>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Welcome to the cubes coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020 the digital edition. It wouldn't be a Dell Technologies world on the Cube without our next guest. Tim Crawford, CEO, Strategic Advisor from a boa. Tim, welcome back to the Cube. It's great to talk to you. >>Thanks, Lisa. Thanks for having me on the Cube today. >>A lot has changed since we last got to sit down with you in person. We think of the last Dell Technologies world is a year and a half ago. But we've seen dramatic changes in the enterprise the last 67 months. Talk to me about some of the things that you're seeing. >>Yeah. You know, Lisa, you couldn't put, um, or sustained way around what we've seen over the last 10 months or less. Even theater prices change for Monster Blue. You know, we've gone from having a pretty clear strategy of how we're going to move forward in the technology is we're gonna use to setting all that aside the strategies and plans that we had in the end of 2019 no longer apply the way we engage with customers, the way we run our business, the way who our customers are. The markets we go after all of that is now up for grabs. All of that has changed. And so, therefore, technology and the underpinnings of how we use data has to change accordingly. And so I think we'll talk a little more about that, too. >>I'd like to get your perspective on this acceleration of digital transformation that happened this year. We've seen that we've seen the companies that weren't ready. We've seen the companies that were pretty decently able to pivot quickly. What's your advice for those who are still struggling? Because here we are seven months in. One thing we know for sure is this uncertainty is going to continue for a while. >>Yeah, you're absolutely right. The uncertainty is going to continue for a while. We don't know what the new normal is gonna look like. We don't know how our customers are going to engage with us in the future. And so all the more reason why we need to be thinking very differently about how we operate our companies and how we remain flexible, how we stay in touch with our customers and how that translates into the choices we make in terms of the partners and technologies data that we use. You know, one of the great things about the coronavirus that has come out. If you can say that there is a great thing that's come out of it is it's really accelerated the need to transform companies. And I'm talking about business transformation, not digital transformation. Digital transformation is a downstream component of business transformation. And so a lot of the hurdles that companies were having that I T organizations were having to move to the cloud toe leverage, data toe leverage, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Ah, lot of those hurdles have since dropped by the wayside because companies are realizing if they don't start to adopt some of this new technology, it's available and has been available for some time. They will die, and it it really is that dramatic for companies. And so the Kobe 19 virus has really kind of thrown everything into into the muck, and we've had toe kind of sort things out, but at the same time, it's really given companies an opportunity to say we have. We have a single opportunity here to do something that we will probably never see again. What I mean by that is now we have the lowest level of risk that our company will will observe, probably over our career lifetimes. And what I mean by that is just imagine if you're a commercial airline, you have the lowest passenger loads right now, If >>you need >>to change core operational systems, now is the time to do it. Not when you're operating at Peak, and this is playing out right now across all of the different industries, and that's a huge opportunity. >>That's a great point. And you're right. There are opportunities. There are pluses that are coming out of this. If you think of the I love the opportunity that you just described it, there's the lowest risk right now for, say, an airline to be able to rapidly pivot. Of course, one of the things that you know what happened during that is the customers that consumers would. We react in many different ways. The customer experience is almost under on even higher resolution microscope. The last seven months talk to me about what some of the things you're seeing, how companies need to react to preserve customer relationships because brand is at stake. >>Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, Brand is at stake. The livelihood of your company is at stake, and at the core of that is technology and data. So all we have to do to answer that question is really look in the mirror. Look at how we have changed. Look at how our buying habits have changed. Now that's more of a B two C relationship. But even in the B two b space, those relationships have changed demonstrably. And so we have to think about how our customers air needing to change and how their business is changing, and then how we can accommodate that. And so what that means is we have to tap into data whether it's on the customer experience side or the business operation side of it. We have to tap into that data and use it in a more meaningful way than we ever have in the past. We have to remain more flexible. We have toe leverage it in ways that that we can do things and change on a moments notice. And that's something that we generally haven't architected our organizations or or our technology architectures for, for that matter. But now is the time to do it, and we have to be in touch with our customers in order to do it so again comes back to data, comes back to technology and architectures. Flexibility is the key here. >>I think consumers are far more demanding in the last seven months just because we have this expectation set for the last few years that we could go on Amazon to get anything we want. Anytime we could go on Netflix and watch any movie from any number of years ago anytime we want. And so when this happened and people were so used thio that speed of delivery and things were delayed, I just started seeing much more uproar from the consumer. I thought, Man, we've been conditioned for so long, but one of things I'm curious about when you're talking to the C suite is budget shifting. I mean, we know companies, some of them those enterprises that are in good shape have d our plans. They have business continuity plans. Probably. Nobody had a pandemic plan. So how do you help advise these enterprises to shift budget rapidly enough to be able thio implement the technologies that can harness insights from that data to drive a stupid earlier differentiated customer experience? >>Yeah, so let's kind of break that a part of it and unpack it. So on the pandemic, planning companies did have pandemic planning. I mean, 15 years ago, when I was leading I t. At Stanford University, we had a pandemic response plan that went with R D. R and B C plans. I think that most folks, though, they they struggled through that D R and B C process, and they never get to the pandemic end of that spectrum. And that's a really hard problem to solve for but kind of getting back to how that customer has changed and how we can accommodate that. Changed your right. Budgets have changed, technology has changed, and so we have to think about how we do things differently. I think from a budgetary standpoint, one of the first things we saw is just extreme spending and productivity tools, right? More laptops, more screens, more webcams, Mawr lights. Who would have thought that I would have needed Ah, lighting system for my home, right? Maybe a laptop was enough. We have to think about how our processes air different. How do we push patches out to people's computers out at their home? You know, that may sound somewhat trivial, but the reality is it's really hard to do because you're dealing with all kinds of different bandwidth requirements. Andi. It's not just me in the house. I have my wife, who is an executive on on video all day. I've got two teenage kids when in high school, when a middle school there on video all day. So we're taxing these networks within people's homes as well, in ways that we never have. And so all of these pieces kind of come together and cause us to rethink how we allocate our budgets within the I T organization. So the first thing is there was a lot of productivity tools that were being purchased. There was a lot of preservation of cash that companies kind of went into. How do we start to control, spend and kind of pull back on the reins? But the smart ones started to look at the opportunities to accelerate their innovation programs. And those are the folks that are really doing well right now. How do I start to use this opportunity again, not trying to suggest that the code 19 or the coronavirus is a great thing for us. But how do we start toe leverage that in the best way possible, and take advantage of it in such a way that it could benefit us on the long run? And this is where innovation and accelerating some of those changes really comes into play. And as I mentioned things like cloud artificial intelligence machine learning, leveraging data to understand your customers more intimately, being flexible to change your company's your business operations, how you engage with your customers, you know, instead of just a website, maybe you need thio move Mawr to a focus on a mobile device or mobile application, or vice versa. All of those start to come into play, but at the heart of it is data and data is what ultimately will drive the decisions down the path. >>So you talked about the work from home thing, and I kept thinking of the proliferation of endpoint devices at the edge you're right. How many of us tried to get a webcam months ago and couldn't? Because suddenly that became a tool that was essential for folks to continue their operations and and maintain their productivity. How are enterprises, in your opinion this year addressing the edge and understanding how they need to be able to take advantage of that? But also understand where all those devices are, to your point, pushing out patches, ensuring that there's a secure environment? What's their view of the edge? >>Yeah, the the edges incredibly complicated, and it's important to differentiate a couple of pieces here. So when you talk about the productivity devices, whether it's the laptops, the Webcams, the lighting, all of those I p connected components that we interface with, that's one aspect. And you're right. I mean, I can remember I t leaders that were telling their staff. Goto every office supply store, every big box store by every laptop keyboard, mouse, webcam you can get your hands on. I don't care what brand it is. I don't care what specs are. Just do it because they didn't have access to those. Resource is for their entire employee base. And so That's one aspect. And that's a whole another, um, consideration as we start to think about cybersecurity, and now we're talking about non non traditional, um, platforms that are in the environment in the enterprise environment, versus your standard kind of image and standard product. But aside from that, we also have data coming from the edge, whether it's from sensors and video cameras and other types of devices that we have to bring into the mix, too. Right understanding that Tim Crawford has now entered into a store and that Tim Crawford has now left the store but hasn't purchased. But we know that Tim Crawford is a loyal customer based on his loyalty at how do we start to gauge that? Or how do we start to gauge the number of folks that are moving through a given area and especially in light of coronavirus? I mean, there there's some aspect that air coming up where companies are starting to look at. How do we measure the number of people that are in a given room and do that in an automated way, and maybe alert people to say, Hey, you know, is there a way you can stand out or reminds people gently, Um, you know, keep your distance, make sure you're wearing your mask, etcetera. There are a lot of ways that edge comes into play, but at the core of this is data. And so that's where it becomes really important to understand that the amount of data, not just the sources of data but the amount of data that we're gonna have to deal with and we're dealing with today at the edge is just incredible. And it's on Lee going to grow exponentially. And so it's important to understand that your customer engagement pieces are going to be a source of data as well as a consumer of data. Let's not forget that people with the edge they need to be able to consume data and not in a batch way, they need to be able to do it in real time, which then gets back to flexibility and speed and algorithms at the edge. But understanding all of that data at the edge, being able to analyze it, whether it's for business operations or customer engagement and then providing that through the continuum from edge to cloud is really, really critical. It's a very complicated problem to solve for, but every single enterprise across the industries is already heading down this path. >>You're right. It is an incredibly complex problem to solve. So here we are, virtually at Dell Technologies World 2020. Talk to me about Dell Technologies Landscape. How do you think it fits into addressing some of these challenges in the complexities that you just talked >>about? Yeah, you know, Dell has been on this path for a while. I mean, through the partnerships through the ecosystem that Don't has is well as their portfolio of hardware and software. I think Della's position really well to be able to address both the customer experience as well as the business operations. The key here is you have to think about edge to Klag. You have to think about data. You have to think about analytics and then, from a nightie perspective, how do you start toe layer in the management and the algorithms on top of that to be able to manage that landscape? Because that landscape is getting increasingly more complicated on I think Dell starting to come up with the software pieces that actually make the connection between back those points on the continuum, and that's a really important piece here for I t. Organizations to understand. I think, you know, with the new announcements around Apex, I think that will will shine really well for dealt. I think if you look at the partnerships and the ecosystem and the connections that they're making both with public cloud providers as well as with other partners in the ecosystem, I think that's, ah, positive place. But the place that I would actually watch most closely with Dell is what is that? Software Later, They already have a really good hardware platform to build on top of them that portfolio. What is that software layer that connects or create that connective tissue for them? And I think that's the big piece, and I think we're going to hear more of that. Here is Dell Technologies World. >>I'm also curious. I read your posts and and listen to podcasts on the difference between a traditional CEO and a transformational CEO. If I think is such an important thing to discuss because part of that is cultural right, it's it's got, too. It's not just about a company being able to transform It's got to be the person with the right mindset with that flexible, agile mindset. But your advice to businesses who are still pivoting or pivoting multiple times and trying to become not just a survivor but a winner of tomorrow. From a cultural perspective, >>you know, culture is the hardest thing to change. It really is. You know, the technology is easy. Relatively speaking. We can swap out one technology for another. It's relatively straightforward to dio, and it always has been, Um, the real challenge here is how do you create the underpinnings and the foundation for that culture? What I mean by that is changing, like within the I T organization, and it starts with the CEO, but then also kind of branches out into the rest of the I T organization to the most junior levels of the I T staff. What I mean by that is you have to look at how you become less text centric and more business centric. And so my post about the change in the differentiation from the traditional CEO to transformational CEO is just about that. It's about how do you start to make that shift where you start focusing on business first and that ultimately becomes our context regardless of what organization you're in. I t marketing HR engineering product support. It doesn't matter. You start with the business context and then you flow down from that. And so part of that move to being the transformational CEO or the transformational organization is really shifting to be more business focused. And using that is your North Star and then from it, you start to understand how the different technology pieces fit into place. And so, for example, a traditional CEO would typically focus on business operations. More of the back end pieces, right? The underlying technology, the back end systems. But the transformational CEO is going to be incredibly more customer focused. They're actually gonna be out with the customer they're going to be doing right alongs will probably not right now in the absence of Corona virus, but they're going to be engaging firsthand with customers, understanding firsthand what they're dealing with, understanding what the business challenges are that they're having and then being able to translate that into where does technology fit in? And where does technology not fit in kind of going back to what I was saying earlier around the importance of customer experience. And so that's really where this transformational bent comes from. Is shifting from just being back office focused to moving toward understanding that front office or that customer focus. And that's the rial differentiator for companies. Here is when you can start to think about how tech enology plays. That's central role in changing your business. That's gold. That's absolute gold. >>Gold, but hard, hard Thio Dig for that gold. One last question, Tim, You talked about a number of the opportunities that Cove in 19 is bringing. And I completely agree with you. Not that any of us loves being stuck at home and isolated in the same walls, but there are opportunities that are going to come. We're gonna learn things from that if we're open minded and and flexible and agile in our thinking. But other things that that you think we haven't heard about yet that you see as a kind of maybe some north stars to come. >>Yeah, there there are a couple things that I think we generally are missing, and I kind of touched on one of from earlier, which is how do you start, Thio, accelerate some of that innovation now. And so you know, I used the airplane example of you know you've got the lowest passenger loads. Now is the time to implement that innovative technology. Because if something does go wrong, if something does go wrong, the impact to your customers is relatively low. And quite frankly, a lot of folks Aer giving out hall passes to say, You know what we understand Coronaviruses. Hard for all of us. Something went sideways here. Fine, go fix it, go fix it and then come back to us. And so I think customers are definitely more apt to hand out that whole past now versus when, where it full capacity. And that kind of leads me to. The second piece that I think people are missing is that companies are organized and built around operating efficiently at 80% utilization or 100% utilization. What I mean by that is they tend not to make money until they get to that level of utilization. But yet in the coronavirus era, what if we had a company that was organized in such a way that it could be profitable at 25% utilization that would cause us to think very differently about how we use technology, how we're able to scale technology, how we leverage data were thinking in more meaningful ways about the customer. And so what that means is that it gives us the ability to scale our business up and down. God forbid, if we ever run into another situation like this ever again in our lifetimes. But if we ever hit another patch of negativity around economic growth, it allows a company to be able to scale down and back up as needed for their customers. And that's another piece. I don't think people are thinking about their thinking about the big picture they're thinking about. How do we build for growth? But what they're not thinking about is what if we need to scale this back, and I think a great example of where this touches in we're here. A Dell Technologies world is Look at the way that companies are starting to shift towards this as a service model, right? We're able to scale technology up use it is, we need it, give it back when we don't need it. And so when you start to move into that more flexible mode. I talked about flexibility in other ways earlier, but as you start to get into a different consumption boat, it gives you a lot of opportunity to do a lot of different things in a lot of different ways. And that's ultimately what companies need to be thinking about today. >>Sounds like it's going to be some of the big differentiators between the winners and the losers of tomorrow. Will Tim, Thank you for joining us on the Cube virtually from your home. It's not a Dell Technologies world on the Cube without talking to you, Tim. And I appreciate we all appreciate your time and the insight that you shared today. >>Thanks, Lisa. Thanks for having me on the Cube. >>Our pleasure for Tim Crawford. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes. Coverage of Dell Technologies, World 2020

>> Live from Orlando Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We're joined by Tim Crawford he is CIO, Strategic Advisor, out of AVOA. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks Rebecca. >> So, what are your thoughts and impressions of Microsoft Ignite, you come to lot of these conferences, I'm curious to hear what's interesting you? >> Yeah, you know, it's interesting because when you think about all the different conferences, all the different companies that are trying to get their message out there. Whether it's from product, whether it's how they engage with customers, whether it's their partner ecosystem; it's really hard to separate, kind of the wheat from the chaff or the signal from the noise, right? One of the things that I find really interesting about Microsoft, specifically, is not just the breadth in which they are engaging with customers, both at a technological level, but also with their partner ecosystem, and also in the engineering groups, but then also the depth in which they're going into this. So this is not about just a show to demonstrate the latest technology, yes that is out there, but it's also to talk about Microsoft as the company and how Microsoft is really engaging with customers and to me, that's really different. >> I want to talk about how Microsoft is engaging with customers, 'cause that's really interesting. You talk to a lot of CIOs in your job, what are you hearing? What is the real differentiating factor, in terms of how Microsoft approaches its clients? >> You know, this is something that I just learned at this show that is really interesting. Microsoft is starting to move away from these interesting sales motions around product categories or particular aspects of the technology, and starting to think about industries, and this is really important for a couple of reasons. One is it gets them deeper into understanding how these technologies really apply to each of those industries, but it also starts to develop a deeper relationship with their customers and also their partners. So they can start to carve out different spaces that they can go deep into, that is pretty unique and differentiated. >> Well, actually, I'm interested, in that I want to hear both, you're both analysts here, does that create more silos? I mean, that's sort of my first impression, that it, you wouldn't then be able to see the best practices that are emerging in manufacturing versus retail and have everyone talking together. What is your take? >> I don't know. First when I think about I'm not an AI expert, but one of the challenges we had in big data was that everything seemed to be custom, and usually when you talk about data, there're so many specific things that I need to worry about in the industry, that sometimes I need to bake that solution all the way down into the product. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that you create a silo, it means that you will share amongst your group. So there's plenty of ways internally that you can build solutions, but learn from those, repeat them, change them and iterate them, but it could be interesting. I haven't heard of a company driving it down. I was Product Manager, once in my day, and you thought about certain industries, but it was more, okay, someone had wrote a white paper to position how it did or, you know, who implemented it, to make an adjustment. But yeah, that was my take. >> But even with something like AI, we all know that for AI to be successful it's the amount of data you can really gather, it's about learning, and the only way that you're going to learn is to get in depth and understand the applicability of this to that particular industry. And the only way you're goin to do that is if you start focusing on a particular industry. One of the things that I do see, is that they're not taking on 100 different industries here, they're focused on the top six or eight industries to start out with and that's grown just in the last 18 months alone, but within each of those industries, figuring out how do you take each of these technologies and do meaningful work? How do you solve meaningful problems? And back to your questions, Rebecca, what are the CIOs looking for? They're looking for companies that are actually talking about and can deliver solving business problems. It's no longer enough to say, hey, I've got this great technology, it's really earth shattering, it's differentiated, that's not enough anymore. You really have to connect with the customer and help them understand how you're going to solve a business problem. >> So, Tim, I want to get your view point as to how CIOs perceive Microsoft today. When you talk about, you know, there's the industries, as well, Microsoft is a bit rejuvenated. Satya Nadella, there's more coming, there's great energy here at the show. I mean the numbers prove out that are here but Microsoft has that strength, they're in business productivity. Everybody uses Microsoft solutions, but there's a lot of change happening in the industry. What is the relationship that companies have with Microsoft, how do they perceive Microsoft in innovation, what do you hear? >> Yeah, and that very question has changed just over the last 12 to 24 months too. Microsoft is one of the few companies that has relationships with pretty much every enterprise on the planet, or just like you said, the productivity apps, even getting into the server and data center environment, Microsoft has a place there. The problem has been historically, it hasn't innovated as quickly as some of its competitors in those spaces. Not in the data, in the productivity area, but when you look at the data center, historically, it hasn't evolved as quickly. Fast forward to the last 12 to 24 months, and we've seen a huge shift. 12 months ago we saw Microsoft actually taking the lead in some of these emerging areas, like cloud, where it was producing products and actually bringing them to market before some of its competition. That's a huge shift, from just 12 months prior. If you look at what people are trying to solve for today, and bringing these technologies to bear, some of this stuff is really complicated, really complicated, and that level of expertise just does not exist within the enterprise IT organization, so what do you do? And that's where I think Microsoft has a strength, because it understands the enterprise, it can talk at an enterprise level. That's a unique attribute that is something that Microsoft has in it's bailiwick that it can pull out, and just in the way that the zen, starting at the CIO and kind of working its way in to empathize with the customer, and kind of delve into those specifics of how these technologies are going to make a difference is a huge, huge step up for them. >> I want to really get into that, because I'm curious of both your perspectives on that. Talking about the perceptions of Microsoft, and you talked about it as being a little bit slower to innovate, now it's starting to change, I'm also curious, we're living in this time when so many technology companies are under fire for being so careless with user data and being so susceptible to other influences of lack of privacy for their customers. Is Microsoft trying to be sort of a moral, ethical leader, in this space in the sense that we take this stuff seriously, we do believe in customer privacy and data security. I mean, what's your take on that? Do you think that that is also something that Microsoft is trying to put out there? >> Yeah, so I'll start off. Stu feel free to chime in. I think you have to go back to the keynote yesterday, look at Satya their CEO, and I had a chance to spend some time with him after the keynote. If you look at how he speaks, and that permeates into the organization. This is not about a company that's just looking to sell product, this is a company that's looking at humanity, looking at the bigger purpose that they serve in the world that we all share. The same thing holds true when it comes to the technology aspect of that, and when you look at cyber security, when you look at artificial intelligence, there's a lot of conversation happening right now within the organization around what should we be doing from an ethics standpoint with some of this technology? Artificial intelligence is great but it can be scary too, and there can be some bad actors that come in and take advantage of that. So with the size of a company and the expertise of a company like Microsoft, how do we start to leverage that strength to do good? And so that comes in a couple different factors. We have to think about governance within the enterprise, we have to think about policy, so the legal aspect and framework, how do we start to get those to catch up? Another conversation that was just taking place recently was around how you balance between moving quickly and letting laws catch up, and it's almost to the point where we need to start slowing down, because we are kind of running with scissors, I like to say. We need to take a step back, take a breath, figure out how to kind of button some of these things up and then go for the next step. >> Rebecca, I go back to something that we talked about in our opening analysis talking about the keynote. Microsoft is going through its own digital transformation and as part of that they're actually really well-positioned to help customers through their own digital transformation. Things like the open data initiative, you know three great companies, Adobe, SAP, and Microsoft all at the center of that transformation. Patrick Borez this morning said, well, you know Oracle and Salesforce, if they were part of this, and they can join it, I'm sure the invitation's out there would be the ones that are at the center of data if we talk about it, three courses going on this week. We've got a team there. Microsoft is there, obviously, security, trust, at the core of everything they do, Tim I want to ask you about something else that's often talked about, do customers have to choose between the build and the buy? Microsoft has taught us how to buy shrink wrap software back in the day, the economics of another disc or CD, everybody knows Microsoft. They help customers move to the SaaS model off 365, Push, I want to buy from SaaS but when I look around most of it is in the buy. It doesn't mean that they don't have great platforms and the ability to build, there's a great section in the show floor for developers that I walked through, talked to the server-less team. There's a lot of pieces there but when I look at the buy versus build, well I look at the other big clouds, I seem to see a little bit more builder mentality, while here it feels a little bit more buy well I'm curious if you have the same reaction. >> Exactly the same perspective. If you look at the different contingents of traditional buyers, right, the startup in Web scale, they're looking for tools, they want to be able to take components off the shelf and be able to put it together themselves. They're looking at a level of specialization that is unique to their service or unique to their product, but when you look at the enterprise it's a totally different world. And going back to earlier, what the CIO is looking for, they need to be able to up-level the conversation in their organization. Right, left, and center when I'm talking to CIOs, when I'm talking to IT organizations, they're looking for ways to build less and buy more. When they do build, they're focused on those aspects that are core to their IP, so things that are strategic and differentiated for their company. I mean, if you look back at the anthropology of IT, and I know Stu, you and I have had a lot of conversations about this, on theCUBE and off theCUBE, if you look back within the anthropology of IT, within the enterprise IT org, we had to build everything ourselves. We had no choice, there were not mature solutions that we could turn to, like cloud and be able to say, you know what? I don't want to run email myself. Who do I turn to? Now, fast forward to today, there are mature solutions for many of these non-differentiated services. How do we start to leverage those from the enterprise perspective and focus our developer attention into those aspects that are differentiated. That's where it really makes a difference, and that's the conversation that's happening with the IT rank and file, as well as at the executive levels. >> So what's your advice to a Microsoft, or to some of its other big partner players in terms of what you see from CIOs, what their pain points are, and what they could do to really make their customers happy? >> Yeah, you know, it's a great question and it's not an easy answer, but if I were to kind of boil it down a bit, we have to stop thinking about technology as technology in a silo. We have to think about how this gets used. You know, it's one thing to say, great, this is a bright, shiny object. Let's take it off the shelf. Let's put it to use. It's another thing when you can take it off the shelf, put it to use, and really make a big difference for your company. When you do that, things happen, and that's a big difference for the marketing message, the PR messaging, that's a difference in the sales motion, it's different in terms of the partner ecosystem. How the customer thinks about how they engage with a company like Microsoft. All of those factors are in play. All of those are up for grabs. >> Alright, so mister Evoa Consultancy, I've heard Microsoft's doing a bunch of interesting things. How should I look at Microsoft? What things did you learn at Microsoft that can help my business do more, move faster, you know, stay relevant? >> Yeah, I think the first thing to understand, there is a bevy of different products and solutions out there, not just for Microsoft, but from other companies too. It's important to understand which ecosystems really fit your business best, and who is really spending the time to understand what your challenges are today, and where you're going, because let's face it. When you make an investment from an enterprise perspective, it's not just for today or tomorrow, it's for the next six months. It's for the next two years, five years. And you need to know that whoever you're working with is going to have those same, aligned goals and objectives, and so I think that's where, again, coming back to Microsoft, Microsoft has a lot of those components. Are they for everyone? Absolutely not, but it's important to understand which components make sense for you to use within your organization. >> Great, well Tim, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure having you here. I know you two go way back. So this was fun. >> Right, thanks for having me. >> Thanks. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Minnimin, we will have much more tomorrow from the Orange County Civic Center here in Orlando, Florida, at Microsoft Ignite. See you next time. (electronic jingle)

(upbeat intro music) >> Okay, we're back analyzing HPE's GreenLake Announcements with the analyst, Tim Crawford is here. He's with AVOA, strategic advisor to CIOs. Tim, always great to have you in theCUBE. How you doing, man? >> Hey, Dave, always a pleasure to share the stage with you. >> So things are evolving here. These, this GreenLake thing, it's not just a one-shot deal once a year, we'll come back to you at discover, they're really showing a cadence. What's your take on the announcements that you heard today? >> Well, I think the one thing we are seeing is that, as you said, GreenLake is not just a piece of it, it is the forward strategy for HPE. And I think that's really important to understand. When you start to unpack the different components, you start to see how this becomes really critical to HPE's future, but more importantly to their customers. As they start to think about their on-premises requirements, as well as what they're going to be doing in the cloud and that whole integration, as well as the edge-to-cloud continuum and how you start to bring that together. I think all of these pieces are converging at the same time. And what we're starting to see from HPE is a convergence of different technologies and service offerings that are here to meet that need. >> Was there anything that stood out to you today? I mean, the data fabric piece, some of the data protection components as a service, other sort of frameworks? What stood out from a CIO perspective? >> Well, I think there are a couple of things. First and foremost, this is a journey. This is not a one-time event of the next announcement is going to show you everything. It's going to take time to put this together, cause to be honest, this is a really complicated space that you're talking about. And so I think it's important to understand that when you're putting together your strategy, when you're thinking about how you're evolving from more traditional stacks and more traditional approaches and architectures to some of the newer forms of architectures and new technologies. And so if you look at the announcements, you can see that these are starting to put very critical pillars in place as they fill out kind of the bingo card, if you will, for GreenLake. >> What's the CIO's sentiment these days as it relates to the cloud, to hybrid, to announcements, like what we saw today from HPE? They got through 2020. Some actually thrived through 2020, others in tough industries, they got through it. Some of the harder hit industries, you talked to the CIOs there. "Hey, you know, that's what we do. "We had a plan and we got through it." What's the sentiment today? >> Yeah, the issue today is how do you start to put together the right pieces and stay close with your customers? I mean, just over the last 18 months to two years, there's been a demonstrable shift in how customers are engaging with each of these companies. And so when you think about the technologies they have to use, when you think about the architectures where cloud comes into play, I haven't seen a greater uptick in cloud interest prior to the last 18 months. At the same time, people that were early entrance into cloud are starting to realize that, you know what, I do have a need for something on-prem. I do need to have services that are more localized to my users or localized to my customers. And so that's where this hybrid story really comes to light, is bringing that the goodness of what you get from public cloud, as well as what you get from on-prem and then bringing private cloud into the mix. As we start to think about, again, going back to that edge-to-cloud continuum, you're going to have different components that are going to have to work together. I think the combination of the data fabric that was announced as well as some of the other components coming together, start to fill in that puzzle, but there's a lot more to go. There's a lot more to go. And so I think it's important to understand that and not just center on a given announcement as this is the key piece, this is the linchpin. >> Does HPE have their own cloud strategy, in your view? >> You know, they're starting to put it together. I think they still have work to do, to be fair. But what I do like is how they're thinking about the bigger picture and I think that is somewhat unique. When you look at the strategies that the hyperscalers have, when you look at the strategies of some of their contemporaries have, HPE's contemporaries have, I think HPE has the right mix of components, but I still want to see some other, some other pieces fall into place first before kind of answering that question in earnest. >> Like what, where do you see the gaps? >> Well, I think one of the, one of the pieces is having that control plane across cloud to on-prem. I think when I look at it from a CIO perspective, my world's getting more complicated, not easier. And when I bring cloud into the mix, now it's gotten exponentially more complicated. And so having something that will help me manage from that edge-to-cloud and everything in between is really, really critical. It helps me streamline, helps me get my arms around data and we know that data is a critical component, especially as you're starting to think about how you engage with your customers and how your customers are changing just over the last 18 months alone, right, let alone how they were changing even two years ago. So I think it is important to, to look at that holistically. But I do think that I'd like to see more of the management pieces and more of that larger context come into play. I think that would resonate better with CIOs and executives. And the other thing to keep in mind is if you look at the traditional HPE customer, they were someone that was further into the organization. When we're talking about cloud, and we're talking about this continuum and talking about it from a strategic standpoint, if you really want to engage the CIO, you have to up-level the conversation and so I am starting to see inklings of that, had opportunities to talk with Antonio about this and the executives within HPE and they get it. They understand that. And so I'm really encouraged by how they're starting to lay out the pieces, but this is a marathon. This isn't a, you know, a sprint and we go over the hurdles and we're done. It's going to take some time, right? >> Tim Crawford, always great to have you on. Awesome, as usual, insights. Appreciate you bringing your A-game to theCUBE. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you. Okay, and thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more great content from HPE's GreenLake announcement. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat outro music)