Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has a new hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform that targets remote offices and branch offices (ROBO) and other space-constrained deployments. The SimpliVity 2600 platform has twice the rack unit density of similar products, the company claims.

“It’s a perfect solution where space becomes an issue,” said Thomas Goepel, director of product management for hyperconverged systems and solutions at HPE. “Specifically, customers like putting these solutions on oil rigs, or in local governments and education — data center closets in a school — or colocations where you pay by the rack space.”

The product launch follows HPE CEO Antonio Neri’s $4 billion edge commitment last month. At the company’s annual Discover conference, Neri pledged to invest that amount in edge technologies and services over the next four years.

While this HCI platform plays well in edge locations, the new SimpliVity 2600 isn’t included in Neri’s investment, Goepel said. “This is in addition to that,” he said.

Other vendors including VMware and Pivot3 have also released their own HCI products in recent months specifically designed for remote and branch offices and edge locations.

HPE’s latest HCI product has the same performance as its original SimpliVity 380 with features including always-on deduplication and compression, Goepel said. The 2600 can physically hold up to four server modules in the chassis compared to one 380, which is only one server.

Although this initial release focuses on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), the company plans to add more use cases in the future.

The new platform is also the first “software-optimized offering” in the SimpliVity HCI portfolio, which means that it does always-on deduplication and compression without any hardware acceleration. “And we do this with literally no performance loss,” Goepel said, adding that it has been tested and validated by Login VSI.

In May, HPE reached a deal to buy SDN fabric vendor Plexxi and weave this SDN technology into its HCI and composable infrastructure products. That acquisition closed last month.

While HPE hasn’t yet combined Plexxi’s SDN with its SimpliVity HCI, the new product is “100 percent compatible with Plexxi,” Goepel said. “If a customer is implementing the 2600 and Plexxi, they work hand in hand together. It’s not a standard offering but the two can be combined.”