Enterprise data movement and analytics are converging faster than most IT shops can absorb, and two vendors are betting that tighter hardware-software integration is the bridge. Rocket Software is joining the HPE Unleash AI partner programme, pairing its recently acquired Vertica analytics platform with HPE's GreenLake and Alletra Storage infrastructure to push AI workloads closer to mission-critical data.
The partnership centres on two Rocket products. Vertica, a massively parallel processing analytics engine with in-database machine learning, is being integrated with HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 — an S3-compatible object storage system that achieved NVIDIA-Certified Storage validation at the Foundation level in March, the first object storage system to reach that milestone. The second product, Rocket DataEdge Data Replicate and Sync (RDRS), becomes the first Rocket offering formally validated within the HPE Unleash AI ecosystem; it feeds system-of-record data to AI and analytics platforms in real time without interrupting the underlying operational systems.
The combined stack targets what both companies describe as a sovereign data lakehouse model: keeping data in place rather than moving it across platforms, and bringing AI processing to the data instead. For enterprises running hybrid environments — on-premises mainframe and midrange systems alongside cloud infrastructure — that architecture is meant to reduce both latency and egress costs while satisfying data residency requirements that have become more pressing in regulated industries.
The HPE Unleash AI programme is a curated ecosystem in which independent software vendors undergo compatibility and performance testing against HPE's AI infrastructure, including HPE Private Cloud AI and the broader HPE AI Factory with NVIDIA. Rocket's entry into the programme signals a push to move beyond AI prototypes: RDRS is positioned as the data plumbing that connects legacy systems of record to AI pipelines, while Vertica handles the analytics layer once data arrives. GreenLake Flex's pay-per-use consumption model rounds out the commercial proposition for enterprises cautious about committing capital to AI infrastructure before use cases are proven.
Rocket Software, privately held and backed by Bain Capital Private Equity, serves more than 13,000 customers across more than 3,000 global employees. The Vertica acquisition, completed earlier this year, extended the company's portfolio from mainframe and IBM i modernisation into high-performance distributed analytics — a market segment where it now competes with established data warehouse and lakehouse vendors.
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