HPE PRESIDENT & CEO ANTONIO NERI LETTER TO PRESIDENT- ELECT BIDEN
Congratulations to you and Vice President-elect Harris on your historic election. It was truly inspiring to see so many Americans from so many different communities and walks of life across our great nation participate in this election in record numbers.
As the Biden-Harris transition team sets the agenda and priorities for your administration, I want you to know that HPE is committed to working constructively with your administration to leverage information technology, including high performance computing (HPC),to fight COVID-19, further scientific discovery and rebuild the U.S. economy in a manner that supports the well-being of all Americans, bridge the digital divide to foster greater opportunity for American families, and advance racial justice and inclusion.
Technology and HPC to Fight COVID-19 and Advance Scientific Discovery
HPE maintains the commitment we made from the start of the pandemic to provide dedicated scientists, engineers, and computing systems to accelerate the research and discovery of a vaccine and new medicines and therapeutics to fight COVID-19. As you convene your COVID-19 task force, please don’t hesitate to call upon me or our experts for assistance.
Currently, HPE is 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 solutions enable researchers to run simulations involving complex data and deep learning workloads to better understand the new COVID-19 strain and develop drug treatments.
We are also proud to support critical COVID-19 research by partnering in the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium with the DoE and other industry and academic organizations to provide supercomputing software and applications expertise free of charge to help researchers port, run, and optimize essential applications to combat this pandemic.
HPE Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts are collaborating to support the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset. They developed 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.
HPE has strong partnerships with the DoE National Laboratories through the Exascale Initiative and other HPC/AI collaborations, and we stand ready to continue the fight against COVID-19 as well as advance scientific discoveries in health care, medicine, renewable energy, manufacturing, space exploration, climate science, and other areas.
Rebuilding the U.S. Economy Through Digital Transformation
Grappling with the pandemic’s impact on America’s economy will be just as important as fighting the spread of the disease itself. We support your ambitious plan to get America’s workforce back on its feet and accelerate the nation’s transformation towards a true 21st century digital economy. Through HPE’s support of states, cities, and the federal government in managing and meeting their IT needs during the pandemic, we have seen firsthand the importance of providing robust funding for our digital infrastructure with the same urgency as we do our physical infrastructure. Now more than ever, government systems are in need of comprehensive modernization, and uncertain federal and state budgets necessitate that we look at more creative ways of acquiring technology. We are eager to partner with your administration on innovative approaches to modernize our nation’s digital infrastructure — helping our economy recover and evolve well into the future.
American information technology exports can support economic growth and development both at home and abroad. As a global company, we also look forward to supporting your Administration’s efforts to rebuild relationships with our allies and trading partners and to strengthen and modernize the rules-based multilateral trading system while leveling the playing field for American workers and creating new markets for our exports.
Bridging the Digital Divide for American Families Across All Communities
During the pandemic, HPE and its customers have evolved and innovated in a truly unprecedented environment. We have partnered with states and cities across the nation to help strengthen America’s digital infrastructure as COVID-19 has significantly increased our country’s reliance on broadband. This increased dependence has proven particularly true in telehealth and distance learning. Many students are unable to continue learning without access to connectivity tools. That is why we have worked around the country to bridge the digital divide for students by extending outdoor Wi-Fi for schools and public buildings, outfitting buses with wireless technology and driving them into low-income neighborhoods, and establishing more permanent enterprise-level solutions that provide equitable access to the internet for entire communities of students and their families. The pandemic did not create this divide, but it has exposed and accelerated it like never before. HPE is ready to help your team hit the ground running to address this challenge and treat access to connectivity as a basic need for all Americans, especially for our students, small businesses and underserved communities.
Advancing Racial Justice and Equity
At HPE, we are committed to unconditional inclusion, and believe it is incumbent upon those of us with means and platforms to create change by taking action to advance racial justice and equity. The feedback my leadership team and I gathered through conversations with our diverse team member groups have informed a series of actions our company is taking to accelerate racial inclusion in our workforce. I am eager to partner with your administration on efforts to advance this critical imperative for our country.
From strengthening our nation’s digital infrastructure, to ensuring equitable digital access for all, to leveraging the next wave of high-performance computing for solutions to society’s most pressing challenges, HPE is working diligently to carry on our legacy as one of Silicon Valley’s founding companies. As you move forward with transition and into the early days of your administration, I wish you the very best of success and hope you will see me and our entire team of technologists and policy experts at HPE as your trusted partners. As you said in your victory speech, now is the moment “to marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time.” I look forward to marshalling these forces for the betterment of our citizens, the nation, and the world.