>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP. Discover Virtual Experience Brought to you by HP >>Everyone welcome to the Cube studios here in Palo Alto, California We here for remote conversation. Where for HP Discover virtual experience. 2020. We would Kumar, Sri Context, chief technology officer and head of Software Cube alumni. We've been following Kumar since he started Blue Data. Now he's heading up the software team and CTO at HP and Robert Christensen, VP of Strategy of Office of the CTO Robert Both Cube alumni's Robert, formerly with CTP, now part of the team that's bringing the modernization efforts around enterprises in this fast changing world that's impacting the operating models for businesses. We're seeing that playing out in real time with Covert 19 as customers are modernizing the efforts. Guys, thanks for coming on. Taking the time. >>You're welcome, John. Good to be back here, >>Kumar. First I have to ask you, I have to ask you your new role at HP sent it up to CTO but also head of the software. How >>do you >>describe that role Because you're CTO and also heading up? This offers a general manager. Could you take him in to explain this new role and why It's important. >>Thank you. Thank you, John. And so good to be back. You get two for one with me and Robert didn't. Yeah, it's very exciting to be here as the CTO of HB. And as Antonio described in in his announcement, we consider software will be very key, essential part of the our people as a service. And, uh, we want we see that it's an opportunity for not only layer division but help drive the execution of that reason. Both organic them in our. So we we see we want to have a different change of software that helps the customers, too, to get us to the workloads optimized, or are there specific solutions? >>You guys were both on the Cube in November, Pre cove it with the minimum John Troyer talking about the container platform news, leveraging the acquisitions you guys have done at HP Kumar, your company Blue Data map, our CTP, Robert, the group. You're there really talking about the strategies around running these kinds of workloads. And if you think about Cove in 19 this transformation, it's really changing work. Workforces, workplaces, workloads, work flows everything to do with work and people are at home. That's an extension of the on premise environment. VPN provisions were under provisional hearing all these stories, exposing all the things that need to be worked on because no one ever saw this kind of direction. It highlights the modern efforts that a lot of your customers are going through rubber. Can you explain? And Kumar talk about this digital transformation in this cove it and then when we come out of it, the growth strategies that need to be put in place and the projects take a minute to explain. >>Go ahead. Robert Cover has been spending a lot of time with our customers, and I would like to go ahead. >>Yeah, thank you so much. It's Ah, uh, accelerators. What's happened? Many of our clients have been forced into the conversation about how do I engage our customers, and how do we engage our broad constituents, including our employees and colleagues, in a more rapid and easier way? And many of the systems that were targeted to make their way to a public cloud digital transformation process did not get the attention just because of their size and breadth and depth effort. So that's really put an accelerator down on what are we gonna do? So we have to be able to bring a platform into our clients organizations that have the same behavior characteristics or what we call you know, the same cloud experiences that people are expecting public. Bring it close to our client's data and their applications without having that you don't have a platform by which you can have an accelerated digital transformation because it's historically a public cloud. But the only path to get that done, what we're really considering, what we introduced a while ago was platform near our clients applications. That data that gives them that ability to move quicker and respond to these industries, situations and specifically, what's happened with company really pushes it harder for real solutions Now that they can act on >>Kumar, your thoughts on this pre coded >>Yeah, yeah, this is the piece of acceleration for the digital transformation is just is a longer dynamically multiplied the code. But I think as you pointed out, John the remote working and the VPN is the security. We were as an edge to the Cloud platform company we were already in that space, so it's actually very, very. As Robert pointed out, it's actually nice to see that transformation is his transition or rapidly getting into the digitization. But one thing that is very interesting to note here is you can you can lift and shift of data has gravity. And you actually saw we actually see the war. All the distributor cloud. We see that we're glad to see what we've seen we've been talking about prior to the Kool Aid. And recently even the industry analysts are talking about we believe there is a computer can happen where the data is on. But this is actually an interesting point for me to say. This is why we have actually announced our new software platform, which we as well, which is our our key differentiator pillar for our as a service people that companies are facing. >>Could you talk about what this platform is? You guys are announcing the capabilities and what customers can expect from this. Is that a repackaging? Is there something new here? What's is it something different, Making something better? What? Can you just give us a quick taste of what this is and what it means. >>Good love alive. >>Yeah, so yeah, that's a great question. Is it repackage There's actually something. Well, I'm happy to say. It's a combination of a lot of existing assets that come together in the ecosystem, I think a platform that is super unique. You know, you look at what the Blue data container Onda adoption of communities holistically is a control plane as well as our data fabric of motion to the market with Matt Bahr and you combine that with our network experiences and our other platform very specific platform solutions and your clients data that all comes together in intellectual property that we have that we packed together and make it work together. So there's a lot of new stuff in there, But more importantly, we have a number of other close partners that we've brought together to form out our as moral platform. We have a new, really interesting combination of security and authentication. Piece is through our site L organization that came underneath with us a few months back and are aggressive motion towards bringing in strong networking service that complexity as well. So these all come together and I'm sure leaving a few out there are specifically with info site software to continue to build out a Dr solution on premises that provides that world class of services that John >>Sorry, Johnny, was the question at the beginning is, what is that? Why the software role is This is exactly what I was waiting for that that that moment where Robert pointed out, our goal is we have a lots of good assets. In addition to a lot of good partnerships, we believe the market is the customers want outcome based solutions. Best motion not. I want peace meal. So we have an opportunity to provide the customers the solution from the top to the bottom we were announced, or the Discover ML ops as a service which is actually total top to the bottom and grow, and customers can build ml solutions on the top of the Green lake. This is built on HP is moral, so it's not. I wouldn't use the word repackaging, but it is actually a lot of the inorganic organic technologies that have come together that building the solution. >>You know, I don't think it's ah, negative package something up in >>Toto. So I wouldn't >>I didn't think >>negative, but I was just saying that it is. It's Ah, it's a lot of new stuff, but also, as Robert said included, or you built a very powerful container platform. As you said, you just mentioned it that you've gone. We announced the well. >>One of the things I liked about your talk on November was that the company is kind of getting in the weeds, but stateless versus State. Full data's a big part >>of >>it, but you don't get the cloud and public cloud and horizontal scalability. No one wants Peace meal, that word you guys just mentioned or these siloed tools and about the workforce workplace transformation with Cove it it's exposing the edge, everybody. It's not just a nightie conversation. You need to have software that traverses the environment. So you now looking at not so much point solutions best to breed but you guys have had in the past, but saying Okay, I got to look at this holistically and say, How do I make sure I make sure security, which is the new perimeter, is the home right or wherever is no perimeter anymore is everywhere, So >>this is now >>just a architectural concept. Not so much a point solution, right? I mean, is that kind of how you're thinking about it? >>That's correct. In fact, as you said, the data is generated at the edge and you take the compute and it's been edge to the cloud platform. What we have, actually what we are actually demonstrating is we want to give a complete solution no matter where the processing needs are. And with HP, you have no that cloud like experience both as UNP prime as well as what we call a hybrid. I think let's be honest, the world is going to be hybrid and you can actually see the changes that is happening even from the public cloud vendors. They're trying to come on pram. So HP is being established player in this, and with this technology I think provides that solution, you can process where the data is. >>Yeah, I would agree it's hybrid. I would say Multi cloud is also, you know, code word for multi environment, right? And Robert, I want todo as you mentioned in your talk with stew minimum in November, consistency across environments. So when you talk to customers. Robert. What are they saying? Because I can imagine them in zoom meetings right now or teleconferencing saying, Look it, we have to have an operating model that spans public on premise. Multiple environments, whether it's edge or clouds. I don't wanna have different environments and being managed separately and different data modeling. I won't have a control plane, and this is architectural. I mean, it's kind of complex, but customers are dealing with this right now. What are you hearing from customers? How are they handling and they doubling down on certain projects? Are they reshaping some of their investments? I mean, what's the mindset of the customer >>right now? The mindset is that the customers, under extreme pressure to control costs and improve automation and governance across all their platforms, the business, the businesses that we deal with have established themselves in a public cloud, at least to some extent, with what they call their systems of engagement. Those are all the lot of the elastic systems, the hype ones that the hyper scale very well, and then they have all of their existing on premises, stuff that you typically heavily focused on. A VM based mindset which is being more more viewed as legacy, actually, and so they're looking for that next decade of operating. While that spans both the public and the private cloud on Premises World and what's risen up, that operating model is the open source kubernetes orchestration based operating model, where they gives them the potential of walking into another operating model that's holistic across both public and private but more importantly, as a way for their existing platforms to move into this new operating model. That's what you're talking about, using state full applications that are more legacy minded, monolithic but still can run in the container based platform and move to a new ballistic operating model. Nobody's under the impression, by the way, that the existing operating model we have today on premises is compatible with the cloud operating model. Those two are not compatible in any shape. Before we have to get to an operating model that holistic in nature. We see that, >>and that's a great tee up for the software question Robert, I want to go to. Come on, I want to get thoughts because I know you personally and I've been following your career. Certainly you know. Well, well, well, deep in computer science and software. So I think it's a good role for you. But if you look at what the future is, this is the conversation we're having with CIOs and customers on the Cube is when I get back to work postcode. But I've gotta have a growth strategy. I need to reset, reinvent and have growth strategy. And all the conversations come back to the APS that they have to redevelop or modernize, right? So workloads or whatever. So what that means is they really want true agility, not just as a punch line or cliche. They gotta move security into the Dev Ops pipeline ing. They got to make the application environment. Dev Ops and Dev Ops was kind of a fringe industry thing for about a decade. And now that's implement. That's influencing I T ops, security ops and network ops. These are operational systems, not just, you know, Hey, let's sling some kubernetes and service meshes around. This is like really nuts and bolts business operations. So, you know, I t Ops has impacted SEC ops isn't impacted. They're working us not for the faint of Heart Dev Ops I get that now it's coming everywhere. What's your thoughts on that? What's your reaction? >>We see those things coming together, John. So again, going back to the Israel were the world we believe this innovative software is. It can run on any infrastructure to start with, whether it's HP hardware knowledge we are with. It's called Hybrid. And as we said we talked about, it is it is, um it's whether it is an edge already where the processing is. We also committed to providing integrated, optimized, secure, elastic and automate our solutions. Right. This is, I think, your question of are it's not just appealing to the one segment of the organization. I think there's going to be a I cannot just say I'm only giving you the devil ops solution, but it has to have a security built into. This is why we are actually committed to making our solutions more elastic, more scalable. We're investing in building a complete runtime stack and making sure it has the all the fleet compose. It's not only optimized for the work solution which we call the work runtime stack, it's also has this is our Green Lake solution that that brings these two pieces together. Robert? Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. >>Robert, you mentioned automation earlier. This is where the automation dream comes in. The Mission ml ops service. What you're really getting at is program ability for the developer across the board, right? Is that kind of what you're thinking? Or? >>Well, there's two parts of that. This is really important. The developer community is looking for a set of tools that they could be very creative and movement right. They don't want to have to be worried about provisioning managing, maintaining any kind of infrastructure. And so there's this bridge between that automation and the actual getting things done. So that's number one. But more importantly, I think this is hugely important, as you look about pushing into the on premises world for for H, P E or anybody else to succeed in that space, you have to have a high degree of automation that takes care of potential problems that humans would otherwise have to get involved with. And that's when they cost. So you have to drive in a commercial. I'm gonna fleet controls of Fleet management services that automate their behavior and give them an S L A that are custom to public cloud. So you've got two sets of automation that you really have to be dealing with. Not only are you talking about Dev ops, the second stage you just talked about, but you gotta have a corresponding automation bake back into drive. A higher user experience at both levels >>and Esmeraldas platforms is cool. I get that. I hear that. So the question next question on that Kumar is platforms have to enable value. What are you guys enabling for the value when you talk to customers? Because who everyone sees the platform play as the as the architecture, but it has to create disruptive, enabling value. What do you >>Yeah, that I'll go on as a starter, I think way pointed out to you. This is the when we announced the container platform, it's off, the very unique. It's not only it's open source Cuban it is. It has a persistent one of the best underlying persistent stories integrated the original map or a file system, as I pointed out, drones one of the world's largest databases, and we can actually allow the customers to run both both state full and stateless workloads. And as I said a few minutes ago, we are committed to having the run times off they run and both which we are. We're not a hardware, so the customers have the choice on. In addition to all of that, I think we're in a very unique solutions. We're offering is ML ops as we talked about and this is only beginning, and we have lots of other examples of Robert is working on a solution. Hopefully, we'll announce sometime soon, which is similar to that. Some of the key elements that we're seeing in the marketplace, the various solutions that goes from the top of the bar >>Robert to you on the same question. What's in it for me in the customer? Bottom line. What's the what's in it for me? >>Well, so I think, just the ease of simplicity. What we are ultimately want to provide for a client is one opportunity to solve a bunch of problems that otherwise have to stitch together myself. It's really about value and speed to value. If I have to solve the same computer vision problem in manufacturing facility and I need a solution and I don't have the resource of the wherewithal stacks like that, but I got to bring a bigger solution. I want a company that knows how to deliver a computer vision solution there or within an airport or wherever, where I don't need to build out sophisticated infrastructure or people are technologies necessary, is point on my own or have some third party product that doesn't have a vested interest in the whole stack. H P E is purposely have focused on delivering that experience with one organization from both hardware and software up to the stack, including the applications that we believe with the highest value to the client We want to be. That organization will be an organization on premises. >>I think that's great, consistent with what we're hearing if you can help take the heavy lifting away and have them focus on their business and the creativity. And I think the application renaissance and transformation is going to be a big focus both on the infrastructure side but also just straight up application developers. That's gonna be really critical path for a lot of these companies to come out of this. So congratulations on that love that love the formula final conclusion question for both you guys. This is something that a lot of people might be asking at HP. Discover virtual experience, or in general, as they have to plan and get back to work and reset, reinvent and grow their organizations. Where is HP heading? How do you see HP heading? How would you answer that question? If the customers like Kumar Robert, where's HP heading? How would you answer that? >>Go ahead, Robert. And then I can >>Yeah, yeah. Uh huh, Uh huh. I see us heading into the true distributed hybrid platform play where that they would look to HP of handling and providing all of their resource is and solutions needs as they relate to technology further and further into what their specific edge locations would look like. So edge is different for everybody. And what HP is providing is a holistic view of compute and our storage and our solutions all the way up through whether they be very close to the edge. Locations are all the way through the data center and including the integration with our public cloud partners out there. So I see HP is actually solving real value business problems in a way that's turnkey and define it for our clients. Really value >>John. I think I'll start with the word Antonio shared. We are edge to the cloud, everything as a service company and I think the we're actually sending is HPE is Valley Legend, and it's actually honored to be part of the such a great company. I think what we have to change with the market transformation the customer needs and what we're doing is we're probably in the customers that innovative solution that you don't have to. You don't have to take your data where the computers, as opposed to you, can take the compute where the data is and we provide you the simplified, automated, secure solutions no matter where you very rare execution needs are. And that is through the significant innovation of the software, both for as Model and the Green Lake. >>That's awesome. And, you know, for all of us, have been through multiple ways of innovation. We've seen this movie before. It's essentially distributive computing, re imagine and re architected with capability is the new scale. I mean, it's almost back to the old days of network operating systems and networking and Os is and it's a you know, >>I that's a very, very good point. And I will come through the following way, right? I mean, it is, It's Ah, two plus two is four no matter what university, Gordo. But you have to change with the market forces. I think the market is what is happening in the marketplace. As you pointed out, there was a shadow I t There's a devil Ops and his idea off the network ops and six years. So now I think we see that all coming together I call this kubernetes is the best equalizer of the past platform. The reason why it became popular is because it's provided that abstraction layer on. I think what we're trying to do is okay, if that is where the customers want and we provide a solution that helps you to build that very quickly without having to lock into any specific platform. >>I think you've got a good strategy there. I would agree with you. I would call that I call it the old TCP I p. What that did networking back in the day. Kubernetes is a unifying, disruptive enabler, and I think it enables things like a runtime stack. Things that you're mentioning. These are the new realities. I think Covad 19 has exposed this new architectures of the world. >>Yeah, one last year, we were saying >>once, if not having something in place >>started. So the last thing I would say is it we're not bolting coolness to anything. Old technologies. It's a fresh it's built in. It's an open source. And it is as a salaries, it can run on any platform that you choose to run. Now. >>Well, next time we get together, we'll refund, observe ability and security and all that good stuff, because that's what's coming next. All the basic in guys. Thank you so much, Kumar. Robert. Thanks for spending the time. Really appreciate it here for the HP Discover Virtual Spirits Cube conversation. Thanks for Thanks for joining me today. >>Thank you very much. >>I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle. The Cube. We're here in our remote studios getting all the top conversations for HP Discover virtual experience. Thanks for watching. Yeah, >>yeah, yeah.

>>live from Orlando, Florida It's the cue covering Microsoft Ignite Brought to you by Cho He City Welcome >>back, everyone to the Cubes Live coverage of Microsoft IC Night. 26,000 people were here. The cube, the middle of the show floor. It's an exciting time. I'm your host. Rebecca Night, along with my co host, Stew Minutemen. We're joined by Barbara Homans. She is the director. Global ecosystem strategy and micro ecosystem lead at HP Thank you so much for coming on the Cube direct from Munich. Yes, Rebecca. Glad to be here. So you have You have two Rolls Global Ecosystem Strategy and Michael Microsoft's ecosystem lead. Explain how those work and how they there is synergy between those two roles. Yeah, I mean, I started >>off with the Microsoft role, but what we figured out is that actually, the world is much bigger than just one alliance, and that's why we call ourselves the Ecosystem. So it's all about driving alliances from different partner speed as I speed Eyes V's or also smaller partners in different segments and build a whole ecosystem play. That's what I'm attempting to do. >>So how do HB and Microsoft worked together. So we've >>seen partnering for 30 years strong, strong relationship with Microsoft and really nice to see. Also today, you know some of the H p e solutions on stage and even deepening our partnership. We have several areas. Probably 34 I can talk about in the next few minutes on how we work together with Microsoft specifically. >>Yeah. So? So Barbara, You know, I think most of us remember back, you know, early if you're talking about windows and office and you know HP here what's now part of HP Inc? Not sure. As many people know about all of the places that H p e Partners, obviously on the server side, it makes sense. But Azure is something. And the Azure arc announcement Help us understand, you know, Azure stack and beyond. Where? HP. Ethan with Microsoft on the Enterprise side. >>Perfect. Absolutely. We have still in Microsoft. Oh, am business where we have actually service attached with licenses. That's not going away rights. We absolutely. It's a strong business class. We work very closely around sequel with Microsoft, and that's also worried this whole azure arc announcement fits in. But it's more than just a sequel right with this as your arc. For me, it's a announcement around deepening relationships. Both. We're interested in a hybrid strategy. I really like Thio here from Satya today. How important hybrid is for Microsoft and this announcement as your ark. That's in public preview now, right? Well, give somewhat details on that. So we'd love to work with customers on that we actually our part of the public review and if anyone is interested, love to hear from customers. Please come to me, Barbara Holman's and we'll hook you up and get into the program. It's really about the hybrid piece, right that we both worked >>in Barbara H. P. E. If my understanding plays on both sides of it, it's not just in the data center with some gear there, but as you said, there's a sequel. The application side, you know, hybrid HP, you know, plays across the board, >>Indeed, So I don't know if you know about HB is actually a expert MSP partner for Azure. We got that last year. We're very proud of what I think we're one of 50 world by its partners. That also means we can actually offer Manage Service's Migration Service is helping people to move to an azure based clout. And that actually came partially because off our position off CTP Cloud Technology Partners, but also read pixie in the UK, and there are no old part off our point. Next service is group, and so as such, we have numerous customers were actually helped into the public cloud. Help them to find the right place. Because if you don't know if you've seen the video from Eric Poodle, that was part of the announcement today as well around as your ark, this is all about finding the right mix off your applications, and this is where we work together and a perfect fit. >>What are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing from your cut from your customers in terms of how you might, how Azure Arc might be the solution for them >>so as your ark? It's hard to say at this >>stage, because I just really don't work for Michael >>Self. So, yeah, we have to ask these people. But again, what I understand division is really that way will be able to manage hybrid environments in a in a better way, and again, this is what HP You know, we have a lot off our tour, of course, but we also announce that our hardware, all of that, will be available as a service within the next two for years. So we're moving in that direction in addition to Azure. And I think this will help customers to take adventures in the end. But it's hard to say Right, So you on this. This is very new. At this stage, the odds are right >>and this is a Microsoft show, not on HP show, but I I read somewhere that you had done a talk. Fear no cloud with H. P m. Our company's afraid. I mean, how would you describe the atmosphere with the companies that you work with? I worked >>in the cloud space, but for the last 10 years or longer, you know, it was on different parts off the industry there and from the early adoption. Really. People looking into you know, should I trust my data in this specific with this cloud provider or which applications am I gonna move? And I think today people have lost the fear a little bit, but they still don't know what to put where and there's applications, you do not want to move in a cloud. There's others that you for your specific company, you don't want to move, and another company may do that. And that's what we're trying to help them, right? So don't you don't have to fear the cloud you can. Actually, we can help you to adopt it at your pace in your way and so that you take most of the advantage out of it. >>But Barbara would love to hear any color you could give from the joint HP, EA and Microsoft customers very much. The announcement today feels like it completely. It's an update on the hybrid message, but A B and Microsoft have been working together on solutions like Azure Stack for a number of years. So what? What's working well today? What do you think you know? This will mean down the road a CZ. Some of these solutions start start to mature even further. >>Maybe moving to another area that HB and Microsoft worked very well together is around the modern workplace practice, and in there we just had a really nice win with Portia thing, actually in Austria, but planning to roll this out no further than that, and h b E's team has helped them to move from the current applicator from the current environment. Thio up two dates. Microsoft 3 65 Environment There's em OD in the UK and it's fast twice if I can talk about M. O D on stage here and they said yes, another customer that we should help to move to a Microsoft 3 65 environment. So there's numerous customers that trust HP with Microsoft in moving their their information to the to the clouds. Yeah, that's one example Asha Stack we have. You know, there's several customers that hard won about ashes. Takis. Difficult to talk about the customers because a lot of them are in the government sector on. So you know, there's a few that we can talk about, but they're mostly service providers, but the really big names, unfortunately, we can talk about because of the conference shit Confidentiality. Yeah, >>trust is one of the things that we keep hearing so much of it about at this conference. Satya Nadella talked about it on the main stage this morning in terms of the relationship that you have and HP standing in the technology world. How do you feel trust with customers? And how do you make sure you are maintaining that? That bond of trust and also the reputation of being a trustworthy partner? >>Yeah, I think I love you know, I love Saturdays, Point on trust because that actually makes the difference between you. Just deliver hardware and you walk away. And this is probably coming back to Azure stack Hop, as it's called now, right? You know, we've been told actually by Microsoft that we've accomplished with the customers from a delivery from a You know, we don't just walk away and say Good luck with the equipment you're on your own really helped them thio and make sure it's working for them. So for me, that's the key that you can come back to a customer afterwards and the customer will actually have you in your office again. >>Well, Barbara, I think back for most of my career what one of the hallmarks of an H. P e solution Was that the turnkey offering we know from, you know, ordering through delivery through, you know, up and running. HP has been streamlining that you know, I think back my entire career cloud has been not necessarily the simplest solutions out there. So maybe give us directionally. How does HPD partner with Microsoft on dhe your customers toe make? I would easier as WeII go through this journey >>S O s aside. Whereas your expert MSP partner a such we have done several of course trainings with Microsoft. We make sure that our people are educated on it way have, you know, with red pixy in the UK it's now part of point next, but I love to say the name because people really associate still with this a specific, strong and trustworthy team. You really build up a very good practice with Microsoft. There's, you know, local deal clinics where we really work in the specific deal. Steal by deal on how we can make it better for the customer. So a lot off local engagement. But for me, that all happens in country. Write me at a global level. I can only help them and steered a little bit. But that's also for me trust. It's a person to person relationship that happens in country. >>And would you say there are big differences country to country in terms of how willingly trust you and and and then how long it takes to build that relationship. >>So I'm gonna get in >>trouble now with some of the country. >>No, I you know the >>somewhere, even your CEO. >>You know, it's no, I mean you and I personally lift in Canada for a while, and so for me, it's some people are harder, you know, you need to get to know them. But then trust is even deeper then some of the others. But I have to say, it's all we're I mean, we're, I would say, from all those who look at h p were really a global company, right? And from this goes from Japan, Thio South Pacific too. You know, many countries in Asia will be very successful with ashes, stack specifically and always in Europe, the Middle East, all the way to North America, South America. So, I mean, that's the nice thing about HPD, I would say for the customers as well that they really get a global view on DA, a global company that can trust. >>So you're here, Ed ignite from Germany. What are the kinds of conversations you're having. And what do you think you're gonna take back with you when you go back to the office next week? So the other piece >>and we have ah, quite big. Both hear it at the event, right? We have a very nice edge line 8000 with us, which is kind of a ruggedized us or a smaller version. It's kindof almost my hand back, kind of to carry along, which has caught a lot of interest from the customers. So just standing there, watching the customers, asking, What is it? Can you tell me more about it? Rest is, you know, I love the bus and I love the actually part of the Microsoft Advisory Council for inspired, which is the partner event, right? But I love the bus to see here what's what's going on and always like to see how other people what they do, what they what they do at these events and then just Microsoft. I think it's wonderful, wonderful company. The inspiration. The story today was just into end a great story with great customer stories as well. So she does to the Microsoft team. Well done. >>Congratulations. Your gear was highlighted in the keynote this morning, so I'm sure that's driving a lot of traffic through for people Thio CC the latest. >>I would >>hope Superdome flex was there and then the actual stick. Both of them were there. So we worked hard for that. Thank you, Michael Self, for giving us the opportunity to be present and the keynote today. Well, >>thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It was a pleasure having you on Barbara. >>Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you. Stupid. >>I'm Rebecca Knight. First to minimum. Stay tuned for more of cubes. Live coverage of Microsoft ignite.

>> (narrator) Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering VMWorld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody. You're watching the Cube, the leader in live-tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host, David Floyer. Good to see you again David. VMWorld day three, wall to wall coverage. We got sets going on. 94 guests. Patrick Osborne is here, he's the Vice President of Big Data and Secondary Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Patrick, it's great to see you again. >> Always a pleasure to be on the Cube. >> Big quarter, Antonio Neri early into his tenure. >> Yes. The earnings, raise guidance, great to see that. Got to feel good. Give us the update, VMworld 2018, what's happening with you guys? >> So Q3 was bang up quarter, for all segments of the business. It was great, you know. Obviously it's the kind of earnings you want to have from a CEO in a second quarter. Steering the ship here. I think everyone's jazzed up. He's brought a lot of new life to the company, in terms of technology leadership. He's someone who's certainly grown up, from the grounds up, starting off his career at HPE. So for us who have started off as a Product Manager, an individual contributor, making your way up to CEO is definitely possible. So that's been great and I think it's favorable micro economics and we're taking advantage of that. VMworld's been awesome. I think this whole story around Multicloud and obviously we talk about hybrid IT at HPE, so it fits very well. VMware Technology, partner of the year, again. Four years running, so it's been a really good show for us. >> As last year, data protection is the single, hottest topic. Data protection, obviously Cloud, The Edge, but The Edge is kind of new and it's hot, it's sexy. But in terms of actual business that's getting done, companies that are getting funded, companies getting huge raises, throwing big parties. We saw you back to back nights at Omnia, it's a lot happening in data protection. HPE has got a whole new strategy around data protection. Maybe talk about that a little bit and how it's going. >> So it's going really well, like you said, that part of the market, it's pretty hot right now. I think there's a couple of things playing into that, certainly this new style of IT, like applied to secondary storage. We saw that with primary storage the last few years. Multicloud, the move to all flash, low-latency workloads. And then, certainly a lot of the things, in that area, are disrupting secondary storage. People want to do it different ways, they want to be able to simplify this area. It's a growing area for data, in general. They want to make that data work for them. Test, Dev, workload placement, intelligent placement of data, for secondary and even tertiary storage in the cloud. So a lot of good things happening, from an HPE perspective. >> So not just back up? >> No, not just back up. >> I want more out of my insurance policy. >> Exactly. Something in the past that was moving from purely a TCO type of conversation. My examples are always like, who likes to pay their life insurance premium, right? Because at the end of the day, I'm not going to derive any utility from that payment. So now, it's moving into more ROI. So we have things like, the Hybrid Flash Array, from Nimble, for example. It allows you to put your workloads to work. We have a great cloud service, called HPE Cloud Volumes, that we use for our customers to be able to do intelligent DR, as a service, and be able to apply Cloud compute to your data. So there's a lot of things going on, in the space, that's just outside of your traditional move data from point A to point B. Now you want to make it work for you. >> And what about the big data portfolio? You hear a lot about data. You don't hear a ton about the Big Data, Hadoop piece of the world. I know Hadoop, nobody seems to be talking about that anymore. But everybody's talking about AI, Machine-Learning, Deep-Learning. Certainly The Edge is all about data. What's the Big Data story? >> So at HPE, we're definitely focused on the whole Edge to Core analytic story. So we have a great story and you can see in the numbers from Q3, The Edge business, The Edge line servers, Aruba, driving a lot of growth in the company, where a lot of that data is being created. And then back into the Core, so for Big Data, we see a number of customers, who are using these tools to affect digital transformation. They're doing it, we're doing it to ourselves. So they're moving from batch oriented, to now fast data, so streaming analytics. And then, incorporating concepts of AI and ML to provide better service or better experience for their customers. And we're doing that with, for example, InfoSight. So we have a great product, Nimble, 3PAR. And then we provide a service, on top of that, which is a SAS based service. It has predictive analytics and Machine Learning. And we're able to do that, by using Big Data analytics. >> You're offering that as a service, as a SAS service to your customers? >> Absolutely. And the way we're able to provide those predictive analytics and be able to provide those recommendations and that Machine-Learning across a entire portfolio and be able to scale that service, because it's a service, we got tens of thousands of users using the service on a daily basis, is moving from an ERP system, data warehouse, to batch analytics, to now we're doing Elasticsearch and Kafka and all these really cool techniques, so it's really helped us unlock a lot of value for our customers. >> So, the Nimble acquisision is interesting, it's bringing that sort of Machine-Learning and AI to infrastructure. You got a lot of automation in the portfolio and you can't really talk about Cloud without talking about automations. So talk a little about automation. >> In particular, even at the show here this week, we are a premier technology partner with VMware and I think more that you see in the VMware Ecosystem is all around Cloud and automation. That's really where they're going. And we've been day-zero partners on a lot of different fronts. So VMware Cloud Foundation integration, we do things on the storage level with Vvols and SRM and all these things that allow customers to essentially program that infrastucture and get out of the mundane tasks of having to do this manually. So for us, automation is key part of our story here. Especially with VMware. >> So going a little bit further with that, what sort of examples, what benefit is this to your customers? How are they justifying putting all this in? >> It's a hybrid world, so our customers are going to expect, from us, as a portfolio vendor, the ability to provide an automated solution, on premises, as automated as what you'd get in the cloud. So for us, the ability to have a sourcing experience, that we call GreenLake, so you can buy everything from us, from a solution perspective, in a pay-as-you-go elastic model where you can flex-up, flex-down. And then being able to, essentially provide a different view, depending on what persona you're coming from. Obviously we've been focused on the infrastructure persona, more often, we're getting into the DevOps persona, the Cloud engineer persona, providing all of our infrastructure, whether it's computer networking or storage, that plugs into all these frameworks. Whether it's Ansible, Chef and all these things that we do around our automation ecosystem, it's pretty ubiquitous. >> You're touching on all the Cloud basis and you're seeing a lot of discussion around that. What are you hearing from customers? Sometimes we have to squint through this, a lot of the guys here, we always like to say, move at the speed of the CIO, which sometimes is slow. At the same time, they're all afraid they're going to get disrupted. HPE, over the last two or three years, has really brought in and partnered with some of the guys your talking about. Whether it's containers and companies that do those types of offerings. How fast do the customers actually adopting, where they adopting them, how are they handling, you talked about a hybrid world; How are they bridging the old and the new? >> That's a great question. For a lot of our customers, it's always a brown field conversation. You do have these mission critical workloads that have to run, so there's no Edge to Core without your core ERP system, right? Your Core Oracle System or for smaller customers that are running their businesses on SQL and other things. But what we're seeing is that, by shoring up that Core and we provide a set of services and products that we feel are the best in the industry for that. And then allow them to provide adjacent services on top of that, it's exactly like the same example we had with InfoSight, where those systems use to call home, right now we're taking that data, we're providing a whole ancillary set of services and functions around it and our customers are doing that. Enormous customers, like British Telecom, folks like Wayfair, for example, they're doing this on premises and their disrupting their competitors, in the mean time. >> What do you make of some of the announcements we've heard this week? Obviously VMware making a big deal with what's going on with AWS. We're seeing AWS capitulate, David Floyer you made the call. Got to have an on-prem strategy. Many said no, that'll never happen. They just want to sweep the floor. So that's a tip to the hybrid cap. What are your thoughts on what's going on there? How does HPE sort of participate in those trends? >> I'd say it's, instead of battle and capitulate, we've been very laser-focused on the customers and helping them, along their way, on the journey. So you see a lot of acquisitions we've done around services, advisory service. CTP is a perfect example. So CTP has a whole cadre of experts who understand AGER, who understand ECS and all the services and functions that go along with them And we're able to help people, right size, right place, whatever you want to call it, within their infrastructure. Because we know, we've been in business for 75+ years and have a very loyal customer base, and we're going to help them along their maturity curve and certainly everyone's not on the same path, in the same race. It's been pretty successful so far. >> You guys tend to connect the dots between your HPE Discover in U.S., in Las Vegas and HPE Discover in December. So June to December, you're on these six month cycles, U.S. focus and Europe focus, Decembers in Madrid, again. Second year of Madrid. U.S. is always Vegas, like most of these conferences, what's the cadence that your on? What was the vibe like at Discover? What should we expect leading up to Q4, calendar Q4 in Madrid? >> I'd say that Discover was a big success in Vegas, always fun to spend time here. In Madrid, you'll see a focus around the value part of our business. So we've been growing in automation, we talked about hybrid IT, certainly the Core around storage. We're really focusing and very heavily invested in, not just storage, but intelligent data management. So we really feel that our offerings, especially doubling down and offering more services around InfoSight and some of those predictive and Cloud-ready user stories for our customers is something that definitely differentiates ourselves in the market. So we'll be very focused on the data plan, the data layer and helping customers transform in that area. >> So let's talk some tenor sax. >> (David laughs) >> This is not New Orleans. When we were down in New Orleans, we were at VeeamON, I think you had your sax with you, you jumped in. >> That's right, I played with the Soul Rebels. >> Playing with the Soul Rebels, you were awesome. Leonard, a big jazz man. Love it. I'm a huge TOP fan. What's new in that world? Are you still active? Are you still playing? >> Yeah, the band's still playing. Shout out to my buddies in Jolpe, sitting in with some friends at a Dead cover band coming up, in a couple weeks. So, should be fun. We're going to reenact The Grateful Dead and Branford Marsalis. >> That's wonderful. >> It should be fun. >> We've been getting a big dose of hip-hop this week. >> Yeah. But the new thing is that, in hip-hop, it's getting back to it's original roots, so a lot of folks in the jazz world, collaborating with the folks in the hip-hop world, so not very commercial, definitely underground, but pretty cool. >> I love it. That's right Leonard, you pointing out Miles Davis was one of the first to make that transformation. >> Yeah >> Good call. >> I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but it's about five percent technique and 95 percent attitude. (multiple laughs) >> Jazz, like hip-hop, there's a lot guys just doing their own thing. And somehow it all comes together. >> Absolutely. >> Okay Patrick, great to see you. >> Great to see you guys. Thank you Dave. Yeah, good to see you guys. >> Always a pleasure, go Sox. >> We got some time for talk stocks? >> Alright. >> What do you think? It's getting a little nerve wrecking. >> #Bucky Dent is trending in my Twitter. That's my problem, so hopefully we can..., I definitely don't want to be limping into the playoffs, and still not a fan of this one team wild card playoff, but I think we'll be alright. >> If we go deep... It's a great time to be a Boston fan. >> Celtics. >> Football starting, Celtics are coming in November, so awesome. Great to see you man. >> Thanks for having me. >> Keep it right there everybody, we'll be right back with our next guest. You're watching the Cube, live. Day three at VMWorld 2018, we'll be right back. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Madrid, Spain it's theCube, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlitt Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to Madrid everybody. This is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host for the week, Peter Burris, otherwise known as Mr. Universe. This is HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Flynn Maloy is here as the Vice President of Marketing the HP Point Next. >> Hi guys. >> And John Treadway is here as the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Portfolio at Cloud Technology Partners, an HPE company. Gentlemen, great to see you again. Welcome to theCube. >> Great to see you. >> It's been a good week. We were just talking about the clarity that's coming to light with HPE, the portfolio, some of the cool acquisitions. You and I, Flynn, were at this event last year in London. You had the Cheshire Cat smile on your face. You said something big is coming. I can't really tell you about it partly because I can't tell you about it. The other part is we're still shaping it. Then Point Next came out of it. How are you feeling? Give us the update. >> It's been a really exciting year for services. This time last year we knew as Antonio announced, we're going to be bringing our services together after we announced that we're spinning out our outsourcing business. We're bringing technology services at the time forward. We had a new brand coming. We purchased Cloud Cruiser in February so we're investing in the business. We also invested in services back in the engine room all year long to really build up to our announcement this week with Green Lake which takes our consumption services to the next level. Then of course in September we continue to invest and acquire Cloud Technology Partners and by the way brought on our new leadership team with Ana Pinczuk and Parvesh Sethi. For us here at HP it's really been a banner year for services. It's really been transformative for the company and we're excited to lead it going into FY '18. >> John, Cloud Technology Partners specializing, deep technology expertise. You've got an affinity for AWS, you've got a bunch of guys that reinvent this week in close partnership with them. Interesting acquisition from your perspective coming into HPE. What's it been like? What has HP brought you and what have you brought HP? >> That's a fantastic question. We have really found that everything about this experience has exceeded our expectations across the board. When you go into these things you're kind of hoping for the best outcome, which is we're here because we want to be able to grow our business and scale it and HP gives us that scale. We also think that we have a lot of value to add to the credibility around public cloud and the capabilities we bring. You hope that those things turn out to be true. The level of engagement that we're getting across the business with the sellers, with the customers, with the partners is way beyond expectations. I like to say that we're about six months ahead of where we thought we'd be in terms of integration, in terms of capability and expertise. Really bringing that public cloud expertise, not just to AWS, we do a lot of Azure work, we do a lot of Google work as well, really does allow the HPE teams to be able to go into their clients and have a new conversation that they couldn't have a year ago. >> What is that new conversation? >> The new conversation is really about, and we like to use the term "the right mix." I.T. is not just one mode. You're gonna have internal I.T., you're gonna have private clouds. Public cloud is a reality. AWS is the fastest growing company in tech history ever. If you think about that it's a reality for our clients, HPE clients, that public cloud is there. That new capability that we could bring, that credibility is that we have done this for the last seven years with large enterprises across all sorts of industries and domains: Toko, healthcare, financial services in particular. We bring that to the table, combine that with the scale and operational capability of HPE and now we have something that's actually pretty special. >> Just to add, it is about the customers at the end of the day. It's about where do those workloads want to land? Public cloud, private cloud, traditional, those are all tools in your toolbox. What customers want to know is what is the right mix? There are workloads that are ideal for going to the public cloud. There are workloads that are ideal for staying on prem. Finding that right mix, especially by bringing in the capabilities of what needs to go to public cloud that really rounds out our portfolio for hybrid I.T. >> I'm starting to buy the story. The upstarts, the fastest growing company in the world would say old guard trying to hang onto the past. I like the way you framed it as look, we know our customers want to go to the cloud. They want certain workloads to be on prem. We want them to succeed. We're open, we're giving them choice. Maybe two years ago it sounded like bromide. But you're actually putting it into action acquiring a company like CTP. It's interesting what you were saying, John, about well no not just AWS, it's Google, it's Azure. You've got independent perspective on what should go where or on prem. >> We always have so even as a company that derived most of our revenue from public cloud over the last few years, we've never, ever been the company that said everything should go to public cloud. Toss it all, go to Amazon, toss it all, go to Azure. Never been our perspective. We've had methodology for looking through the application portfolio and helping determine where things should go. Very often a large percentage of the portfolio we say it's good where it is, don't move it. Don't move it right away. >> But in the past that's where it ended. You said okay, hey, go figure out, go talk to HPE. >> That's actually a funny thing because we've had this conversation. Literally when we would say okay we'll take care of this part for the public cloud, but you're on your own for the private cloud stuff, in the past HP would do the reverse. We'll help you with the private cloud stuff, and we think this could go to public cloud. But you're kind of on your own with that. Not that there wasn't any capability, but it wasn't really well developed. Now we can say this should go to private cloud, this should go to public cloud and guess what? We can do both. >> Dave: So now you've got a lean-in strategy. >> Absolutely right, as John said the funnels and the response from our customers have been outstanding. As you can imagine, Mike, all of our top customers are saying fantastic, come talk to us, come talk to us. They're having to prioritize where they go over the last few months. We are well ahead of where we were. >> We strongly believe over the years that the goal is not to bring your business to the cloud. It's to bring the cloud to your business. That ultimately means that public cloud will be a subset of the total although Amazon's done a wonderful job of putting forward the new mental model for the future of computing. Can you guys reliably through things like Green Lake and other, can you present yourselves as a cloud company that just doesn't have a public cloud component? >> Let me approach the response to that question in a slightly different way. When you look at our strategy around making hybrid I.T. simple it's not necessarily which cloud is the right cloud? It's not really about that. It's about where should the workloads land? We do believe that the pragmatic answer is you need to be a little bit above all of those choices. They're all in the toolbox. If you look at, for example, our announcement with One Sphere this week that's a perfect example of what customers are asking the industry to do which is to look across all of it. The reality is it's hybrid, it's multi-cloud and speaking at that length. >> But you're saying it's a super set of tools that each are chosen based on the characteristics of workloads, data, whatever it might be, that's right. So John look, as human beings we all get good at stuff. We say I know that person I can stereotype him. I can stereotype that. What's the euristic that your team is using to very quickly look at a workload? Give our audience, our clients a clue here so that they can walk away a little bit and say well that workload naturally probably is going to go here. And that workload's naturally going to go there. What's it like 30 second where you're able to generally get it right 80% of the time? >> It really comes down to a set of factors, right? One factor is just technical fit. Will it work at all? We can knock out a lot of workloads because they're on old Unix or just kind of generally the technical fit isn't there, right? Second thing is from a business case. Does it make sense? Is there gonna be any operational saving against the cost of doing the migration? Because migrating something isn't free right? It's never free. Third is what is the security and governance constraint within which I'm living? If I have a data residency requirement in a country and there's no hyper-scale public cloud presence in that country then that workload needs to stay in that country, right? It's those types of high-level factors we can very quickly go from the list of here's your entire list down to already these are candidates for further evaluation. Then we start to get into sort of deeper analysis. But the top level screen can happen very, very quickly. >> You do that across the, you take an application view, obviously. A workload view. Then how do avoid sort of boiling the ocean? Or do you boil the ocean? You have tools to help do that. >> We do, I mean we've invested a lot in IP, both service IP and software IP in both Point Next also comes with some strong IP in this as well that we've been able to merge in with. Our application assessment methodology is backed by a tool called Aura. Aura is a tool for taking that data, collecting it, and help providing individualization in reporting and decisioning at the high level on these items. Then every application that looks like a great candidate for something that I'm gonna invest in migration, we need to do a deeper analysis. Because it isn't lifting and shifting. It doesn't work for 90% of the applications, or 80%, or 70. It's certainly not anywhere near 50% of the applications. They require a little bit of work, sometimes a lot of work, to be able to have operational scale in a public cloud environment because they're expecting a certain performance and operational characteristic of their internal infrastructure and it's not there. It's a different model in the public cloud. >> A lot of organizations like yours would have a challenge presenting that to a customer because they can't get the attention of the senior leaders. How is it that you guys are able to do that? You were talking I think, off-camera, talking about 20-plus years of experience on average for each of your professionals. Is that one of the secrets to how you've succeeded? >> This is a big thing and why this integration's working so well is that the people, the early team all the way through today of CTP are all seasoned I.T. professionals. We're not kids straight out of school that have only known how to do I.T. in an Amazon way. We have CIOs of banks that are in our executive team, or in our architecture team that have that empathy and understanding of what it means to be in the shoes. Not having this arrogant approach of everything must be a certain way because that's what we believe. That doesn't work. The clients are all different. Every application is a snowflake and needs to be treated as such, needs to be treated like an individual, like a human. You want to be treated like an individual, not like -- >> Stalker! (laughing) >> Gezunheit. (laughing) >> Okay, so now the challenge is how you scale that. How you replicate that globally and scale it and get the word out. Talk about that challenge. >> That's right and one of the big things we're really excited to see is the merger of the IP that comes from CTP along with everything that we have inside of Point Next and then rolling that out to the 5,000 plus consultants that we've got inside of HP and our partners. That's really where we're expecting a lot of the magic to come from is once we really expose the integrated set of what those capabilities are we think, and Ana has said it on stage. We had heard from a couple of analysts that we believe that together we have the largest cloud advisory in the industry today. >> It was interesting we actually had, we've had challenges in the past where we've gone into clients and were starting to get into some pretty serious level of work. We were a younger company, didn't have the scale, and scope, and capability of HPE. Now we're being brought in to these opportunities and the clients are saying HP, you're right here. We can do that. We have the scale to now start doing the larger transformation programs and projects with these clients that we didn't have before. Now we're being invited back in, right? In addition to that being invited in because now we have the cloud competency that we can bring to the table. >> You know what, I kind of want to go back to the point you made earlier about how it's all cloud. That resonates with me. I think it is all cloud depending on where you want to land the various pieces. If that's what you want to call that umbrella I think it makes a ton of sense. You know, a lot of what we've announced this week with Green Lake is about trying to bridge the benefits gap with public cloud as the benchmark for the experience today for what needs to stay on prem. When you sit down and for all those reasons you outlined, whether it's ready, whether it isn't ready, where the data has to sit, or whether or not. There's gonna be x-workloads that need to stay on prem. We've been working hard in the engine room to really build out an experience that can feel to the customer a lot like what you get from the public cloud. That's gonna continue to be an investment area for us. >> If the goal is success for the business then you don't measure success by whether you got to Amazon. >> That's correct. >> The goal of success is the business. You measure success by whether or not the business successfully adopts the technology where the data requires. What's interesting about the change we're experiencing is in many respects for the first time the way of thinking about problems in this industry is going through a radical transformation. Let's credit AWS for catalyzing a lot of that change. >> Absolutely, setting that benchmark. I mean it really is a catalyst. >> But you look at this show, HP has adopted the thought process, it's adopted it. It's no longer in our position to say fine, you want to think this way, we'll help. >> Imagine this, as One Sphere comes up and as we really can manage multi-clouds and as we'll eventually be able to move workloads between the various clouds, manage the whole estate, view the whole estate and everything under it whether it's off-prem or on-prem is all consumption. I mean, how does that change central I.T.? Central I.T. radically changes. If everything's consumed, wherever it is and you've got a visibility to the whole estate and you can move stuff depending on what the right mix is, that's a fundamental change and we're not there yet as an industry. But that's a fundamental change to the role of Central I.T. >> But your CIOs are thinking along those lines. We can verify they are thinking along those lines. >> Again the strategy's coming into focus for me personally. I think us generally. We talked to Ana about services-led, outcome-led. And if it's big chewy outcome like kind of IBM talks well you've got partners to help you do that. Deloitte, we had PWC on. They're big, world-class organizations with deep expertise in retail and manufacturing and oil and gas. You're happy to work with those guys. If it is service-led or outcome-led you can make money whether you're going to Amazon, whether you're staying on prem, whether you're doing some kind of hybrid in between and you're happy to do that as an agnostic, independent player. Now yeah, of course you'd like to sell HP hardware and software, why not? >> I think that's really an important point. When it comes to the infrastructure itself we do believe we have the best infrastructure in the industry, but we play well with others and we always said HPE plays well with others. When it comes to the app layer we are app agnostic. A lot of our biggest competitors are not. When you go out and talk to CIOs today that's really, this is my app, this is my baby. This is the one that I want. They're not really looking for alternatives for that in many cases. When you're thinking agnostic that's really where we think partner, being agnostic, working with all the ad vendors, working with all the SIs, we think that's where the future-- >> And it's a key thing. You guys are younger, but you remember Unix is snake oil. I mean-- >> Designing is a Russian Trump. >> Unix is snake oil and then two years later it's like here our Unix. >> Flynn: It's the best thing ever. >> So you now are in a position to say great, wherever you wanna go we'll take you there. That's powerful because it can be genuine and it can be lucrative. >> What's unlocking here is the ability to actually execute a digital transformation program within the enterprise. One of the big things the public cloud providers brought to us and that HPE's now bringing in through the internal infrastructure is that agility and speed of innovation of the users. Their ability to actually get things done very quickly and reduce the cycle time of innovation. That frankly has always been the core benefit of the public cloud model, that pay-as-you-go, start with what you need, use the platform services as they grow. That model has been there since the beginning and it's over 11 years of AWS at this point. Now with enterprise technology adopting similar models of pay for it when you consume it, we'll provision it in advance, we'll get things going for you, we're giving that model. It's about unlocking the ability for the enterprise to do innovation at scale. >> I wanna end if I can on met Jonathan Buma last night, J.P., J.B., sorry. You're J.T. >> It's confusing. >> But one of the things I learned, a small organization, 200-250 people roughly when you got acquired, but you've got this thing called Doppler, right? Is that what it's called, Doppler? Explain that, explain the thought leadership angles that you guys have. >> Actually from the very beginning. >> The marketing team loves this, it's fantastic. >> So follow up with how. >> From day one there's a few things that we said were core principles, the way that we were going to grow and run the business. I'll talk about one other thing first which was that we were gonna be technology-enabled, technology-enabled services company. That we were gonna invest in IP both at the service level but as the technology level to accelerate the delivery of what we do. The second thing as a core principle is that we were going to lead through thought leadership. So we have been the most prolific producers of independent cloud content as a services firm bar none. Yeah, there's newspapers, magazines, analyst firms like yourself producing a lot of content. The stuff that we're producing is based on direct experience of implementing these solutions in the cloud with our clients so we can bring best practices. We're not talking about our services. We're talking about what is the best practice for any enterprise that wants to get to the cloud. How do you do security? How do you do organizational change? That has a very large following of Doppler both online where we have an email newsletter. But we also do printed publication of our quarterly Dopplers that goes out to a lot of our clients, the CIOs and key partners. That kind of thought leadership has really set us apart from all of the rest of the, even the born in cloud consultancies who never put that investment in. >> Flynn, you're a content guy. >> Absolutely. >> So you've got to really appreciate this. >> That's a dream, it's an absolute dream. One of the things, another proof point as a way to end, services first strategy is what we're doing in the market community at HP more money, energy, content, time is going into how we're talking, thought leadership and services than anything else in the company. We've got not just branding for Point Next and Green Lake, but bringing Doppler forward, bringing those great case studies forward. Putting that kind of content at the tip of the HPE sphere. It's not something you've seen from our company in the past. I think keep your eyes out over the next year. We'll have this conversation in six months and you'll see a lot more from us on that topic. >> Great stuff, congratulations on the process, the exit, the future. Good luck, exciting. >> Thanks guys. >> Really appreciate it. Keep it right there everybody, we'll be back right after this short break. Dave Vallente for Peter Burris from HPE Discover Madrid. This is theCube. (upbeat instrumental music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain it's The Cube, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to Madrid, everyone. This is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here, this is Day Two of of HPE Discover 2017. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host for the week Peter Burris. Ana Pinczuk is here, she's the Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Pointnext Group. >> That's right, that's right. >> Welcome back to The Cube. >> Glad to be here. >> Many time Cube alum. >> That's right, that's right. >> Pre-HPE and second time since, when did you start, in February? >> Yes, I know it's been nine months, I'm a veteran. >> You're a vet, right. (laughs) How's the gig going, you hitting your groove swing? >> Yes. >> Dave: Looked great up on stage yesterday. >> Thank you so much, yeah I appreciate it. Yeah I think we are, I came on board in February and it's been a run ever since. We launched a brand in February, so that's when I think when we sort of talked last. And then since then, we've just launched another brand which is HPE GreenLake for flexible consumption model stuff. And we've been doing a lot of great things, we've been doing partnerships with folks, I've been going out to each one of the regions talking to different customers, it's been going really well. >> Well so Pointnext has become a linchpin of HPE strategy. After the spin-merges, things became more clear when you talk about making hybrid IT simple, getting to the intelligent edge, services is now front and center. Meg talks about it, Antonio talks about it. >> That's right. >> Why is services so important and how do you see that scaling in the organization? >> So first of all, I definitely believe the world is turning to be a services-led world and I tell folks that it's really two things, it's services-led and then advisory-led, really advisory. And particularly because our customers want to really undergo these new digital journeys. I was just on stage talking to one of our customers, the Tottenham Hotspurs, and they're redoing their whole stadium and they're trying to increase the interaction and the engagement that they have with fans. So that's where services come in, and so we're really services-led that way and the second thing that's a phenomenon is really the cloud has really helped us learn to want everything instantaneously and to want things when we need them and when we think we need them. And so a lot of services is really about enabling those experiences in a consumption model. So that's the transformation I think that HPE is going through right now, just being a product company, but really moving to being services-led to deliver these digital experiences. >> Well one of the things that we've observed over the years, as folks who work with customers in thinking about their technology, is that there's a co-mingling, a bringing together of the idea of invention. And one of the things that's most attractive to me about a services-led, or acknowledging the role of services, is it really, innovation, is a two-part process. There's an invention, which is the engineering element, and enters the innovation, which is the social, the change. And one of the beauties of taking a services as opposed to a product approach, is that you end up focusing on the social change. >> That's right. >> You end up focusing on what does it mean to use this, apply it, make it happen, and it accelerates the innovation process. I'm wondering if by having a more services-approach, HP's able to look at this significant new range of problems you're going to try to address, but address them as a social innovation challenge as opposed to just getting product into market. >> Yeah, no and that's absolutely right. I'll give you another cool example, we have a customer Yoox Net-A-Porter, and they're a digital sort of online experience provider. They support brands like all of the expensive luxury brands that we know and love. And they're trying to help stores innovate, so let's say you're Prada or Marni or Louis Vuitton, they're helping provide a social experience to their luxury brand consumer. And being able to do that, not just mirroring what you would get in a store, but really innovating in how do you engage with that kind of a consumer online. And so for example, they allow you to shop online but then they'll bring the product to you, it'll be all wrapped really nice, they wait for you to try it on to make sure it's okay. So that's an example of social innovation, not just thinking about how to provide product to enable a website, but how do you actually then help a customer innovate in that whole engagement model? >> It's innovation that is made possible by a whole lot of technology combined with simple ways of introduce change, not just to consumers, but also the people who are ultimately responsible for providing that service. >> Ana: That's right, that's right, that's exactly right. >> Peter: Is that one of the basis then for thinking about Pointnext? >> It is, yeah, it is because people ask me, you know we've always done services and a lot of our services were product-attached services, you do support services, operational services, data center care, those sorts of things. And then we decided to sort of launch Pointnext, and the idea is that this is more than just what we've traditionally done as product-attached. This is really coming at it from a completely different angle, which is recognizing that there is an element of social and management of change that comes through digital. And that's why we talk about advisory-led. Part of that advisory-led is really helping companies figure out what is that new phenomenon, how do I actually shift the experience that I want to enable and how do I bring social innovation with a set of partners, too, because experiences really require us to work not just with our own products, but with software providers, with inside and others. >> Peter: And your customer's partners too. >> And our customer's partners as well, I mean who the customer is is shifting as we put this together. I'll give you an example, when we work with automotive companies, we've gotta think not just about, let's say, the car company and their connected car, but we also have to think about how the consumer of the car is going to interact with the IT environment in the car. >> How the dealers are going to sell it, >> Ana: And how the dealers are gonna sell it. >> how they're gonna make money, the whole thing. >> How they're gonna do predictive maintenance on it >> Exactly. >> So you start to think not just about one experience, but all the elements that come from that single experience. >> Well we just had Deloitte on talking about retail experiences and transforming brick and mortar stores, so that's a key part of it. So partnerships is also something critical, 'cause you can't do everything. >> Ana: That's right. >> So I want to come back to some of the invention piece. When you were up on stage talking about flexible consumption models, you know, cloud, when we went into the downturn it was kinda a tap on the shoulder. Coming out of the downturn it became a kick in the butt to a lot of tradtional IT players. So you've had to respond to that. And you have, flexible consumption models, pay-as-you-go models. So I started to make a list because we've been talking all week about two ends of the spectrum. We've got here at HPE Discover, AWS re:Invent's going on this week, completely different philosophies about what customers want and how to serve those customers. And so you've got to a great degree mimic the cloud experience. And you can't do it 100%. At the same time, the cloud can't mimic what you guys can do. So I kinda wanted to go through a list and think about where have you closed those gaps, where do you still have advantages for customers. So things like pay-as-you-go, flexible capacity, you've done a lot of work there. Can you give us the update on that and how big is that gap when you talk to customers? >> So first of all, it's interesting because when some of our competitors talk about pay-as-you-go, they start by talking about just a leasing arrangement. They say "Okay, it's a lease." And this is far beyond a lease. I think I can eliminate quite a few of our competitors, (laughs) not cloud competitors, just by saying we've gone beyond that, right. And we provide a full service. So it's the hardware, the software, the data center care, the operational management. And then we turn that service into a pay-as-you-go model. So that's the first sort of innovation and differentiation. And we do that on-prem or in a hosted environment, that's the first thing. The second thing is that part of what we do is we help to manage that environment for the customer. So in a flexible capacity model, we over-provision in a sense and we have a buffer and we understand where the customer's going, how much their utilization is, and then we automatically sort of manage that whole thing for them, up or down depending on what happens. I think the third thing, which is part of the innovation, which is a little different, is we also do the integration of other technologies into the offer. So yesterday I was talking about private backup as a service. There we've got the hardware, the software, it could be Commvault let's say backup software, all the management associated with that, including the support that you need for that, offered in an outcome-based service. So what we're doing there is we're also innovating in the metering, what we're saying is we're going to really provide you an outcome, and that outcome is a successful backup. So you don't actually have to worry about the equipment, you don't have to worry about is it infrastructure-as-a-service? You know, AWS, whatever, we're actually providing a full solution in an outcome-based. And I think that's a little bit of what differentiates us from maybe some of the solutions that are out there, from others. That said, I view this as providing the right mix to our customers, so although, yes, you can say that we're competing with the public cloud, because customers have choice, at the same time part of what we're trying to do also is bring those two together, which I think is unique for us. >> Makes more same philosophy, different approaches. >> Different approaches, and by the way, if you're customer-centric, then what you wanna do is provide customer choice and do the right thing for the customer, and to say where does it make sense to be on the public cloud, or in a private environment, and optimize for the customer benefits that you're going after. >> Well I think it's fair to say that the world has learned a lot from what AWS has done, and said "Hey, we can take that "and we can apply it to our customers' businesses "on-prem or in a hybrid environment." >> And by the way, AWS, especially with our CTP acquisition, they've been a long-term AWS partner and we're having conversations with AWS that say okay, if we're going to really focus on customers, and we're really customer-centric, then how do we work together? Not just AWS, but Microsoft and Google and others, how do we work together and look at where we can optimize our solutions to be able to do the right thing for the customer. >> So our clients are sick and tired of hearing me say this, or us say this, but we believe that where we're going is the cloud experience for your data demands. >> That's right. >> So the way we think about it and I'm wondering if you would agree, is that the first conversation we have with a customer is what's the outcome, what data is required to serve that outcome, how're you gonna package it up as a workload, and where do you naturally need to run that based on latency, other types of issues. Is that kind of how Pointnext is working with customers as well? >> Yeah absolutely right, so we wanna come in, customer in, so you wanna be able to say "What is it that you're trying to do from an outcome?" I described a backup outcome, another outcome might be I'm trying to accelerate my ability to roll out new agile solutions, or microservices-based applications. So we have that conversation with a customer, we then say okay, for that kind of workload, what are you requirements? What are you trying to do? We might also come in and actually, 'cause sometimes what people think they do and what they actually do in their environment is different. So we can come in and say okay, let me actually measure what you're doing and see what you're doing and then bring that information back to them. And then have a conversation about what to do with your workload and what makes sense. So I think it's a very close engagement with the customer, it's based on real data about what the customer's trying to do. And frankly that was one of the reasons that we made the CTP acquisition, as well, because it started to complement our portfolio. A lot of the capabilities that we had were very robust, in particular around private cloud, but just having the public cloud angle there and sort of strengthening that piece was super important to be able to have that conversation and truly enable the right mix. >> Well now that brings up the topic of multi-cloud, which kinda, to use a sports analogy, it's jump ball. It's kind of a free-for-all, everybody wants that business. I guess with the exception of some of the big cloud guys aren't interested. But certainly, Hewlett-Packard >> Peter: Well don't believe it, want to avoid it. >> Yeah well, but that's the reality is there's gonna be multiple clouds, we know this. Particularly with SaaS. So a company like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, obviously has to play in that space. So I wonder if you could talk about the strategy there, why you feel confident that HPE is in a good position. >> Yeah well a couple things, first of all I think it's really good to be, we're somewhat independent, we're not totally independent because we've got a whole set of products, but we're somewhat independent in the sense that if we wanna be truly hybrid and enable other public and private solutions, we wanna be able to give customers choice in terms of the public domains that they can work with. And so we're sort of in a great position as a large provider and with the relations that we have in the enterprise in particular, with our customer base, to be a little bit of Switzerland and be able to say, okay, let's have that conversation about the right mix and enable these multi-cloud solutions, that's the first thing. The second thing is we have relationships and great partnerships with many of these providers. So take Microsoft, we've got an Azure relationship, an Azure stack opportunity, so we've got the ability and by the way, we do many of their applications as well. So we've got the ability to help have that conversation with our customers to say okay, do you wanna be on-prem or do you wanna be in the cloud? Even with one provider, and to do that, and so we have the opportunity to provide robust solutions even with one private and public provider. And on top of that, we've got a consultancy with our professional services. We wanna be responsive to our customers, we've got now HPE OneSphere. And with HPE OneSphere we can be data-driven and actually provide our customers a view of their environment and help to be a little bit of that Switzerland to say look, here's what would be best for you and help to have workload mobility together with OneSphere. So I think we're well-positioned, I tend to call it my stairway to Heaven. In a sense we start out at the bottom talking about infrastructure and support, and we've got great relationships there with our customers. If I launch the flexible capacity offers, we're starting to deliver outcome-based solutions. When I bring in CTP, we'd go up the stack and we now provide advisory and the consumption solutions. And with OneSphere now you go up the stacks just a little bit more and say not only are we gonna advise you and provide you those executables with consumption models, but we now have capabilities that allow you to sort of optimally choose what's the right thing for you. So I think we're well-positioned, by the way, with CTP we've got sort of a managed, sort of cloud sort of capability as well. We manage compliance and other elements. So we're able to have in our portfolio sort of value-added services above and beyond that help with multi-cloud and making sure that customers can be compliant, secure, and have the right experience on a multi-cloud environment. >> Yeah I think a lot of people that don't know CTP don't understand how deep their expertise is. They're only a few hundred people, if that. But they're rockstars. >> They're over 200 people. >> Serious thought leaders with real deep connections. I've gotta change subjects to the last topic area. As you know, The Cube from day one has always been a fan of having women on, and promoting women in tech. We first met you at the Anita Borg Institute of the Grace Hopper Conference. Meg Whitman is obviously a woman leader in tech and she's leaving HP. We've got Meg and we've got Ginni. And Ginni's coming to the end, I don't know, she's getting to the age where typically IBM retires its CEOs. You've got two prominent women in tech now leaving. Now maybe IMB will replace Ginni with a woman. HPE has chosen Antonio, great choice. But your thoughts on a leader like Meg, obviously has done some great work. But we're losing one. >> I know, and so >> How do you feel about that? >> I mean, you know, I'm very conflicted if I've gotta be honest. One one hand, as I joined HPE I had never worked for a female CEO so I've really enjoyed watching. You know it's always great to have mentors and to have people that are advocating for women, so I really enjoyed being part of Meg's organization, I'm really sorry to see her go. And she's an icon as well, so she does a lot, in fact this afternoon we're gonna be doing a session for women just here at the conference. So very sad to see her go, at the same time I think we as women, and men by the way, have a responsibility to build the next generation of leaders. And I think that's where I focus my energy and I know that I'm gonna be sort of a high profile female in the HPE environment so I feel that sense of responsibility, not just within HPE, but within the industry, to help to cultivate an environment that takes advantage of half of the population and enables innovation through them as well. So I think we've gotta get more women up there. I think part of it is really bringing up the next generation and frankly this next generation, they don't have tolerance for waiting for things, whatever, and they feel like they're super entitled to have the right and the choice >> Peter: They are. >> And they are, right. But that seems like an easy thing to say, but in some sense we come from a generation, many women as well, which have had challenges especially in the tech world, in terms of really breaking that glass ceiling. And I think we've got some amazing women and some amazing leaders as well. I'm part of the Anita Borg Board of Trustees as well, and we were at Grace Hopper and we had Debbie Sterling, some really great women that are coming up the ranks that are CEOs, that are CTOs, that are really leading the way and so I'm very hopeful that the conversation, by the way, about women in tech is really prominent right now. And that I think it'll open up opportunities for women to shine going forward and I think that should happen for HPE as well. In fact right now its me and then Archie Deskus is the CIO for HPE. So we're trying to do our part to sort of make sure that there's other women in leadership as well. >> Well you're a great example of a current and future leader. >> Thank you so much. >> Really appreciate you coming onto The Cube, Ana. >> I appreciate it, thank you. >> Great to see you again. >> Great to see you, great to see you, thank you so much. >> Alright keep it right there everyone. This is The Cube, we're live from HPE Discover Madrid, we'll be right back. 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(tech music) >> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain, it's the CUBE, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017 brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to Madrid everybody this is the CUBE. The leader in live tech coverage. This is day one of our coverage of HPE Discover 2017. I'm Dave Vollante with my co-host Peter Burris. Jim Jackson is here, he's the senior vice president of the Enterprise Group at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Happy to be here. Good to see you again and Jason Newton, vice president of global marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Guys, it wouldn't be a Discover without some big news, transitioning to Antonio. We're about to hear the key note but Jim, set up the week for us. The big news that we can expect. Show us a little leg. >> Yeah well first of all, thanks for having us here guys. We're really excited for this week. It's gonna be probably one of our biggest weeks of innovation. We've got a pretty amazing Discover lined up. So you're gonna see us talk about AI in the data center, so bringing predictive analytics from our Nimble acquisition it's called info site. We're extending that to three par so that really helps our customers predict and anticipate problems and solve them in advance. So that's really software-based leading with that. Another area is we're bringing consumption-based capabilities. A whole new suite of consumption offerings. We're branding it HPE Green Lake and it's really, think of purpose-built solutions for things like backup, SAP, data like environments but it's really outcomes as a service. So we're not able to give our customers the ability to have infrastructure as a service, and now outcomes as a service. And the other part of making hybrid IT simple that you're gonna hear about is how we're really helping our customers unify and manage that multi cloud environment. So applications are sitting in public clouds, private clouds, what we're hearing from our customers is, hey we need to be able to manage this a lot easier and have holistic ability to see all of that. So you're gonna see us talk about that on main stage as well. So new brands, a lot of innovation. We've also got some partnerships that we'll be rolling out later today. So a lot happening. >> Jason, you've spent a lot of time, sweat, toil, blood on branding. Obviously you're a big part of the branding exercise. Up leveling the messaging, we had you on two or three years ago, and you said, look, we're gonna change things. We're gonna shift the focus from product and widgets and really talk about what customers care about. How has that gone? Where are you at with that? It resonates extremely well with customers. In fact we just got out of a panel where we had four of our top customers, ABV, Dreamworks, IKEA and Nokia. And we just spent an hour just talking about their digital transformation journey and what they're all about. The room was packed. I think we had over 400 people who were in there. That's showing that we can be an innovation partner to those customers enabling them to share their stories at a venue like this is really powerful. >> We're becoming much more software and services led and it's really all about experiences. Providing that experience that our customers are looking for. >> Just follow up to that, so a lot of people think oh well HP, spun merge it's software business but you're leading with services and software. So help us clear that. >> We're doing a ton in software today. So if you just think of our software portfolio. We have HP 1V to manage our customers complete infrastructure estate, service storage and networking. We extended that last year with composability so HP and Synergy, we have over a thousand new customers since we announced that last year actually at this event. So we're seeing a lot of progress. Synergy enables our customers to really have one environment that can flex to the needs of multiple different applications so reduces over provisioning. AI, I talked about AI in the data center. So what we're doing with info site, that's software based, we're extending that to 3PAR and you'll see us extend that to other parts of the portfolio going forward. Nyara, and on the Aruba side of the house, software based. Aruba is very software centric and then of course, we'll be announcing this afternoon our code name project new stack, really about helping to manage that multi cloud environment. A lot happening in the software space and an area that we're very focused on. >> One of the things... By the way, we think that those three things that you mentioned, automation in the data center, on-premise capabilities and a cross multi cloud approach to management and managing your assets, absolutely spot-on. And we think ultimately and here's a question, we think that what's going to drive the determination is what does the data need? So talk to us a little bit about how you are articulating the idea of data as the new value source, the new value and hardware infrastructure and software and these capabilities, making it possible for the work to exist where the data requires. >> Yeah and I'll start maybe you can pile on a little bit. Our conversation starts with apps and data so we're starting the dialogue there and you know what we're seeing is you know really moving from large data centers, or only large data centers to centers of data that are really everywhere, right? So we're starting to see that edge really starting to proliferate and drive a lot more change, and what our customers are saying is wherever might, regardless of where my data sits, I need to manage it, I need to secure it, I need to process it, I need to be able to translate it into insight and that's really what our strategy is all about. We've been talking for the last couple of years about making hybrid IT simple. and we're really doing a lot in that space. So for example, we announced the acquisition of cloud technology partners and really what we're trying to do there it's the foremost authority really in helping customers understand how to migrate applications to to AWS or even to Google or Azure, and when you combine that with our on-prem capabilities, it really now starts to talk about data, we want to say your data is what matters and we want to help you manage that holistically. The software investments that we're doing enable you to have that complete view. And then from a consumption perspective, some of the things I talked about earlier, rolling that out right, making it easier to consume this as a service and only pay for what I use. So, we are in alignment. It all starts with data and wherever that data sits, it's how do I manage it? >> And that's why Aruba is such a great asset for us, because a lot of people think about Aruba as you know, you just replace copper wire and WiFi ... And hey, don't get me wrong, it's a money-making great business, but if you'd asked Kierty, he'd probably say we're a data business, right? >> Peter: We did ask him, and that is what he said. >> Is that what he said? Well, good, we're on message then. We're on message today, alright, yeah. I mean, because that's where the action is happening, that's where the data is being created, and so everything that they're doing around the the security 360 platform, the mobile first platform, everything is centered around, how do I draw a value in context from that data? >> Well I want to ask you about Aruba, because when you acquired Aruba, we said wow, this is a great business, it's gonna be a growth business, but is it a strategic weapon for HPE? Is it a strategic infrastructure component? From a messaging standpoint, It's all about the intelligent edge, that you've up-leveled that. Where'd that come from? Maybe take us through sort of the anatomy of-- >> Well I mean, the message is just exactly what we were saying. That if if value is gonna be created at the edge, if the data's gonna be coming from the edge, we have to drive a whole lot more intelligence into that edge in order to collect, process, analyze, secure the data that's coming in and make use of it, right? So I mean, that's where the genesis of the intelligent edge came from. >> Yeah, I mean I would say the other thing about Aruba that we're really seeing is all about experiences. So when we talk to our customers about Aruba, they're looking to deliver a different experience. Whether it's in retail, whether it's in stadiums, whether it's in the campus space. It's all about delivering a better experience. And that's really the value prop behind Aruba. Very software centric, open software, mobile solution. The other thing is, it's enabling us to engage more and more with parts of the company, customers that we might not have had as much engagement before. You know, the c-suite, you know, talking more with the line of business. because what they're focused on is how do I deliver that better experience? And Aruba's really playing a key role in doing that. We also have the view that ultimately, and you started the conversation about data, and we totally agree. But it has to be thought of from the edge, to the core, to the cloud. So whether we engage with Aruba, whether we engage with our core data center, capabilities, and our strengths there, or with services ... That's enabling us to holistically have a much more strategic conversation with our customers. So we're excited about that. >> I'd like to dig a little bit on this notion of AI for the data center, or AI for managing IT (mumbles). We'd like to talk about the difference between a breadth-first, which is I'm gonna do this, like in this big broad way, and we'll figure out how we're gonna get the components to participate, versus a depth-first. Which is, let's lean on suppliers, who know that hardware, know the software best, and ask them to create simulacrums, you know, digital representations that then will allow me to apply AI machine learning, et cetera. We like the depth-first approach, but customers ultimately want to see this bloom into a breadth approach. Talk to us a little bit about how individual elements are being represented, but in a coherent consistent way, so that you can get to a broader, overall set of automation across entire infrastructure. >> Well, I mean, I think that you're seeing the paradigm shift now. I mean for decades we've been chasing this idea that we can make the one tool to rule them all, this sort of magic management environment, one single pane of glass, everyone says that right? >> I've written a lot of research papers that suggested that, right? >> Right? And look, I think that's, we're done, alright? And the only thing we can do now is, how do we embed intelligence to make the infrastructure so smart it can take care of itself? And that's ultimately the experience that our customers are telling us that they want, right? Is, I don't want to be an expert on IT anymore. I don't wanna touch this stuff, I don't want to deal with it. >> Peter: Not just want, need. >> Right? I can't handle it, right? I mean, the scale and speed of everything is beyond the capacity ... I can't hire enough people to take care of it. So you know, I think starting there and saying, okay we're gonna start embedding that type of intelligence. Right now it's mostly predictive analytics type of stuff, but increasingly you're gonna see more true AI come in not just in the data center, with what we're doing with Nimble, right? But also with Nyara. Now we call it introspect, right at the edge. How do we start weaving that across to do a variety of things? Whether it's maintenance or performance optimization, or security. I think thinking of it like a continuous platform across the infrastructure is gonna give you that depth and kind of breadth of control that you're looking for. >> So that leads to kind of an ecosystem question, and I liked your comments on that. Because the question of breadth or depth, the answer is yes, you got to have both. The ecosystem posture has totally changed in the last year or so, subsequent. Because we had PWC on today. We've had Veam on earlier. These are-- >> Jason: They love us. Partners that you're putting forth, yeah. >> Jason: We're making them money. >> For sure, right. But they are partners that previously, you know, you wouldn't have profiled. Whether on stage, on the Cube, wherever. >> Jason: Yeah. >> How has the ecosystem evolved? >> I mean it's opening up a whole new set of opportunities for us. You know, if you think of when we had ES, a lot of people just felt like, hey we were gonna compete with them, right? Now that ES has spun out, we actually created another great partner in ES, but we've got a whole host of other SIs that want to engage with us. They want to take our capabilities in IT systems. Our consumption capabilities, and then align it with a value prop that they'll bring. So you talked about Veam for example, right? Data availability is really, really important for customers. So taking HPE and Veam together, we're able to deliver a great solution from data protection to recovery. Really powerful stuff, and we're seeing some great opportunities out there in the marketplace, and a very strong ROI. I mean, we have some data that says, hey over five years, is a 200% ROI. Another area, when you think of just partnering, right? Is what we're doing with our channel partners. So we're giving them more solutions that are channel centric, that we're driving through our channel organization, yeah. And then, we just announced a relationship a couple weeks ago with Rackspace. It's a managed private cloud, open source solution. We're using our consumption capabilities, combined with with Rackspace, their environment. And this is giving our customers the flexibility to now spin up very quickly, a private cloud environment that they're looking for with a lot of the public cloud capabilities. Very strong economics behind it. And then the edge, that's the other area we're seeing lots of new partnering opportunities as the edge continues to expand. So we believe that innovation is a team sport, and we're leaning in really hard, and I know you know the Gartner's and the IDCs don't track who are the best partners, but I think if they did, we would be at the top of the list. >> Well, probably a lot of this activity was going on previously, so it's not like you're starting from ground zero. >> Jim: Correct. >> But you just, from a marketing standpoint, you really didn't talk about it, because you had colleagues, whether it was from EDS or the software division that's saying, hey, don't talk about that, help us out here. So, how has that changed the way in which you market? One of the big values is your go-to-market. I mean, people are drooling to now partner with HPE. >> Yeah, and one of the big reasons is honestly, is point next. Because they see the value in what Accenture or PwC, or Wipro can bring from understanding a business, or whatever, versus the deep technical knowledge of a point next to come in, and what they really love is the consumption model stuff that we've been able to wrap around it. They see that customers want, that in order to move fast with less risk, right? You've gotta have some sort of financial lever that says, okay, I can start small and I can grow over time. I'm not putting all my money out in one place and we've been building that with flex capacity over the last several years. You're gonna see, well, I guess we announced yesterday, a new Green Lake ... Making that even simpler to consume. Every one of our partner says, I wanna take your IT expertise in that consumption based model and wrap it around a total solution. And that's what's like white-hot right now, and there's unlimited opportunity right now from ... As Jim said, edge to core to cloud. >> And we have another one we're gonna announce on stage in a couple of hours, so we're pretty excited about that as well. >> Well, you see that in the numbers too, yeah. >> Jason: I think we might have a clue what that is. >> We're excited about that. >> Yeah, I know, it is. Well, look, and you kind of you kind of gave something of a preview when you talked about the three things that you want to be able to do. Because there's one brand that hasn't been mentioned yet. But ultimately the business is recognizing that the technology questions that we're raising here are crucial to their future success, but they don't want them to be a continuous source of antagonism. >> Group: Right. >> So they recognize that they need the capability, but they want to dramatically simplify the degree to which it's evasive. I once had a CIO tell me that the value of my infrastructure is adversely proportional to the degree to which anybody in my business knows anything about it. So how do you then take steps to ensure that your customers don't know anything about the infrastructure, even though they have the infrastructure where the data demands, which is gonna be at the edge, and on premise? >> I think that's some of the things we're focused on now. So software to make infrastructure much more frictionless. And you're not really worrying about managing that infrastructure, it's just there to power the business, to deliver the business. Consumption-based offerings with Green Lake, this is truly purpose-built stacks for specific things, because our customers are telling us, I don't want to have to set all that up and manage it, but I want that outcome, and I only want to pay for what I use. So those are just a couple of examples of how we're trying to simplify it. Because ultimately it's all about the experience and the outcome and being able to translate all that data into insight. >> Well, when you're simplifying your face to the world, we heard in the last earnings call, new reporting structure going forward. Hybrid IT ... intelligent edge, and financial services, which is exploding, the consumption base modeling 22% growth last quarter. So organizationally, presumably, you've started to take that shape, and that's how you're presenting your face to the world. Is that right? >> Yeah, and that's helping us to really break down some of the silos, that has existed in this company for a while. And you're seeing that really, really becoming much more unified in terms of how we go to market, and how we think about engaging with our partners how we engage with our customers. >> Are your customers breaking down those silos at a consistent rate? Are you a little bit ahead, a little bit behind? How would you evaluate that? I think it's a transition, it depends on which customer, which sector. We still see some of some of them that are maybe a little behind. Some that are a little bit ahead, but really everybody wants to start the conversation much more about, how do I move faster? How do I accelerate my business? It's all focused on outcomes starting at that data level, and then how can you help me? And this is where I think some of the acquisitions that we've made, like CTP are very empowerful, and then all the software capabilities that we're bringing as well. So we're leading the dialogue much more around that. >> And the only way they're gonna get there is to break down those silos. >> Jim: Absolutely, absolutely. And we have to help them do that, right? We have to help them do that and give them the solutions to do this. >> So Jim, I want to go back to a point that you made about those other two research firms, Gartner and IDC I think it was. But you said that if they were measuring the value, or if there was a magic quadrant for who is the best partner, you guys would be up in the upper right hand quadrant? But partners in this world, especially here in Europe, are more than just the big guys. >> Jim: Yes. >> How are you taking steps to ensure that that large mass of crucially important companies out there, that still where a lot of that innovation, a lot of that excitement really is, are coming with you, are able to move with you? Because your ability to certainly provide them with financial support is important, but your ability to show them the future, and have them see their business in the future, is going to be crucial to whether or not they stay with you. >> And I think we're doing a couple of things. We created our Pathfinder program, I'm sure you guys are aware of that, right? So these are some of the newer partners coming up, we're actually investing in them, helping to scale them, because we think it's going to be unique innovation. Another area is this program that we have called Cloud 28 Plus, where we have a whole network of providers, service providers, ISVs, SPs, that's part of a network that we're able to grow and kind of scale that ecosystem, so I don't know if you want to comment anything more on that, but-- >> Jason: Up to 700 now (mumbles). >> Yeah, so Saviea is very passionate about this obviously, but he's done some some really good things-- >> Peter: And he should be passionate about it. >> But that gives us an ecosystem now of partners who are part of that HPE ecosystem, but different use cases, different compliance needs, they sit in different regions, so we're able to give our customers a lot of that flexibility. >> Alright, gotta give us something on the key note. Just a tidbit. What can you share? A little nugget? >> I mean, you know-- >> Dave: Teaser. >> Some themes we've talked about. You'll hear the word friction free a lot, how do we make things invisible? And really demonstrating how with services and software, and consumption-based service models, can we do that for customers? You'll hear a lot of those themes. We'll highlight some of the things we've announced over the last 24 hours, a few weeks. So we'll emphasize what we've done around Nimble and info site, and the importance of AI in the data center. We'll obviously spotlight point next, and Anna and her energy, she's gonna be out there and really firing people up. And a few surprises in the software space that will come today, that it'll probably cause the market to do a bit of a double take and say who is that that's doing this again? Yeah, it's us, it's HPE doing that. >> And you'll see us also talk about a little bit of a vision in terms of how we see the market starting more at the edge, bringing in AI, composing for different kinds of environments, and then how HPE has really been able to invest, so we're gonna start to show that over the last couple years, we have had a very clear agenda where we want it to go, and now that's all coming to fruition, so we'll start to show all that holistically in terms of our technology vision. So that's another thing that we're gonna be highlighting. >> Great. Perfect timing, we can hear the announcement. Keynotes are coming up, we'll be broadcasting those on our twitch channel. Siliconangle.com/twitch You can go to HPE.com and see the keynotes as well. Gents, great energy, awesome to see you. >> It's great to see you guys, thank you. >> We'll be watching the college football ranks. You guys have a fun little rivalry of Ohio State here. >> The Ohio State. >> Dave: ... Yale, but nobody cares. >> Baker for Heisman. >> Dave: Gents, thanks very much for coming. >> Thanks guys, appreciate it. >> Keep right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. (soft tech music)