cloud AI with a curated ecosystem of vetted ISV partners. The conversation emphasizes the necessity of governance, security and scale, highlighting how organizations can achieve tangible outcomes behind their own firewalls. Braun also explains the value of Unleash AI hands-on labs, which enable customers to test solutions and validate workflows on their proprietary data without the friction of a full proof-of-concept.
The discussion further explores the practical application of these technologies across diverse industries, citing use cases such as automating digital accessibility with Kamiwaza and deploying agentic smart city solutions. Braun addresses the growing complexity of global regulations, including the EU AI Act and GDPR, and explains how a sovereign AI architecture helps enterprises navigate data residency and compliance challenges. Looking forward, Braun and Strechay discuss the evolution of vertical AI solutions in sectors like manufacturing and retail, as well as the shift toward agentic workflows where AI moves beyond generating insights to executing complex, autonomous business tasks.
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Robin Braun, HPE
In this #HPEAIMomentum interview, theCUBE’s Rob Strechay sits down with Robin Braun, VP of AI Business Development at HPE, and Jack Hogan, VP of Advanced Growth Technologies at SHI International Corp., to unpack how accessibility compliance is becoming a foundational step for enterprise-scale AI. The discussion explores Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 realities facing U.S. state and federal agencies – especially as stricter rules arrive next April for municipalities of 50,000+ residents – and why inclusion, trust and legal risk all converge on digital accessibility. Braun and Hogan detail a joint HPE–SHI approach that pairs HPE infrastructure (powered by NVIDIA GPUs) with partner technology from Kamiwaza to automate multimodal remediation across HTML, PDFs, images, video and audio – keeping data in place, honoring sovereignty and ensuring a “human-in-the-loop” final publish.
The conversation dives into outcomes and operations: accelerating timelines from multi-year, multi-million-dollar programs to weeks and “tens of thousands” of dollars, targeting sub-$200K entry points for large, complex sites; enabling continuous monitoring so compliance isn’t a one-time project; and validating solutions in SHI’s AI & cyber lab on HPE private cloud AI systems before deployment. Beyond compliance, the guests explain how clean, accessible content becomes the base layer for AI adoption – supporting hybrid and private cloud patterns, de-risking downstream AI use cases and helping municipalities focus budgets on better citizen services.
In this episode of HPE’s “Unleash AI Momentum,” Robin Braun, vice president of AI Business Development at HPE, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay to unpack the strategy behind the Unleash AI partner program. Braun details how HPE is addressing the critical transition from AI pilots to production-ready enterprise deployments by combining HPE Private Cloud AI with a curated ecosystem of vetted ISV partners. The conversation emphasizes the necessity of governance, security and scale, highlighting how organizations can achieve tangible outcomes behind their own firewal...Read more
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What is HPE's strategy for delivering production-ready enterprise AI?add
What are some practical ways to make AI tangible for customers?add
What are the challenges organizations face regarding AI regulations, and how can they navigate them?add
What are the considerations and strategies for managing AI regulations and compliance within an organization?add
>> Hello and welcome to this episode of HPE Unleash AI. Today, we're going to be diving into what it is and what it means for organizations that are trying to figure out their AI journey. Today I'm joined by Robin Braun, who's the vice president of AI Business Development at HPE, and the leader behind the Unleash AI partner program. Robin, it's so great to be talking to you again. Great to have you on.
Robin Braun
>> Thanks. Delighted to be here today, Rob.
Rob Strechay
>> So, let's roll it back a little bit and take it up a level and help people understand exactly what is Unleash AI and the program.
Robin Braun
>> Absolutely. Unleash AI, I'm so excited to be leading the program. It's really HPE's strategy for delivering production-ready enterprise AI with the governance, security, and scale organizations need to be able to jump over that gap that we've heard so much about going from pilot to production. We look to combine like HPE Private Cloud AI, HPE's flagship product around being able to get started with that total AI solution that's co-engineered with NVIDIA and, of course, also built on NVIDIA acceleration. But then, really the Unleash HAI portion is a curated ecosystem of vetted ISV partners and being able to bring them together across whether it's our X10000 PCAI, as I mentioned, being able to bring the different components of the infrastructure. But underneath the use case, underneath that less mile of the solution that the ISV can help us bring to our channel partners and then customers is to really underscore the mission of, again, how we can help our customers move from AI experiments to AI outcomes both fast, safely and behind their own firewalls, so that they can take advantage of their own data to be able to drive their own outcomes.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I love that. I think, again, when you look at it, bringing in the ecosystem and helping those customers, like you said, behind the firewall where they're creating on top of their own intellectual property, but let's stick there with the ecosystem. Why have you built such a selective ISV community for enterprise AI like this with Unleash AI?
Robin Braun
>> I think, Rob, AI is this vast topic. Somebody was like, "We do AI." That doesn't really say what you're doing. That could mean anything to anyone. We've really gone out and curated a handful of partners focused on different AI use cases from vision AI, all the way to agentic analytics and everything in between, including accessibility and compliance, which we've talked about before, data governance. Getting into the considerations that we so often focus on an AI around the data that we're building out all of these great insights on. And then, stretching all the way into digital twins, where you start to think about operationalizing your environment in different ways. We have partners like Viteo and ProHawk to DataIQ and Able and Kamiwaza, and even CrowdStrike and Fortanix. And being able to put all of these partners together into an ecosystem and innovation partnership and toolboxes, I like to say, because each one brings something essential that our customers and partners need to be able to solve those business challenges that they're wrestling with.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I love it. I think, again, when you talk about it, you're providing them that opinionated stack, so that they can go and plug pieces in where they need to based on the outcome they're looking for, which is really what everybody's trying to get to, the ROI of AI, or the ROAI. So, I also hear that you're really going down this path and really investing in helping to roll out hands-on labs. Help us understand a little bit more about that.
Robin Braun
>> When we think about AI, there's a ton of different slides out there, there's a lot of jazz hands around it, but how do you start to make it practical and tactical and something that's really tangible for someone? And so, when we think about the Unleash AI hands-on labs, we think that can be a big differentiator to help our customers try solutions before buying, to be able to walk through the workflow, start to understand what that can mean, start to really see and demonstrate the type of outcomes that they can have within their own environment. Because an AI that's really tough to do without going into a full-blown POC and all the time and energy and impact that that has on the organization. So, we want our customers to see real results on their data before they commit, but being able to do so in a much more controlled environment.
Rob Strechay
>> I think that was key, and I think let's keep on that train because I think making it real is really where it's at. And why don't you share what some of the examples of outcomes customers can deploy today and where they can really get that ROI?
Robin Braun
>> Well, we've started, and one of the points of Unleash AI is to bring out use cases. While it's great to talk about ISVs, and I have some fantastic ones and I can wax poetic about them all day long, it's really looking at how do we help people solution? How do we help people implement and leverage these technologies to achieve the type of results that they're looking for? So, one of the first that we started with was around 508 digital accessibility working. We released that with Kamiwaza and SHI. We're really where we can help organizations automate their accessibility audits and WCAG remediation behind their own firewalls. And in the end, the goal being to make public information more accessible for people with disabilities, which is something that you can just be passionate about, whether there's a federal regulation or not, quite frankly, this used to take months, but working with someone like Kamiwaza, it can take minutes and it's really game-changing when you start to think about how can we help these organizations who are struggling with all of their legacy content to be able to make it accessible. Then, being able to grow that out further to smart cities, which we announced at GTC D.C. at the end of October. That's live today in Vail, Colorado. Being able to bring in, again, that agentic back in. So, we announced HPE's Agentic Smart City Solution, leveraging that agentic intelligence with a partner, such as Kamiwaza, but bringing in those other types of AI, again, part of the Unleash AI ecosystem with Viteo, ProHawk, Blackshark, and we'll continue to build out that ecosystem as additional use cases come up from mobility to public safety, environmental insights, digital twins, all things that cities are struggling with to look at how did they bring them to life and start to leverage these technologies to help their cities in the end be smarter? And then, you'll start to see new things coming around manufacturing and retail, but those are coming and we're excited for the conversations we'll soon be having.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, and I love that it all ties back to this curated partner approach, right?
Robin Braun
>> It does. And the customers know what they're trying to achieve, but don't necessarily know whom to work with to achieve it. And one of the great things about being able to bring in these partners and these solutions so the customers know that they've been vetted and are enterprise ready working with HPE and typically a channel partner or a system integrator, to be able to bring them into their environment and essentially create that easy button for how they can get started on their AI journey.
Rob Strechay
>> So, let's hop across the pond here for a second. From the US over into Europe, there's an explosion of regulation going on over there. I think I personally think from an analyst perspective, this is coming our way. In the US, we're already seeing it pop up a little bit, but you got things like things like GDPR, the AI Act, you have the Data Residency, you also have Data Resiliency and some many others. How are you helping organizations really deal with all of this? Because even if you're a US company and if you have a domain over in Europe, you still have to deal with this as well.
Robin Braun
>> It's such an explosion, but it's also kind of confusing when you start to think about all of the different regulations and how do you manage to them all at once? Now, some of the base things is, again, when we think about it from an HPE perspective, before even layering Unleash AI in, is being able to have platforms like Private Cloud AI, which is designed for sovereign AI and being able to have that on-premise control, that full data and model residency and have that responsible AI and audit ability. So, being able to have all of that be packaged. Then, being able to layer the ISV ecosystem on top of that type of platform where we're helping European banks and governments and healthcare organizations prepare for the AI Act. Readiness and compliance to me is one of the areas why we started with 508 compliance here in the US and now expanding that to be able to bring that same type of compliance against the EU regulations is that that is such a complex and sometimes even conflicting environment, that it really is a growth driver for AI adoption to ensure that you can meet all of the type of regulations that are required.
Rob Strechay
>> So, when you start to look ahead and you're starting to understand what's going on, what do you see next for Unleash AI as you go down this path?
Robin Braun
>> There is so exciting. The change in AI is happening so rapidly that what is the word for next year going to be? This year it was a genetic, what will next year bring? But in looking at Unleash AI and what our customers are really asking for is around how do we continue to bring out vertical AI solutions, being able to the smart city, incredibly exciting and impactful, but being able to now consider other verticals that our customers are clamoring for that type of expanded use case and capability solution, whether it's around manufacturing or retail, additional areas around airports and airlines. It's amazing the number of questions that we get that pertain to that area. Additional considerations from public sector and healthcare. Every different vertical has their own unique need, all of which AI can assist with, but with different flavors and different requirements across each one. So, you'll see us continue to lean in those areas to continue to grow that out. As we look at agentic workflows, continuing to build out in those areas, from accessibility to analytics to operations, our partners who are building AI, they don't just answer questions. It starts to take action. It starts to look at workflow. Because when you think about it, AI first just gave us an answer. And an answer is interesting, but you need to do something with the answer and that's why I love about the agentic approach that we're taking is really that capability to now build out workflows that match more the human workflows that we're accustomed to and how can we automate those more mundane, time-consuming areas, so that we can drive more back into the business will see us continue to expand our hands on lab. I'm really passionate for people to be able to experience PCAI and our different ISV solutions directly so that they can get excited about the same things that I see every day. And also you'll see us continue to lean in globally with Unleash AI as we continue to grow this community working across our regions, working globally with our different partners and ISV partners out there with more partner events, more office hours, more seller enablement, and of course, more customer-facing proof points.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah. I love it, Robin. I think again, just the tremendous momentum that I'm seeing and from the outside looking in, and it's such a clear strategy for helping people with this opinionated stack and these great partners and this partner program that brings solutions and outcomes. Any final words you want to share with the folks about this and the customers that are out there and partners?
Robin Braun
>> Absolutely, Rob. I think my observation is that we've been through a great deal of experimentation, but AI is real now. The impact it can have on your business is real now, and that our customers are looking for outcomes. They may not always know how to achieve those outcomes, but they really are looking for outcomes, not just experiments, to try new things. And Unleash AI is all about helping them get there with confidence and with the best partners in the world, and of course, on the best infrastructure in the world.
Rob Strechay
>> It has to sit somewhere, I agree with you on that.
Robin Braun
>> Has to.
Rob Strechay
>> Absolutely. Well, hey, Robin, thanks for coming on board. This has been great. Really always love talking to you and the customers and the momentum with Unleash AI has been fantastic. Thanks for coming on board again.
Robin Braun
>> Oh, thank you. It was a great conversation, as always.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah. And thank you for joining us with this episode of HPE Unleash AI. I really appreciate you joining us here on theCUBE, the leader in tech analysis and news. Stay tuned.
