>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube. Covering HPE Discover 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Hey welcome back everyone, live here in Las Vegas is Silicon Angle Media's Cubes, three days of exclusive coverage, we're on day three of HPE Discover 2017, our seventh year covering HPE Discover. Our second year, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Discover, I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vallante. Our next guest is Flynn Maloy, Vice President of HPE.next solution, pointing to what's next. Welcome back Good to see you. >> Thank you. Good to see you guys. >> So nice, clean positioning, point next, nice and tight. Nice messaging. >> Flynn: Thank you. >> Clean positioning, new opportunity, give us the update. What is the positioning? How's it been going? And what's the reaction with partners? >> Well, when we last spoke in London, we told you we were going to do something big with our services business and that's what we did. In March, we launched HPE.next and we've got really fabulous reaction from the market. We see it, all of our customers across the board, our marketing numbers, in terms of our inbound. What it looks like, the amount of interest that we're gathering, really we couldn't be happier with where .next has gone. >> For the record, just why ... What's the motivation behind .next? Why do this? What's the official position on why you're doing it and what's the impact for the customer? >> Well, you know, a year ago, just before the show, we announced that we were going to be spinning out our outsourcing business. And up to that point, over the last five years, six years, we'd approached our largest customers with a run message, we can help run your IT. And I think Meg, and the board of directors, and our senior leaders, really took a look at it and said, "It's a good business for a certain segment "of the market, but where HPE wants to go is we want to be more about advise, and transform, we want to help you get there. Not necessarily do it for you. That market's changing. As we announced and moved out that business, we took look and, in fact, I think the very first question you guys asked Antonio in London was, "So, jokingly, you're a play product company "now, right guys? " And no, we're not. We have a big services business, a big part of our business, and that's what .next was, was really to bring that to the front as we spun out the outsourcing business, we really wanted to bring our very strong services business, our consulting and support business to the front, rebrand it, get it out there. And really lead with services. And I think at the show this week, across the board, on main-stage, on the show floor, you can see again and again, HPE is walking the walk on really realizing, let's start with digital transformation, let's lead with services first and start with outcomes. And then bring in the technology to get you where you need to go. >> Wow. And that's a business that Antonio used to run, so obviously he's got an affinity for that. Flynn, can you take us through the background of the branding and sort of what you went through? It's always fascinating to us. How did you get to .next, right? It didn't just fall out of the sky. >> Well, we have the company, we have a company that accelerates next, right? So, that's what HPE does. We believe in what's next. We believe in always looking to the future. HPE has always been about invent, and innovation, right? We are looking for what's next and so we sat down with some of our senior leaders and said "Okay, we could certainly name ourselves "HPE Services and look like everybody else in the market." You go out there and look at our competitors, you've got global services, technology services. We think it's time to break from the past. We think it's time to look to the future and point to the future, and we are the company that accelerates next, we have a point of view on where our customers should go. We have a point of view on where technology is going. And so we want to help point you to what's next. It's got to feel it's certainly heavy on advisory, and you heard Meg on stage talk again and again, this is our business. We're not about run. We're about advising. We understand where digital transformation is going, we have a point of view, and let us talk to you about it, let us help you on that endgame. >> Dave: And bumper sticker the brand promise for us. What's the brand promise? >> We make hybrid IT simple. We power the intelligent Edge and we have the expertise to make it happen. >> The bridge to the future is really, the customer are looking at the future and I like the name, by the way. I think it's great, it's clean, it's generic in a way, .next. Clever. But really, the transformation journey is about business process and improvement and changes with Cloud, and big data. You see in the apps, with div apps, you see, certainly that movement, top line revenue growth. This is really about crossing to the future, right? I mean, for the customers. Having that head room option, that's where you guys see the advisory shining. How do you talk to the customers? Because, again, they start on a journey, you guys always talk about, but ultimately there's going to be some unknowns that they have to face. How does that play into what you guys are doing with the hybrd IT message, simplifying hybrid IT? >> I'll definitely say, I completely agree with that. And that's the way Anna Pinczuk, who you guys spoke to earlier today, that's the way she really envisions it. She used an analogy for like a GM car. In the 70's, you had a different key for the trunk, a different key for the ignition, A different key for the door and customers are looking for one key, That's what they're looking for. And so we want to create a seamless experience for our customers across the board. And you may not always need a high-end, big transformation is that's not what you're looking for. Most customers today, don't have one giant, macro-transformation. There's dozens of them going on in different areas and that's the way we've kind of built this business is to be able to handle the small ones, to be in and out quickly, you know, it's not bringing in thousands of people. It's taking a look at, what are you trying to do and let's get some quick wins, and there might be some big ones along the way. But one other thing you touched on was business model, and I know we talked a lot about consumption this week, what changing business models are like. And I know we've talked about that at length in the past and we really see that big change around, what we believe is a huge opportunity. We've talked about flex capacity a lot this week, right? Which is, your stack, in your environment. We put a lease on top, we run-time optimize it, activate capacity management and basically it feels to you, as it flexes up and down, like a public Cloud option on Prim. But it's your stack in your environment. And there's so much more that we can do with that, and Anna talked about in hers, about private backup. We're debuting in here. Private backup is a service, which is basically your backed up data, that you pay for as you back it up, but it's on Prim. It's not out there. It's inside of your firewall, it's inside of your environment, and that's a big deal. We're onto something there. >> Well, where that gets interesting, too, is if you backup not only your data, but maybe you back up data from AWS, or maybe you back up data from your CRM system. >> Absolutely. >> And it goes both ways. So you become that sort of center of the data protection service. And there's probably "n" number of examples like that, but we've talked in the past about services as a service. We kind of joked about that. But is that the model that you're working toward? >> Well, I would say as the marketing leader for .next, we're not branding services as a service. We've tested out a lot of different ideas. What we fundamentally believe is that there's a new category out on the market. We believe that, as we say, hybrid IT will win in the end. We believe that there are plenty of workloads that are going to go out to the commodity cloud, that's a very important part of your right mix. We've talked to enterprises across the board, you hear it across the bard, why flexible capacity has been so successful. There is this whole class of service which is consuming, but consuming on Prim. And that doesn't just mean a lease, that means private backup, that means a group of clusters, that means a whole series of IT, but you consume it. You meter it, you measure it, you consume it, You pay for what you use but you do it inside of your own environment and that's not only in your data center. Your environment can be your manufacturing floor, or your mall, or your airport because we have these great Edge assets. >> The refinery. >> Right., and if you're able to again, same idea, put that sort of consumption model in place, at your Edge, or in your data center ... Of course, bring in public when you need it, but that mix, that right mix, we think this is a huge class of service. We think we have a six year advantage on the market, and we're going to go strong on that. >> I guess the point is, in services traditionally, either a maintenance contract or it's an SOAW-based business, and what you're describing now is much more of an at-your-service, monthly, or whatever, quarterly billing, type of cycle, right? >> Flynn: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I think the tail wins for you guys have the wind at your back and I think you're right. You're onto something. Some things we're seeing here at the show, and also other Cube events we've done is, micro services, you're seeing things with Cloud Native on the Cloud side, and general Cloud, on Prim as well as in the public micro services. And people know about the compos-ability of lego blocks and open sources even going down to the point where things are being open-sourced like we've never seen before, so people have to cobble together and roll their own solutions. The other thing that's interesting and most notable, that's come up this week, is Ricky Vaughn's private Cloud report, that true private Cloud report came out and the only one in the market that actually has real numbers, points to-- >> Flynn: Great numbers, by the way. Love it. >> This is complete validation, that the right mix is also a good message in the sense that are on-Prim, those are some markets over 260 billion. That means, that IT is not going to be shrinking, like some might say, service shipments are certainly shrinking maybe here and there, but IT is growing in a Cloud-like environment. On-prim's not going away. >> No. >> So this really comes down to, Okay, I've got to deal with what I've got, build on these micro services, a lot of open-source projects coming in. This is, I think, a great opportunity for you guys. How are you going to attack that? How do you go in to a customer, because I know they have Slizer on it, the globalist ... (overlapped talking) ...was on earlier, these are big problems to solve. >> Yep. >> How do you engage with that kind of level of scope? >> Well let's start with, and we completely agree with the Premise As you know, we've been talking about that for a while. We also believe that the term on Premise, that doesn't just mean a big, air-conditioning room in your building, that can be the Colo, that can be your hoster, that can be in a lot of different places, but it's your private item, right? That's what it is. >> The air control. >> That's the point, it's control, it's about controlling security. And once you put that in, as you develop the micro services, we know, to answer your question directly about, how do we engage? We know these enterprise customers, and even smaller customers. They want to move from capex to apex, that's an overused term. But really it means, instead of buying 100 servers and then I go over provision for six months, and then another 100 servers, right? If we can get into a way where we can actually get apex, and that conversation is ... You're still starting out with the same business problems, this is kind of the thing that we learned. It's not some, you don't go in and say "Apex to capex", you go in and say "Hey, you need a new customer "experience, right? You want to transcribe your "customer experience." (overlapped talking) >> That's right, let's talk about your digital transformation that you want to put in, what's the new technology that you need? And then, let's talk about the business model that follows behind that, so it's not consumption for consumption's sake. It starts as, what is the outcome and then, bring in the technology, solve the problems, bring in the partners, and then, you can consume it over time. >> John: I think that validates why hybrid Cloud is so hot. We've been pointing at it, but really when you break it down like that, with a true private Cloud environment, which is essentially IT on Prem, or however you describe it. Then you got hybrid. That's where workloads, move to the Cloud and that destination-oriented multi-Cloud environment. So, we believe that multi-Cloud will be there. I personally don't think, and Levon's got some research coming out on this, that multi-Cloud is a little bit further out. That hybrid is a gateway to multi-Cloud. And right now, you can be on multiple Clouds but it's just different workloads. But the nirvana is just having workloads just moving in and out of Clouds, and eventually that's how I see it. What's your thoughts on that? >> Well, have you had a preview of New Stack, and some of the discussions this week? >> Well, we've had the PowerPoint preview and today, this afternoon, we get the NBA preview. >> Oh, fantastic. Well, we see that, too. We believe that that's the control point. And by the way, you're not going to find that from public Cloud, you're not going to get that... The over-arching single pane. That's not going to come from that side, it's going to come from this side, right? And that's where New Stack is aimed, That's where a lot of our software-defined technology is aimed and we completely agree and we think that, that's what's going to be that top control layer. >> Dave: You'll get, from the public logic, about five single panes, or four single panes, or eight single panes, or ... >> That's right, but you know what? You need a pane for the pane, I mean ... There's a sea of panes. (laughter) Flynn, thanks for coming out on The Cube, I know you got a hard stop, but I want to just get your thoughts. What's next as you go out and market .next? Great, clever name. Simple to get. Pointing to the future. We do a little dab with the point. >> It is a dab point. >> With a point to the future, up to the right, growth. What's next? What are you guys going to be doing in the marketplace? What's the message going to be? What's going to be the cadence of .next from a marketing standpoint? >> Well, we're going to continue to talk to our customers about the value that .next brings, and we're just previewing a few services here this week. We think it the tip of the ice berg, around, private backup as a service, big data as a service, we think there is an enormous amount of work here. We've previewed a little bit of it, Anna's talked about it on stage. I think, in the next few months, you're going to see us really come out strong to talk to the market, because we have, we do believe we have a six year leadership in this space, we purchased Cloud Cruiser, which is secret sauce that really allows us to do these kinds of services. Measure the meter, you know? And I expect to see a bunch of new messages and a bunch of new services around the space. >> John: Awesome. Thanks for coming on The Cube, great to have you, great conversation, new opportunities that is the ice berg. Cloud is certainly changing, a big day to IoT, all happening in real time. This is the Cube happening here, day three, coverage of HPE Discover, 2017. Stay with us. More coverage after this short break, stay with us. (electronic music)