Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Aruba intelligent edge business was once again the highlight of the vendor's third quarter fiscal 2021 despite ongoing supply-chain challenges.

“We delivered a very impressive third quarter at HPE, with strong orders growth, expanded margins, and record free cash flow,” CEO Antonio Neri said on Thursday’s earnings call. “We were able to deliver these results while mitigating against industrywide supply constraints by taking proactive inventory measures, working closely with our suppliers, and deploying our best-in-class engineering capabilities to establish specific response plans.”

Supply-chain constraints resulting from the ongoing semiconductor shortage have dogged recent earnings across the industry, with many hardware vendors reporting extended lead times and increased parts and unit costs. Despite these challenges, HPE reported Q3 revenues of $6.9 billion, up 3% over the prior quarter, but down 2% from last year when adjusted for currency.

Meanwhile, the company’s annualized revenue run rate (ARR) grew 33% during the same period to $705 million. Likewise, the company’s net earnings continued to rebound in the quarter at $392 million compared to just $9 million a year ago.

Heightened demand for secure connectivity bolstered the company’s intelligent edge revenues, which grew 27% year over year in Q3, and generated a backlog “five-times greater than at the close of Q3 last year,” Neri said.

While HPE’s intelligent edge business saw the strongest growth of any segment during the quarter, the company’s HPC and mission-critical services businesses grew roughly 9% year over year. Combined, the three product segments accounted for nearly 25% of the company’s revenues, Neri boasted.

“The exponential growth in data along with AI and big-data analytics are all driving an increased need for high-performance computing and mission critical capabilities in enterprises of all sizes,” Neri said.

HPC has become a key growth area for HPE following the acquisition of Determined AI earlier this summer, and the launch of its GreenLake for high-performance computing platform late last year. The latter won HPE a $2 billion contract from the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide high-performance compute capacity. The 10-year contract will enable the NSA to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to glean more detailed insights, analyses, and forecasts from a growing supply of raw data.

While HPE’s intelligent edge and HPC business units received the biggest fanfare from executives on Thursday’s call, HPE saw strong growth across most of its businesses units.

HPE’s storage and financial services revenue were both up 4% year over year to $1.17 billion and $844 million respectively.

The company’s computing business saw similar growth quarter over quarter, up 4% to $3.1 billion. This was overshadowed somewhat by a 9% decline from the prior year.

Looking ahead to the four-quarter of 2021, HPE executives expect earnings per share between $0.14 to $0.22. And for the full-year fiscal 2021, HPE raised its earnings per share outlook to $0.80 to $0.88.