>>The cube presents HPE discover 2022 brought to you by HPE. >>Hello, everybody. Welcome to day three of the Cube's coverage of HPE discover 2022 we're live from Las Vegas and the Venetian convention center. This is I, I counted him up. I think this is the 14th HP HP slash HPE. Discover that we've done really excited to welcome in Alexia Clements. She's the vice president of go to market for HPE GreenLake cloud services. That's all the rage everybody's talking about. Green, all the wood behind the arrow, as the saying goes, welcome to the queue. Good to see >>You. Thank you so much for having me thrilled to be here. >>You walk up Janet Jackson last night, >>Epic. Wow. She killed it. She was awesome. >>I thought the band was super tight, but the other thing was the place was >>Packed. It was >>Nice. You know, what happens is a lot of time they put the band in the getaway day, you know, and nobody stays, but wow, the, the hall was jammed. >>It was great. It was, you could feel the momentum and the excitement. And it was just a great way to, to kind of end the, the HP discover. So it was great. >>Yeah. I mean, I, I mentioned that we've been to a lot of HP slash HPE discovers and, and this one was different in the sense that I think first of all, 8,000 people, yep. People are excited to get back together, but I think, you know, HPE has a spring in its step and the customers are kind of interested. It's much more focused than some of the past HPE discoverers, which was kind of hard to get my hands around. Sometimes the business was sort of an Antonio's pulled that together. So what's changed since the last time we were face to face. >>We're transforming and hope you all saw that on the, on the floor here. So, um, we're absolutely trans going through a transformation and, you know, I, I think we're, you know, we're shifting to an edge to cloud platform company. And with that, it's, it's how we approach our customers differently and our partners and, you know, we're hoping that, uh, we showed this week and that, that we're different and we're transforming. >>So how do you spend your time Mo mostly in front of customers having conversations about what, what their needs are and aligning is that right? >>Yeah. So, um, I, I lead the, the go to market for GreenLake. So that's everything around how we're driving our as a service go to market strategy, how we're driving programs, enablement, how we're really in the end, how we're executing on that as a service strategy from a sales perspective. >>So what do you hear? Of course, a lot of that involves partners. Yep. Right. I mean, that's kind of the route to market. Absolutely. The HPE prefers for obvious reasons, although others don't necessarily share that, but, but, so what are you hearing from the partner ecosystem and the customers that their biggest challenges are now that we're entering the let's call it the post isolation economy? <laugh> >>Yeah. I mean, the reality is, is digital transformations are hard and I think some customers, um, who haven't necessarily moved forward on it or, you know, maybe they move forward and they're realizing, Hey, I'm stuck and I'm not, I'm not getting to where I wanna be and really, you know, driving that end state. So, I mean, I, I would just say overall, I think things are like, customers are, are struggling if they didn't, you know, they're falling behind a little bit. And I think through the conversations that we're having and through HP green, like it gives customers choice. And so really, um, I mean, what, you know, I spend my time with, and, and when we're talking to customers and partners, it's about helping customers on that digital transformation journey and understanding what are they trying to drive? What business outcomes are they trying to drive and how we can help them get there. So >>I, I often call it the force March to digital yep. With the pandemic. Um, and, and I, I was looking at a survey recently, I think it was put on by couch base. And it was probably on a thousand respondents and it was a CIO survey and they asked who's, who's responsible for the digital transformation at the organization and overwhelmingly it was the it organization. And I said, uhoh, that's the problem now. But it made sense to me because when the economy shut down, everybody went to it and said help, right. Make this work somehow. Right. But, but what, that doesn't seem to me to be the right prescription for a successful digital transformation. Do you agree with that? And what do you see as a successful template for DX? >>Well, I think what, what we see is that really the lines of business are desperate to move fast and they're really looking for their it partners to help them in that journey and, and, and drive, you know, whether it be, you know, drive them, you know, drive orders, drive, you know, they need it to help them in that journey. And so really it's gotta be a partnership between the two organizations. And what we're trying to do with HP GreenLake is kind of abstract that almost. So, Hey, we're gonna give it to you in an, as a service and you're gonna get all of these components. And all you have to think about is where do I need to grow and what are the outcomes that I'm looking for? So that's what it's gotta be. There's gotta be tight alignment, I think between the lines of business and it, and sometimes those two don't know how to talk to each other. >>Mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's another way of, of really trying to speak to the business leaders and say, what are you trying to do? Where do you need to go? And what do you need to get? And, and a lot of times they don't even know what they need to get there. So that's where we need to have those different conversations with our customers to, and that's where we look for our partners to help us in that. So really having those different conversations to progress, um, what, you know, what customers are really looking to, to drive, >>How, how does GreenLake specifically accelerate that transformation? Where does it fit? Maybe you can kind of take us through, you know, a, a generic example of how that works. >>Yeah. I mean, a great example is, you know, especially with the pandemic is desktop, Hey, you now need to, you know, everybody's working from different locations. So, you know, desktop as a service VDI as a service, and, you know, you're putting it in a, you know, per whatever, you know, per you can, whatever variable pricing you want, but think about it, you have that one pay as you go. And so the it organization, all they have to think about is that's my, you know, per, per unit price there. So that's a great example of how we saw, like, especially during the pandemic, that was something that was, you know, a huge area of focus organizations. What's >>The spectrum that you see in terms of, you know, the maturity model, if you will, a digital transformation. I mean, if you weren't in a digital business during the pandemic, you were pretty much out of business. Yeah. And with very few exceptions. Um, and so, okay. So on the one end, you have folks that sort of were forced into it. You, my forced March scenario, others were actually moving quite a bit along before the pandemic, others were kind of given at lip service and maybe doing a few projects. What do you see as that spectrum? >>I think if you're not transforming, you're falling behind. And so everybody needs to be, you know, looking to the future and understanding, you know, really trying to get aggressive on that. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing companies who, you know, aren't moving fast on that or falling behind. >>Do you see a bifurcation? I'm sure you do those that say, yeah, I want as a service and others that say, look, I I'm really well capitalized. I'm gonna gimme the, gimme the CapEx. I'm gonna put it in and run it myself. And is there a relationship between that approach and their digital transformation maturity, or is it kind of just really their preference? >>I, I mean, for us, we're meeting customers where they're at on their journey and their multi-cloud journey. So some, and, and what I'm seeing is that every customer today has multiple clouds, whether that be their, you know, their kind of, MultiGen it, the, the legacy stuff that they've gotta deal with. They've got stuff in public clouds, and they're trying to really transform and figure out how do I work all of that in like, how do I move forward with that new operating model? And so what I'm seeing is, you know, we're gonna meet customers where they're at on their journey. So some are gonna continue to go down that path in a, how they've always purchased their it. And others are really, you know, more often than not, we're seeing, they want that as a service cloudlike to have all the benefits of cloud, but yet still have it on their prem or in a colo or, you know, at the edge. So I do see some of those customers who are thinking differently, right. That, and they're the ones that are more apt to be a little bit more aggressive on their digital transformation. They're, they're open to the possibility if that makes sense. No, >>It does. It makes total sense. I, I, I think, you know, on the one hand they're a lot of customers are trying to build their own cloud. Yep. Um, so you mention multicloud, I'm not gonna go to Amazon to help me with my multicloud strategy. That's not, that's not gonna be my preferr. Yeah. I might talk to Microsoft about it a little bit. Google's got Antos and that's kind of interesting, but you know, Google's not enterprise, they got good data, but so, but there are other choices out there. Why HPE for my cloud hybrid multi-cloud strategy, give us the >>Sticker. It's, it's the best of both worlds for customers. So it enables them to have the security. It enables them to grow, to, to be in their data centers or in colos at the edge. It allows them to not over provision. It allows them to pay as they go and pay as they grow there's. Um, and then it also really is that ease factor. So it it's that thinking about it as I have, I already, I know what my pricing is. I know what that predictability is from a pricing perspective and what my costs are gonna be. So all of those things really re that all those messages resonate with customers, >>Right? L thanks so much for coming on. We got the trains are backing up super tight schedule today. This is wall to wall coverage of HPE. Discover. Thank you. Thank >>You so much for having me appreciate it. >>You're SU very welcome. All right. Keep it right there. Dave ante is here. John furrier, HPE discover 2022 from Las Vegas. We're live. We'll be right back.

(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCube's coverage of HPE's Green Lake announcement. We've been following the caves of Green Lake's announcement for several quarters now, and even years. And we're going to look at cloud adoption and frameworks to help facilitate cloud adoptions. You know, in 2020, the world was on a forced march to digital and there was a lot that they didn't know. Big part of that was how to automate, how to reduce your reliance on physically, manually and plugging things in. And so, customers need an adoption framework to better understand and how to de-risk that journey to the cloud. And with me to talk about that are Alexia Clements, who's the Vice President at Worldwide go to market for GreenLake cloud services at HPE and Alexei Gerasimov who's the vice president of Hybrid Cloud Delivery advisory and professional services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Folks, welcome to theCube. >> Alexia: Thanks so much for having us. >> You're very welcome. So, Alexei, what is a cloud adoption framework? How does that all work? >> Gerasimov: Yeah, thanks Dave. So the framework is a structured approach to elevate the conversation, to help our customers get outcomes. So we've been helping customers adopt the benefits in the most of IT for a decade. And we've noticed that they basically focus on eight key areas as they transform to cloud-like capabilities. It's a strategy and governance, it's innovation, people, a dev ops applications, operations security, and data. So we've structured our framework around those core components to help our customers get value. Because end of the day, it's all about changing the way they operate. To get the advantage of all of it. >> Yes. So you can't just pave the cow path and kind of plug your existing process. There's a lot that's unknown, as I said up front. So, so Alexia, maybe you could talk a little bit more about some of the real problems that you're solving with customers that you see in the field. >> Alexey: Yeah, absolutely. So most customers are going through some form of digital transformation and these transformations are difficult and they need a structured approach to help them through that journey. I kind of like to think of it as a recipe to make a meal. So you need to know what ingredients to buy and what are the steps to perform to make that meal. >> Okay. So when you talk to customers, what do you, what do you tell them? That's in it for them after the, after you've actually successfully helped them deploy? What are they telling you? >> Yeah, well, they're telling they now have reached their business outcomes and they're, you know, they're a more agile organization. >> What's the experience look like when you, when you go through one of these journeys and you, you apply the adoption framework, can you sort of paint a picture for us? >> Yeah, absolutely. So every customer is in some sort of transformation, like Alexia said, that transformation implies you've got to know where you start and again, know where you're going. So the experience traditionally is customers need to understand what are my current hybrid cloud capabilities? What do I have, what am I missing? What's lacking and then determine where do you want to go? And in order to get from point A to point B, they have to get a prescriptive approach. So the framework sort of breaks down their path from where they are to their desired maturity. And it takes them in the very prescriptive path to get there. >> So you start with an assessment, you do a gap analysis based on their skill sets. I presume you identify what's possible, help them understand, you know, best practice, which they may not achieve, but this is kind of their north star. Right? And then do you help? How do you help them fill those gaps? Because are skills gaps. Everybody talks about that today. You guys presumably can provide additional services to do that, but so can you add a little bit color to that scope? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so to your point, the first is a maturity level. So once you figure out the maturity level, you understand what needs to be done. So if you look at our domain, the eight domains that I mentioned and the framework, people is a big one, right? Most of the folks are struggling with people's skills and organizational capabilities. And it's so because it's an operating model change, right? And people are the key component to this operating model change. So we help our customers figure out how do we achieve that optimal operating level and operating a model maturity. And that could be on-prem that could be on public cloud. That could be hybrid. That could be at the edge. And yeah, we, if we can HP, the framework, by the way is pretty, pretty open and pretty objective. If we can help our customers address and achieve their sales gaps great. If we can not directly, then we can have a partner that can help them, you know, plug in something that we don't have. >> Are you finding that, that in terms of the maturity that most people have some kind of experience with, with cloud, but they're struggling to bring that cloud experience to their on-premise state. They don't want to just shove everything into the cloud. Right. So, what does that kind of typical journey look like for folks? I know there's--it's a wide spectrum, or you've got people that are maybe more mature. Maybe some of the folks in financial services got more resources, but can you sort of give us a sense as to what the typical, the average. >> Oh yeah yeah yeah, absolutely. By the way. So that give you a customer example, perfect example of a large North American integrated energy company. They decided to go cloud fresh, like a lot of companies. that wants to do cloud first. And why? The reason was agility. So they started going to the cloud and they realized in order to get agility, you can't just go to you, pick your public CSP, you got to change the way to operate. So they brought us in and they asked, could you help me figure out how we can change the organization? So we actually operate on the proper level of maturity. So we brought our team in. We help them figure out what do we need to look at? We need to look at operations. We need to look at people. We need to look at applications, and we need to figure out what gives you the best value. So when all said and done, they realized that their initial desire of, you know, public first or cloud first, wasn't really public cloud first. It's a way to operate. So now the customer is in three different public CSPs. They're on-prem, there are at edge and everywhere. So that's the focus. Yeah. >> Is the scope predominantly the technical organization. How deep does it go into the, to the business? Is it obviously the application development team is involved, but how deep into the business does this go? The framework. >> Right, and it's absolutely not a technology focused, the whole concept areas, it's outcomes based, and it's a results based. So if you look at the framework, there's really not a single element of the framework that says tech, like storage or compute. No, it's its people, its data, it's business value, strategy and governance, because the goal for us is being objective is we're just trying to help them address the outcomes. Not necessarily to give them more tech. >> So Alexia, I like that answer because it's a wider scope as, I mean, if we just focused on the tech and that's the swim lane, it'd be a lot easier. But as we all know, it's the people in the process that are really the hard part. So that, that makes the challenge for customers greater. You're hurting more cats. So what are the, some of the obstacles that potentially you help customers before they dive in understand. >> Yeah. So we're giving them a roadmap on where they need to go. So we're like I mentioned that recipe, so we're really trying to identify what is their strategy and where do they, what are the outcomes that they're trying to drive and help them on a street, you know, with that path to meet those outcomes. So some of those, I mean, every customer's a little bit different. I mean, we had one customer, which was a, one of the largest hospitals in north America and they, they would needed to, they wanted to go to the cloud, but they realized they couldn't put all of their patient data on the cloud. So what we did was we helped them in changing their operating model and really look to see how does that, how do they need to what's that end game for them, and actually help redo their operating model to have some in the cloud and some on-prem and, and really identify, you know, where they needed to go for their roadmap. So that was an obstacle that they had, hey, we can't put all this stuff out there. How does that now need to work in this new world? >> I would think the data model is a big deal here. I mean, you just gave an example where there's a, there's a, there's a governance and compliance aspect to it. So thinking about that example, did they have to change the way in which they provided federated governance was that presumably identify whose whose responsibility that was to adjudicate, but also had to get the, the implementers to follow that's the, how does that all work? Is it just the deep conversations? And then you figure out how to codify it or. >> No. So what so we have, so through those eight domains that Alexia mentioned, we go through, step-by-step how they need to think about it. And within mind, what are their business outcomes and goals that they're trying to achieve? So really identifying how they need to change that operating model to meet those business outcomes. >> So what's the output, it's a plan, right. That's tailored to the customer. Is that, is that correct? And, and then sort of assistance in implementing downstream or what do they get? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just to piggyback to what Alexia said, the alignment, the early alignment, the strategy and governance, as you mentioned, this is probably the most important thing, because everybody says we want to be cloud first, but what does that mean? Cloud first means different things to everyone. So we said, give him a plan. The first we'll help with figure out is what does that mean for you? Because at the end of the day, you're not going to the cloud for the sake of cloud, or anywhere you go into the cloud to get some sort of value. So what's that alignment. So the plan is supposed to help you on your road to that value, right? So we'll help them figure out what I want to do, why, for what purpose, what's going to actually address my business value. So yes, they will get a plan as part of it. But more importantly, they get, they get a set of activities, communication plans, which by the way, another block that you got to address. >> Dave: Huge. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, a lot of executives tell me, look, if you don't change your operating model and go to the cloud, yeah. You're talking, you know, nickels and dimes. If you want to get telephone numbers, you know, big companies, you want to get into bees with billions, you have to change the operating model. And the problem that they tell me is a lot of times the corner offices, okay, we're doing this, but everybody in the fat middle says, what are we doing? >> Right. And now more than ever, I mean, customers need to look at that model like a more modern operating model to realize the benefits of cloud capabilities, whether that be at the edge, their data centers, their colos cloud. So they really need to look at that. And what we've seen is with our framework, we're really helping customers accelerate their business outcomes. De-risk their transformation, and really optimize that cloud operating model. >> It's that alignment you reducing friction within the organization, confusing confusion. When people don't know which direction they're going, they'll just going to go wherever they're pointed. Right. Right. >> And you back to the alignment. So you've got alignment and you mentioned communication. You have to communicate up and down and left and right across the organization because that's one of the most probably ignored elements of any transformation lots of people don't know. So you got to communicate. And then you have to actually measure and report on how they, you know, how the transformation is happening. So we can help in all three of those. >> Especially when everybody's remote. Yeah. Right. And then I said, hey, these digital transformations, there's so much, that's unknown. >> Alexia: Right. It's difficult. >> It's a lot of new. And so you also have to, I presume part of the plan is, Hey, you're not, it's not going to be a hundred percent perfect. So you have to have. >> Alexia: Right. And you're constantly iterating on that plan. >> What does this have to do with GreenLake? >> Alexia: Yeah. So, I mean, GreenLake is HPE's you know, cloud everywhere. And what we're really doing is this framework is helping customers with that path to get that cloud-like experience and as a service model. And so the framework is really helping clients understand where do they need to go and what GreenLake solutions can help them get there. >> So the fundamental assumption of not every cloud player necessarily bad, I would say most hyperscalers is, hey, ultimately, all the data and the workloads are going to go to the cloud, that's their operating premise. So they all have an operating framework to facilitate that. >> Alexia: Right. >> It's, it's tongue in cheek, but it's true. So, but everybody has one of these. How was yours different? >> Yeah. So like, like you said, there's lots of different, you know, frameworks out there, but what we're really focused on is meeting those business goals and outcomes for clients. So we didn't focus on the technology. Like we mentioned what we were really focusing around. I mean, we kind of learned early on that every customer has technical capabilities, applications, data in multiple clouds, on-prem in colos and at the edge. So we didn't focus on like just the technology. So it's really driving business outcomes and their goals and, and the tech, all those frameworks that we just mentioned, they're really specifically driving a particular technology tool or vendor implementing a particular technology or vendor. >> So we've talked about outcomes a lot, but I wonder if we could peel the onion on that. So, you know, the highest level outcome is I want to increase revenue, cut costs, drop to the bottom line, increase shareholder value, improve employee experiences and retention, make customers happier, grow my business. I mean, those are, I mean, I, I don't know a lot of businesses that don't... >> Alexia: Right. >> want to do that, So. Okay. That's cool. But then I'm imagining you really start to peel the layers and say, okay, this is how we're going to get there. And you get down to specific objectives as to the, how is that sort of how this works? >> Right, and that's due to echo at Alexia. So that's exactly why ours is different. We're not focusing on how to adopt Microsoft or AWS or Alibaba with focusing on how we can deliver the customer experience or a better revenue, you know, or, you know, increase the value for the consumer for whatever the company will help him. So the framework we'll look at that and figure out how do we actually address it, whether it's on public cloud, whether it's on prem, whether it's at the edge. >> You mentioned Alexia, that something, hey, if we don't have the skills, we can get a partner who does, a big company. You got a huge partner network. So for example, if you might not have necessarily a deep industry expertise, that's where you might lean on a partner or is that, is that a good example or is there a better one? >> Yes and we know. We're not going to just like you mentioned AWS or Microsoft, Alibaba thing that everything will go to public cloud. I don't believe so, but at the same time we know not everything will stay on-prem. So the combination of on-prem, the edge, you know, private cloud and public cloud is what the customers are after. So our partners could be either third party, system integrator that can help us implement something or even the public CSPs, because we know our customers have capabilities everywhere. So the question becomes, how can we holistically address their needs, whether it's on-prem, whether it's in public cloud. >> Great. Guys, thanks so much. >> Alexia: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. >> My pleasure and thank you for watching everybody's as theCube's continuous coverage of HPE's GreenLake announcement, keep it right there for more great content. (bright upbeat music)