>> Announcer: Live from Washington, D.C. It's theCUBE covering DotNext Conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to the district everybody, I'm Dave Allante with Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, and we Extract the Signal from the Noise. We're here, this is day two of the Nutanix.NEXTConf, #NEXTConf, Chris Hsu is here, sorry Calvin Hsu is here, VP of Product Marketing at Citrix. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, nice to be here. >> So, you're up on stage earlier today right? A lot of good action here at the show. Talk about Citrix, and what you guys are doing here. >> Yeah, so I think Citrix, Nutanix, we've had a partnership going back for quite awhile. I think what really brought us together were customers that were actually trying to solve this issue, of how do I implement VDI, and how do I do this better right, there has to be a better way. And it's funny, we were just talking about chatting a little bit before about how many different infrastructure pieces and how many different components there are to learn in order to do VDI, and that was one of the things that always kind of stood as a barrier to adoption in some of the early days, going back, I don't know several years now, and they would say, well, you got to have, be an expert in networking, you got to be an expert in storage, you got to know all the server side infrastructure, the virtualization that goes with it, and then you got to also know the desktops, and the app parts of it, and how to manage all that. And in my experience it was all that technical knowledge, but it was also, it was also the people right? So, you also had to bring those people to the table, have one VDI project, go in and talk to a customer, and we're going to do a pilot for 200 people to start, and there'd be 20 people in the room. Because everybody had different areas of responsibility. And so as Nutanix is involved, and the whole idea of hyper-conversion, and HDI that's come around, that's really been some of the basis of where VDI is kind of getting that second booster of, in it's life cycle here, where they're realizing that it could just be a few people that are responsible for that HDI infrastructure, can deploy the VDI, and now they have a more simple reliable way of implementing that solution so (mumbles). >> I mean, that's kind of where, even when I go back to the converged infrastructure world that's, VDI was the one like foothold use case with Vblock's in the early days, and the HPE stuff, or HP then, and you know I have to say, I have to ask both of you guys, because you know this business really well, and you're obviously a VDI expert but, when you talk to customers, they get really excited about VDI, they're like, "Hey, this is a great use case, "we're going to, we're doing VDI, VDI, VDI, "it was a big project effort." When you talk to the analysts they're like, "Uhhh, VDI is so boring." What is it about VDI that there's this bifurcated opinion base right? Analysts uhhhh, okay, but customers eat it up. What's going on, what...? Unpack that for us. >> Well, I mean analysts don't necessarily feel the day-to-day pain of managing a desktop right? That's what it is right, so for them it's a-- >> Well said. >> It's the truth. Well, actually I know, I know some analysts that actually did that job, and so they're the ones that are still excited about it right? But in general, like once you get past the idea of that consulting a client on the complexities, and how do you choose a vendor and, and then it comes down to a few basic things, it's which one's going to deliver the best employee experience with the solution, which one's going to be the best operationally to manage and then sort of their job is done. But then, from a IT Admin perspective it's like they're still, every day they're managing new application update, the new desktop image, and it doesn't end right? And that's dozens and dozens of hours out of every week, every month, that you spend. >> Alright let's hear from the analyst. >> Dave, it was called VDI fatigue. Every year was the year of VDI you know. I think we've gotten beyond that, because I tell you, from my viewpoint, it was wait. It was this mess of a stack, and we're going to fix that. Oh wait, now storage is the mess, now flash is going to solve that, oh wait, mobile adoption is you know, the barrier, yet the opportunity, how do we modernize our applications, the changing workforce, mobile workforce. There were always the next, the next, the next, the next, the next thing and, it reminds me of our conversations with (mumbles) you know, it was like we're never finished, and a lot of it was, it was this big category of you know, you talk about the user experience, is I think, what Citrix is focused on, and how do we make that simpler and you know, so many analysts... The other thing from an analyst is, most analysts focus on a piece of it, and this is very different. I know some analysts focus on like, user experience, and let's look at the application, that's probably closer to where VDI is then, right, if you ask the storage guys they're like ah, VDI. If you ask the desktop people they're like wait, my place is fine so, it's that, it was a really complicated problem, but it's very different today, than it was, and I have to think with Nutanix it is, must've changed in the last five years. >> Absolutely, and well, I think the other thing is that's funny is if you take it back to like 2008 right? Analysts called the VDI game really early, so it's like you're saying every year was the VDI. Before anybody was deploying it in any sort of size, they were already saying it's a, X gazillion billion dollar market and that, and it, I think it's taken awhile for the customers... The customers are still just trying to dealing with some very basic desktop management issues today, and they're probably lagging behind the industry and analysts by three to five years I'd say, right? But what I hear now is, Windows 10 is coming around the horizon, how am I going to manage Windows 10 updates? I've got an Office 365 deployment project on my hands, how am I going to get this all out, how am I going to get the functionality that every one of my end users needs? And it comes around and it's like VDI is a great answer for that, it's a great way to solve that issue. >> Calvin, one of the things that we hear from new (mumbles) customers I mean, they love that kind of one-click simplicity, one-click update, and I hear about you know, Windows 10 is like the roll-out of the next thing, and where things break. How are Citrix and Nutanix working together to solve some of these challenges? >> Yeah, I think that approach of one-click, the automation you know, both the blue-printing types of technology is what we're pulling together. All that sort of automation is really important for, for this type of environment. You know I think the, we're both willing to pull together solutions that really then, drive that simplicity for, for both the infrastructure and the management, ongoing of that solution. It's like for example, we're working together on, work on the district's workspace appliance right? And that's, for us it's not a product name that's really a program, it's a way of defining HCI infrastructure like Nutanix and they're jumping on board with this. To be able to point that thing at the Citrix Cloud, and then download all the resources that it needs in order to run a Citrix workload on it. So it's a very automated way of getting stood up, so that not only is it deployment of the infrastructure, automated and simple, but placing that workload on it, and getting it set to manage, and then even running it and operating it is more like running and operating a Cloud service than it is even operating a local infrastructure for it. >> One of the things that David Floyer from Wikibon, has done a lot of analysis saying, if we can get to basically a single-managed entity is where he calls it, so I can have the entire thing comes out, not just the infrastructure, but all the way through the stack. Not only does that really help your deployment, but the overall kind of time-to-value, customer experience is just tremendously improved, tell us how you're helping to kind of reach that vision. >> Yeah, well I think it's time-to-value, but it's also making VDI accessible to more customers right, and more segments of the market. The types of things that VDI solves, security, manageability, those aren't just enterprise problems right? Even midsize companies, they have security concerns, and for them it's actually probably even more dramatic, like they have a breach there, and it's catastrophic for the company, not just, you know we're delayed by a few hours. And so you know, having that simplicity, and then making that whole thing easier to deploy, and faster, it's not just easier to deploy, but on day two, it's easier to manage ongoing. Those things are getting into tension again. >> So for years I remember in the Citrix, Synergy, a bunch of VMware, VM world's, talked to customers, and it was always a two-horse race between those two companies, and Citrix was like Secretariat, and VMware was like Devil His Due. You've probably never heard of Devil His Due. Pretty good horse but not Secretariat, and you guys, Citrix was the dominant player in that marketplace. What's the competitive situation today? It seems like VMware has made some acquisitions, has maybe caught up, maybe has some advantages, what, how do you see them as a competitor? >> I, so I think where Citrix is, I think that what really happens in the competitors space now is that it becomes less about VDI, versus VDI, and like what features are in each one. Although I could talk for hours, I think there's still a bunch of differentiation in there. You know earlier talking about user experience, I think the way we're looking at this market, and what's happening to it right now, is less about sort of user experience in the sense of a classic protocol versus protocol sense, in a technical sense, and more about, and I'll use the term more and more often about employee experience, alright, so it's not just what is the performance of my virtual desktop when I'm on x-y-z device, over a certain network. It is what happens that first time I give an employee a resource, or a virtual desktop, or a mobile application, or access to a SAS application, or an internally-hosted Web application through a virtual browser, and they go in and they, they want to get work done right? So the experience of that employee is now, not just one of these technologies, it is what we refer to as workspace technology. It's everything I need from the applications, to the files that I want to use, to the workflows that I want to kick off, and I think that will be their new area of differentiation, and again, that's where we want to move very far for. >> Calvin, what should we be expecting to see from Citrix and Nutanix going for a long partnership, and how does it improve even more for customers? >> I think you know, the stuff that Nutanix has announced here, with the whole Hybrid Cloud strategy, I think that very much is in alignment with our philosophy on Hybrid Cloud approaches for customers. So I would expect to see a lot more in that collaboration area. There's lots more that we can do on the NetScaler side of the business for networking, and enabling the reliability of a lot of these network connections as people become, you know I love that concept of the core, the distributing the Edge Cloud right, and all of that's going to need interconnectivity, and security and reliability. And you know, more of the same on making VDI simpler for, for all customers of all sizes. I think we're just at the cusp of you know we've got this automation plan going in, we're creating the workspace appliance in its simplicity there. I think there's a lot more we can do, again, from day two perspective operationally, as I keep going and I'm growing this thing, and I'm managing my images, and I'm managing applications, and growing the infrastructure, increasing performance, taking on different types of workloads, there's lots more we can do in that area. >> What is the all Citrix Stack Workplace Appliance? >> Right, so that is really the Nutanix has announced support for XenServer, and for us, you know XenServer, we've really done a transformation of that technology over the last couple years, where we've taken what was a general platform virtualization solution, and we've really specifically targeted at our workloads. At XenApp, XenDesktop, NetScaler, and making it the best virtualization platform for our, for our solutions. Why do we do that? We do that because there's going to be certain things that we need out of that layer from an innovation standpoint whether it's supporting graphics, which we were the first to do, across all the major ship vendors, virtual GPUs, coming up with new security paradigms like being able to do deep Hypervisor Introspection, and identify day one malware attacks before they, even infect any of the machines. You know, those sorts of innovations become really important that we can drive, and having control over XenServer we're able to do that. So through the partnership with Nutanix, and getting their support on that as well, then all the joint Nutanix and Citrix customers could take advantage of that innovation. So now they also have the obviously at their disposal, everything that Nutanix is putting into HV, everything we're putting into XenServer, and being able to manage it that way. So, in the workspace appliance, sort of reference guide for building this, one of the things we focus on is the XenServer component of it, and being able to have that innovation coming from Citrix as part of that solution. >> Great. Calvin, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE, appreciate your time, and your insights. >> Thank you, yeah it's good to be here. >> Good to see you. Alright, keep it right there buddy, Stu and I will be back with our next guest. We're live from DotNext, #NEXTConf, this is theCUBE. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering HPE Discover 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back everyone. Live here in Las Vegas is SiliconANGLE's CUBE, our flight ship program. We go out to the event ... I'm John Furrier, My co-host David Vellante. Been watching 3 days of wall to wall exclusive coverage of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover 2017. Our seventh year covering HP Discover, now called HPE Discover. Dave, we've covered them all. Now we're doing some European versions. I missed the last one in London, but you were there. But you and I have covered HP Discover, Now HPE Discover, for now our 7th year. Interesting times as they say. >> Dave: I'll say. >> We live in interesting times. HP's been getting hammered. Certainly the competitions been slamming them, The press has not been kind to them, People think they're irrelevant. Wall Street just slammed them, so Jim Cramer on CNBC, really taking Meg to task, But we always come back and we feel differently when we're actually at the event. When you actually talk to the people in the company. They got a lot of cash on the books. They've got a lot of customers. They got technology. They're doing the vendor R&D that you guys have pointed out in your recent, ground-breaking, true private cloud research market sizing you put out there. Astonishing change. And I think, my gut is, yeah, certainly HP's had some changes in corporate development, but the reality is that they now have set that up and the market is exploding. It's got the cloud market that's coming on premise. The private cloud business is taking off. >> Yeah, you know, John, we have documented this over the last seven years, and it's like the Band-Aid is coming off slowly, and it finally feels like this Discover (ripping noise) is finally almost there, right? Because you remember the split, and then the spin merge, and then the software business, okay. This has been the cleanest Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Discover that we've been to. There wasn't a lot of noise about software, they had a little separate event going on. Not a lot of talk about the spin merge, a lot of talk about Pointnext, I think that's good, I like their branding. >> It's like they cleaned up all the rooms in the house, and the outside's got a new fresh coat of paint. I got to say, last year- noticeably, the branding, which we were kind of originally critical on two and a half, three years ago; the show was beautiful, the branding's amazing this year, again, they're going to that next level, you're starting to see the clean messaging, it's as if the ship has been kind of re-readied. And we said that last year, but to be fair, we did say last year that they got to prove it to you, They got to show the results. And we were talking with Alain, who runs their data center infrastructure group, he agrees; the metrics that all the other analyst firms are using out there are irrelevant, and he believes that new metrics have to be redefined. This to me is the biggest story of this show, is that HP is eyeing a new sea change and I don't think people understand it. That's my personal opinion. >> I think you're right, I mean, the narrative on HP is, oh, they're just a hardware company, hardware's dying, what are they doing, et cetera. Well the reality is, people have been telling me the hardware business is dying since I've been in the business. The good trend for them is, the hardware business is consolidating. Of course, the tough news is, a lot of it's going to the public cloud. But as you've been pointing out all week, there's plenty of growth, on prem, in what we call the true private cloud. >> That's the biggest discussion of the show here, is the impact of the Wikibon research, the true private cloud report that you guys put out, I want to spend some time with you on that and ask you some really pointed questions. What is the true private cloud report that Wikibon put out, and what does it mean, why are people talking about this research so much here? >> So three years ago, the team at Wikibon started to quantify this notion of private cloud, and we looked at it and said, ah, this is cloud-washing. Really this is just virtualization. What we really want to see is, on prem, mimicking,to a substantial degree, the public cloud. Orchestration, certainly, >> Agility, >> Management, agility, pay-as-you-go, those types of things. Okay, so, the genesis of the market move is something that we heard from Alan Nance, our friend, several years ago at the Vertica user conference. He said- he was, at the time, CIO of Philips- he said, "my CEO said 75% of our spend in infrastructure "is non-differentiated, so we're going to eliminate it, "and everything we're going to do is going to be as a service." That was three years ago. So, massive change, and Philips went out to all of its suppliers and said, this is what were doing, if you can't do business with us this way, you're out. And remember, we wrote a bunch of stuff about it, and Alain came back, okay. So they were one of the early folks making that move. Everybody is now doing that. So what's happening is, there's going to be $150 billion that is going to vaporize out of non-differentiated heavy lifting. And it's going to go in two places: it's going to go into the public cloud, and it's going to go to what we call true private cloud, and that true private cloud business is going to grow to be about $250 billion within the next 10 years, okay? So that's a long term market forecast. >> So the addressable market for true private cloud is what, 260, or 250 plus- >> 250, just under $250 billion. Which is growing faster than infrastructure as a service, public cloud, and it will ultimately, we believe, be larger than that IAAS business. Not as large as SASS, that's going to be the biggest public cloud market, but it's a huge opportunity for companies, and it's a land grab, and it's a dogfight. >> So, I want you to explain this, 'cause I think this is important, and it took me a couple minutes to click on this. You had mentioned that- there's a point in your slide on that deck, the size of the market is huge, it's $250 billion, that's a lot of cash. But the TAM component of labor costs, now, this is the big fear, everyone thinks, "oh, my job is going away, AIs and auto ate my job away", but yet you're saying $150 billion of cash costs are going to shift. >> To where? >> Absolutely. Okay, so a couple of things. What is going to shift? Today, there's so much IT labor spent on provisioning servers, provisioning storage, tuning systems, tuning databases, all this stuff that can be now hyper-automated, as the CEO of Wipro said, so that's happening today, as we speak. So, vendor R&D, i.e., R&D money that goes into appliances, boxes, new systems, new software, is going to replace and automate out those non-differentiated tasks. So if your job is provisioning LUNs, you really want to re-skill. >> So what's that mean for the customer in HP, and why is that important to this show, why are people talking about this report, what's the relevance? >> Because everybody's talking about their digital transformation. And how do you fund a digital transformation, right? You've got to spend all this money to become a digital, data driven company. Well, where do I get that money? >> John: Real cash involved, basically. >> Yeah, there's cash involved, so how do I do that? Well, I have to shift away from things that aren't driving value for my business, and eliminate that, and put the resources in things that are driving value. Application development, new development paradigms, digital transformations, new partnerships, and that's where the money's going. And so again, if you're an IT infrastructure patch management pro, you either have to re-skill, or you're going to be out of a job. >> Did you see Kate Swanborg light up when we talked about the private cloud, 'cause that's exactly what was her point. >> Yeah, well they're seeing it at DreamWorks, because essentially what they're doing, they're changing the game in animation. My prediction is, they're going to be able to pump out many more movies within a year now, and that's going to make them more competitive. I think that's part of the reason why she didn't want to dig too deep into what they're doing, 'cause I think they see it as a competitive advantage. >> Yeah, and she did tease a little bit out by saying that the creative people are so much more productive, she mentioned the dragon. Alright, other impact: Wall Street. We see a lot of analysts kind of taking HP to town. We know the competition, we talked to Michael Dell, he came on The Cube; Meg stopped by but she did not come in, that's notable for the folks out there, Michael certainly sits down with us; Michael says, "hey, I got plenty of cash", when I bring up the debt thing, he thinks bigger is better, HP thinks smaller and nimbler is better- >> This is going to be really interesting- >> Your thoughts on that as we move forward? >> Look, there's two, sort of, bromides, right, with Wall Street. First disappointment is never the last; uh oh, that would be bad news for HP, but Meg said, "we have bottomed in terms of margins, margins will improve." And a big thing's going to happen next month, HP's gets the cash from the spin merges, right, that's going to happen, and that's a big deal because their balance sheet- they're going to have $12 billion in cash on the balance sheet, which will match their debt, and they're going to start to be acquisitive. Dell EMC can't be acquisitive right now. They got to retire that debt and delever. >> We saw SimpliVity and Nimble, front and center, a lot of good success with the software there. >> Yep, so this will be really interesting to see, is this the last disappointment, is this a buying opportunity? >> Yeah, we're going to watch it, and- >> So if I had to bet, if I had to bet I'd say it is a buying opportunity, based on what I'm seeing here. It's much cleaner, leaner, and they've also restructured the sales organization to a great extent, so hopefully the execution's going to be better. >> Well, I'm not that generous, I think I want to see more results, I think- >> I know, but if you see more results, you're going to miss the upturn. (laughs) >> Well the question, to me, is- I do believe that they have an advantage with the true private cloud report you guys put out, I think that validates the shift of spend in IT, which validates the fact that it's growing, not shrinking, and yes, people might not be buying boxes but they're going to be buying IT. >> And the big thing is, well you know, John, the street right now wants growth. That's why Amazon can make no money and still crank, right? But if HPE can eke out any growth and start throwing off cash again, I think the stock is going to do just fine. >> Other notable things; obviously, the outsource business is gone, Pointnext is the solution, we had Ana on from Pointnext, she was the leader; other notable thing is the absence of Chris Hsu with Micro Focus, we had a chance to ... saw him at the Foundation Room at the Mandalay Bay the other night, had a great conversation. Apparently, they're not included in HPE Discover because they're a separate company. They're apparently doing really well. >> Well Micro Focus is killing it, right? I mean, their stock price increased faster than Facebook last year (laughs) so, that's an interesting play. I think it's a new private equity play, John. You know, the private equity play used to be, suck as much cash out and then leave the carcass. I think the new private equity play is, invest, and then take it to market again, and try to get that value from the market, so increase the value. >> I think you're onto something, and this is why I've always been complimentary of HP's corporate governance game, because I think that private equity is all about taking things private, and being nimble, and then going public again, so- >> And Micro Focus, in my opinion, picked up those assets for short money. >> Yeah; well, HP owns a big part of the company, so- >> Yeah, of course, but that's why they did the deal, it's short money, and they wanted the cash, and that's why they had to put the security piece in there. >> Alright- Dave Vellante, I'm John Furrier here breaking it down, ending our three days of exclusive coverage, at HPE 2017. Look for us at Madrid, the show there; I won't be there, Dave will be there; and again, HPE Discover, enjoy the rest of the conference, thanks for watching; this is The Cube out, thanks to the team and everyone here for a great job, see you next time.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering HPE Discover 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for HPE, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Discover 2017. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante, and our next guest is Bill Philbin, who's the general manager of storage and big data for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Bill, welcome to theCUBE. Again, good to see you. I think you've been on since 2012, '13, '15. >> Is that right? What, are we carbon dating ourselves now or something? >> We've been tracking our CUBE alumni, but you're heading up the storage business-- >> Do I get a pen? >> We're working on that, Jerry Chen-- >> Seven of them >> Jerry Chen at Greylock wants to have, now, badge values. So, welcome back. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> You were just on theCUBE at VeeamON, which is an event Dave was hosting, I missed it in New Orleans. But a lot of stuff going on around stores, certainly. Virtualization has been around for a while, but now with Cloud; whole new ballgame. Programmable infrastructure, hybrid IT, Wikibond's true private Cloud report came out showing that private Cloud on Prim is $250 billion market. So nothing's really changing radically in the enterprise, per se, certainly maybe servers and storage, but people got to store their data. >> Bill: That's right What's the update from your perspective, what's the story here at HPE Discover? >> So I think there's really three things we're talking about amongst a number of announcements. One is sort of the extension of our All Flash environment for customers, who, as I was saying at Veeam, have the always-on. New world order is we expect everything to be available at a moment's notice, so I was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, using Google Voice over satellite IP on the boat, talking to San Jose, and it worked. That's always-on environment, and the best way to get that is, you know, with an All Flash [unknown], so that's number one. Number two, going back to the story about programmable infrastructures, storage also needs to be programmable, and so, if you've had Rick Lewis or Rick Lewis is coming he'll talk about composable infrastructures with Synergy, but the flip side of that is our belief that storage really needs to be invisible. And the acquisition of Nimble gets us a lot closer to sort of doing that in the same way that you have a safe self-driving car is all the rage. All that rich telemetry comes back, it's analyzed, fingerprinted, and sent out to customers to a point where it's, I call it the Rule of 85. 85% of the customers, the cases are raised by InfoSight and closed by InfoSight, and they have an 85 net promoter score. We're getting to a point where storage can be invisible, cause that's the experience you get on Amazon or as you swipe your credit card, say I want ten terabytes of storage, and that's the last time you have to think about it. We need to have the economics of the web, we need to have the programmability of the web, that's number two, and number three of what we talked about, and this is a big issue, a big thing we talked about with VeeamON, was data protection. The rules of data protection are also changing. Conventional backup does not protect data. I was with a customer a couple weeks ago in London. 120 petabytes; this is a financial services customer now. 120 petabytes of storage: not unusual. 40 of it was Hadoop, and they were surprised because it's unprotected, it's on servers, it's sort of the age of the client-server, and the age of Excel spreadsheets all over again. We realized that most businesses were running on Excel, so All Flash, a different way of supporting our customer support experience, and number three, it's all around how do you protect your data differently. >> What's the big trend from your standpoint, because a lot of that self-driving storage concept, or self-driving car analogy, it speaks to simplicity and automation. >> That's right >> The other thing that's going on is data is becoming more irrelevant, certainly in the Cloud. Whether that's a data protection impact or having data availability for Cloud-native apps, or in memory, or all kinds of cool stuff going on. So you got to lot of stuff happening, so to be invisible, and be programmable, customer's architectures are changing. What's the big trend that you're seeing from a customer standpoint? Are there new ways to lay out storage so that they can be invisible? Certainly a lot of people were looking at their simplification in IT operationally, and then have to prepare for the Cloud, whether that's Multicloud or hybrid or true private Cloud. What architects are you seeing changing, what are people doubling down on, what's the big trends in storage, kind of laying out storage as a strategy? >> So I think the thing about storage in the large, one of the trends obviously that we're seeing is sort of storage co-located with the server. When I started at HP now seven years ago, gen six to gen ten, which we've announced here at this show, the amount of locally attached storage in the box itself is massive. And then the applications are now becoming more and more responsible for data placement, and data replication. And so, even while capacities are growing, I think six or seven percent is what I saw from the latest IDC survey, the actual storage landscape, from a shared storage company, they're actually going down. And the reason is, application provisioning, application-aware storage is really the trend, that's sort of number one. Number two, you see customers looking at deploying the right storage for the right applications. hyperconverge with SimpliVity's a really good example of that, which is they're trying to find the right sort of storage to sort of serve up the right application. And that's where, if you're a single-PoINT provider company now in storage, and you don't have a software-only, a hyperconverge, an All Flash in a couple different flavors, including XP at the top, you're going to find it very, very difficult to sort of continue to compete in this market, and frankly, we're driving a lot of that consolidation, we put some bookends around what we're prepared to pay for. But if you're a PoINT providing storage company now? Life is a lot harder for you than it was a couple years ago. When we started with All Flash, I think it was like 94 All Flash companies. There are not 94 All Flash companies today. And so, I think that's sort of what we see. >> Well, to your point about PoINT companies are going to have a hard time remaining independent, and that's why a lot of 'em are in business to basically sell to a company like yours, cause they fill a need. So my question relates to R&D strategy. As the GM, relatively new GM, you know well that a large company like HPE has to participate in multiple markets, and in order to expand your team, you have to have the right product at the right time. One size does not fit all. So the Nimble acquisition brings in a capability at the lower end of the market, lower price spans, but it also has some unique attributes with regard to the way it uses data and analytics. You've got 3PAR Legendary at the high end. What's the strategy in terms of, and is there one, to bring the best of both of those worlds together, or is it sort of let 20 flowers bloom? >> So, I don't know if it's going to be 'let 20 flowers bloom', but I would probably answer a couple different ways. One is that InfoSight, you're right, is unique value proposition, is part of Nimble. I would bet if I come see you in Madrid, if you have me back for the, whatever, 13th time, [Laughing] that we'll be talking about how InfoSight and 3PAR can come together. So that's sort of the answer to number one. The answer to number two is, even though within the Nimble acquisition, one party acquired the other party, what we're really looking at is the best breed of both organizations. Whether that's a process, a person, a technology, we don't feel wedded to, "Just because we do it a certain way at HP, that means the Nimble team must conform." It's really, "Bring us the best and brightest." That's what we got. At the end of the day, we got a company, we got revenue, but we got the people, and in this storage business, these are serial entrepreneurs who have actually developed a product, we want to keep those people, and the way you do that is you bring 'em in and you use the best and greatest of all the technologies. There's probably other optimizations we'll look at, but looking at InfoSight across the entire portfolio, and one day maybe across the server portfolio, is the right thing to do. >> And just to follow up on that, Tom, if I may, so that's a hard core of sort of embedded technology, and then you've got a capability, we talk about the API economy all the time. How are you, and are you able to leverage other HPE activities to create infrastructure as code, specifically within the storage group? >> So if you look at us, at our converged systems appliances like our SAP HANA appliance, databases greater than six terabytes, we have 85% market share at Hewlett-Packard. And the way we do that, and that's all on 3PAR by the way, and the way we do that is we've got a fixed system that is designed solely to deliver HANA. On the flip of that, you have Synergy, which is a composable programmable infrastructure from the start, where it's all template-based and based on application provisioning. You provision storage, you provision the fabric, you provision compute. That programmable infrastructure also is supported by HP storage. And so, you have-- You can roll it the way you want to, and to some degree I think it's all about choice. If you want to go along, and build your own programmable infrastructure and OpenStack or VCloud Director, whatever it is, we have one of those. If you think simplicity is key, and app and server integration is important part of how you want to roll it out, we have one of those, that's called SimpliVity. If you want a traditional shared storage environment, we have one of those in 3PAR and Nimble, and if you want composable we have that. Now, choice means more than one, I don't know what it means in Latin or Italian, but I'm pretty sure choice means more than one. What we don't want to do is introduce, however, the complexity of what owning more than one is. And that's where things like Synergy make sense, or federation between SerVirtual and 3PAR, and soon we'll have federation between Nimble and 3PAR. So to help customers with that operational complexity problem, but we actually believe that choice is the most important thing we can provide our customers. >> I've always been a big fan of that compose thing, going back a couple years when you guys came and brought it out to the market. We're first, by the way, props to HP, also first on converged infrastructure way back in the day. I got to ask you, one of the things I love doing with theCUBE interviews is that we get to kind of get inspiration around some of the things that you're working on in your business unit. Back in 2010, Dave and I really kind of saw storage move from being boring storage, provisioning storage, to really the center of the action, and really since 2010 you've seen storage really at the center of all these converging trends. Virtualization, and hyperconverges, all this great stuff, now Cloud, so storage is kind of like the center point of all the action, so I got to ask you the question on virtualization, certainly changed the game with storage. Containerization is also changing the game, so I was telling some HP Labs guys last night that I've been looking at provisioning containers in microseconds. Where virtualization is extending and continuing to have a nice run, on the heels of that we got containerization, where apps are going to start working with storage. What's your vision and how do you guys look at that trend? How are you riding that next wave? >> It all comes down to an application-driven approach. As we were saying a little earlier, our view is that storage will be silent. You're going to provision an application. That's really the-- see, look at the difference between us and, let's say, Nutanix with SimpliVity. It's all about the application being provisioned into the hyperconverged environment. And if you look at the virtualization business alone, VMware's going to have a tough go because Hyper-V has actually gotten good enough, and it's cheaper, but people are really giving Hyper-V a much better look at than we've seen over the course of the last couple years. But guess what? That tool will commoditize, and the next commoditization point is going to be containers. Our vantage point, and if you look at 3PAR, you look at Nimble, we're already got it, we've already supported containers within the product, we've actually invested companies that are container-rich. I think it's all about, "What's the next--" >> And we at Dacron last year said, "We know you're parting with all the guys." But this is a big wave. You see containers as-- >> I see containers as sort of the place that virtualization sort of didn't ever get to. If you look at-- >> John: Well, the apps. >> On the apps absolutely, positively. And also it's a much simpler way to deploy an application over a conventional VM. I think containers will be important. Is it going to be important as the technology inflection point around All Flash? >> John: Flash is certainly very-- >> That I don't know, but I think as far as limiting costs in your datacenter, making it easier to deploy your applications, et cetera, I think containers is the one. >> What's the big news here, at HPE Discover 2017, for you guys? What's the story that you're telling, what's going on in the booth? Share some insight into what's happening here on the ground in Las Vegas from your standpoint. >> So I would say a couple of things. I think if you look out on the show floor, it seems more intimate and smaller this year. And there's a lot of concern, I think, that HP is chopping itself off into various pieces and parts, but I think the story that maybe we're not telling well enough, or that it gets missed, is out of that is actually a brand new company called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which is uniquely focused on serving enterprise infrastructure customers. And so I think, if I was going to encourage a news story, it's about the phoenix of that, and not the fact that we've taken the yes guys, and the software guys, and the PC guys. It's that company, maybe in Madrid we'll do this, and that company, that's really, really, really exciting. And as you said, storage; sort of in a Ptolemy versus Galileo approach. We believe everything, first of all, revolves around storage. We don't believe in Galileo. So if you look in here at the booth, we've announced the next generation of MSA platforms of 2052, we've got the 9450 3PAR -- three times as fast, more connectivity for All Flash solutions. We've talked about the secondary Flash array for Nimble, most effective place to protect your data is on an array, is on a type where the data came from, and that is the secondary Flash market. We're big into Cloud, we've talked about CloudBank here, which is the ability to keep a copy of your store-once data in any S3-compliant interface, including Scality. I don't know if I'm forgetting, I'm sure I'm forgetting something. >> John: There's a lot there. >> There's a lot there. >> I mean, you guys, I love your angle on the phoenix. We've been seeing that, we've been covering seven years now, and it is a phoenix. And the point that I think the news media is not getting on HP, there's a lot of fud out there, is that this is not a divested strategy. There's some things that went away that were the outsourcing business, but that was just natural. But this is HP-owned, it's not like it's like we're getting out of that, it's just how you're organizing it. >> And with a balance sheet that now is really a competitive weapon, if you will, you're going to see HP both grow organically and inorganically, and I think as the market continues to consolidate, the thing to remember also is there's fewer places to consolidate to. And so if you're a start-up, there's a handful of companies that you can go to now, and probably the best-equipped, right-sized, great balance sheet, great company, is Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Well we had hoped to get Chris Hsu on, but I've always said the day we talk about the debates on management style, but I've always been a big believer as a computer science undergraduate, decouple highly cohesive strategy is a really viable one, I think that's a great one. >> Yeah, and there's still a good partnership with DXC, there'll be a great partnership with Micro Focus, and there's both financially as well as from a business perspective. But it's really an opportunity to focus, and if I was at another company, I would wonder whether or not if their strategy continues to be appropriate. >> Bill Philbin, senior Vice President and general manager of storage and big data at Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, theCUBE more live coverage after the short break. From Las Vegas, HPE Discover 2017, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante with theCUBE, we'll be right back after this short break.

>> Announcer: You are CUBE Alumni. Live from Munich, Germany, it's theCUBE. Covering, DataWorks Summit Europe 2017. Brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Hello, everyone, welcome back to live coverage at DataWorks 2017, I'm John Furrier with my cohost, Dave Vellante. Two days of coverage here in Munich, Germany, covering Hortonworks and Yahoo, presenting Hadoop Summit, now called DataWorks 2017. Our next guest is Carlo Vaiti, who's the HPE chief technology strategist, EMEA Digital Solutions, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, John. >> So we were just chatting before we came on, of your historic background at IBM, Oracle, and now HPE, and now back into the saddle there. >> Don't forget Sun Microsystems. >> Sun Microsystems, sorry, Sun, yeah. I mean, great, great run. >> It was a long run. >> You've seen the computer revolution happen. I worked at HP for nine years, from '88 to '97. Again, Dave was a premier analyst during that run of client-server. We've seen the computer revolution happen. Now we're seeing the digital revolution where the iPhone is now 10 years old, Cloud is booming, data's at the center of the value proposition, so a completely new disruptive capability. >> Carlo: Sure, yes. >> So what are you doing as the CTO, chief technologist for HPE, how are you guys bringing this story together? 'Cause there's so much going on at HPE. You got the services spit, you got the software split, and HP's focusing on the new style of IT, as Meg Whitman calls it. >> So, yeah. My role in EMEA is actually all about having basically a visionary kind of strategy role for what's going to be HP in the future, in terms of IT. And one of the things that we are looking at is, is specifically to have, we split our strategy in three different aspects, so three transformation areas. The first one which we usually talk is what I call hybrid IT, right, which is basically making services around either On-Premise or on Cloud for our customer base. The second one is actually power the Intelligent Edge, so is actually looking after our collaboration and when we acquire Aruba components. And the third one, which is in the middle, and that's why I'm here at the DataWorks Summit, is actually the data-analytics aspects. And we have a couple of solution in there. One is the Enterprise great Hadoop, which is part of this. This is actually how we generalize all the figure and the strategy for HP. >> It's interesting, Dave and I were talking yesterday, being in Europe, it's obviously a different sideshow, it's smaller than the DataWorks or Hadoop Summit in North America in San Jose, but there's a ton of Internet of things, IoT or IIoT, 'cause here in Germany, obviously, a lot of industrial nations, but in Europe in general, a lot of smart cities initiatives, a lot of mobility, a ton of Internet of things opportunity, more than in the US. >> Absolutely. >> Can you comment on how you guys are tackling the IoT? Because it's an Intelligent Edge, certainly, but it's also data, it's in your wheelhouse. >> Yes, sure. So I'm actually working, it's a good question, because I'm actually working a couple of projects in Eastern Europe, where it's all about Industrial IoT Analytics, IIoTA. That's the new terminology we use. So what we do is actually, we analyze from a business perspective, what are the business pain points, in an oil and gas company for example. And we understand for example, what kind of things that they need and must have. And what I'm saying here is, one of the aspects for example, is the drilling opportunity. So how much oil you can extract from a specific rig in the middle of the North Sea, for example. This is one of the key question, because the customer want to understand, in the future, how much oil they can extract. The other one is for example, the upstream business. So doing on the retail side and having, say, when my customer is stopping in a gas station, I want go in the shop, immediately giving, I dunno, my daughter, a kind of campaign for the Barbie, because they like the Barbie. So IoT, Industrial IoT help us in actually making a much better customer experience, and that's the case of the upstream business, but is also helping us in actually much faster business outcomes. And that's what the customer wants, right? 'Cause, and was talking with your colleague before, I'm talking to the business guy. I'm not talking to the IT anymore in these kind of place, and that's how IoT allow us a chance to change the conversation at the industry level. >> These are first-time conversations too. You're getting at the kinds of business conversations that weren't possible five years ago. >> Carlo: Yes, sure. >> I mean and 10 years ago, they would have seemed fantasy. Now they're reality. >> The role of analytics in my opinion, is becoming extremely key, and I said this morning, for me my best center is that the detail, is the stone foundation of the digital economy. I continue to repeat this terminology, because it's actually where everything is starting from. So what I mean is, let's take a look at the analytic aspect. So if I'm able to analyze the data close to the shop floor, okay, close to the shop manufacturing floor, if I'm able to analyze my data on the rig, in the oil and gas industry, if I'm able to analyze doing preprocessing analytics, with Kafka, Druid, these kind of open-source software, where close to the Intelligent Edge, then my customers going to be happy, because I give them very fast response, and the decision-maker can get to decision in a faster time. Today, it takes a long time to take these type of decision. So that's why we want to move into the power Intelligent Edge. >> So you're saying, data's foundational, but if you get to the Intelligent Edge, it's dynamic. So you have a dynamic reactive, realtime time series, or presences of data, but you need the foundational pre-data. >> Perfect. >> Is that kind of what you're getting at? >> Yes, that's the first step. Preprocessing analytics is what we do. In the next generation of, we think is going to be Industrial IoT Analytics, we're going to actually put massive amount of compute close to the shop manufacturing floor. We call internally or actually externally, convergent planned infrastructure. And that's the key point, right? >> John: Convergent plan? >> Convergent planned infrastructure, CPI. If you look at in Google, you will find. It's a solution we bring in the market a few months ago. We announce it in December last year. >> Yeah, Antonio's smart. He also had a converged systems as well. One of the first ones. >> Yeah, so that's converge compute at the edge basically. >> Correct, converge compute-- >> Very powerful. >> Very powerful, and we run analytics on the edge. That's the key point. >> Which we love, because that means you don't have to send everything back to the Cloud because it's too expensive, it's going to take too long, it's not going to work. >> Carlo: The bandwidth on the network is much less. >> There's no way that's going to be successful, unless you go to the edge and-- >> It takes time. >> With a cost. >> Now the other thing is, of course, you've got the Aruba asset, to be able to, I always say, joke, connect the windmill. But, Carlo, can we go back to the IoTA example? >> Carlo: Correct, yeah. >> I want to help, help our audience understand, sort of, the new HP, post these spin merges. So perviously you would say, okay, we have Vertica. You still have partnership, or you still own Vertica, but after September 1st-- >> Absolutely, absolutely. It's part of the columnar side-- >> Right, yes, absolutely, but, so. But the new strategy is to be more of a platform for a variety of technology. So how for instance would you solve, or did you solve, that problem that you described? What did you actually deliver? >> So again, as I said, we're, especially in the Industrial IoT, we are an ecosystem, okay? So we're one element of the ecosystem solution. For the oil and gas specifically, we're working with other system integrator. We're working with oil and the industry gas expertise, like DXC company, right, the company that we just split a few days ago, and we're working with them. They're providing the industry expertise. We are a infrastructure provided around that, and the services around that for the infrastructure element. But for the industry expertise, we try to have a kind of little bit of knowledge, to start the conversation with the customer. But again, my role in the strategy is actually to be a ecosystem digital integrator. That's the new terminology we like to bring in the market, because we really believe that's the way HP role is going to be. And the relevance of HP is totally depending if we are going to be successful in these type of things. >> Okay, now a couple other things you talked about in your keynote. I'm just going to list them, and then we can go wherever we want. There was Data Link 3.0, Storage Disaggregation, which is kind of interesting, 'cause it's been a problem. Hadoop as a service, Realtime Everywhere, and then Analytics at the Edge, which we kind of just talked about. Let's pick one. Let's start with Data Link 3.0. What is that? John doesn't like the term data link. He likes data ocean. >> I like data ocean. >> Is Data Link 3.0 becoming an ocean? >> It's becoming an ocean. So, Data Link 3.0 for us is actually following what is going to be the future for HDFS 3.0. So we have three elements. The erasure coding feature, which is coming on HDFS. The second element is around having HDFS data tier, multi-data tier. So we're going to have faster SSD drives. We're going to have big memory nodes. We're going to have GPU nodes. And the reason why I say disaggregation is because some of the workload will be only compute, and some of the workload will be only storage, okay? So we're going to bring, and the customer require this, because it's getting more data, and they need to have for example, YARN application running on compute nodes, and the same level, they want to have storage compute block, sorry, storage components, running on the storage model, like HBase for example, like HDFS 3.0 with the multi-tier option. So that's why the data disaggregation, or disaggregation between compute and storage, is the key point. We call this asymmetric, right? Hadoop is becoming asymmetric. That's what it mean. >> And the problem you're solving there, is when I add a node to a cluster, I don't have to add compute and storage together, I can disaggregate and choose whatever I need, >> Everyone that we did. >> based on the workload. >> They are all multitenancy kind of workload, and they are independent and they scale out. Of course, it's much more complex, but we have actually proved that this is the way to go, because that's what the customer is demanding. >> So, 3.0 is actually functional. It's erasure coding, you said. There's a data tier. You've got different memory levels. >> And I forgot to mention, the containerization of the application. Having dockerized the application for example. Using mesosphere for example, right? So having the containerization of the application is what all of that means, because what we do in Hadoop, we actually build the different clusters, they need to talk to each other, and change data in a faster way. And a solution like, a product like SQL Manager, from Hortonworks, is actually helping us to get this connection between the cluster faster and faster. And that's what the customer wants. >> And then Hadoop as a service, is that an on-premise solution, is that a hybrid solution, is it a Cloud solution, all three? >> I can offer all of them. Hadoop is a service could be run on-premise, could be run on a public Cloud, could be run on Azure, or could be mix of them, partially on-premise, and partially on public. >> And what are you seeing with regard to customer adoption of Cloud, and specifically around Hadoop and big data? >> I think the way I see that option is all the customer want to start very small. The maturity is actually better from a technology standpoint. If you're asking me the same question maybe a year ago, I would say, it's difficult. Now I think they've got the point. Every large customer, they want to build this big data ocean, note the delay, ocean, whatever you want to call it. >> John: Love that. (laughs) >> All right. They want to build this data ocean, and the point I want to make is, they want to start small, but they want to think very high. Very big, right, from their perspective. And the way they approach us is, we have a kind of methodology. We establish the maturity assessment. We do a kind of capability maturity assessment, where we find that if the customer is actually a pioneer, or is actually a very traditional one, so it's very slow-going. Once we determine where is the stage of the customer is, we propose some specific proof of concept. And in three months usually, we're putting this in place. >> You also talked about realtime everywhere. We in our research, we talk about the, historically, you had batchy of interactive, and now you have what we call continuous, or realtime streaming workloads. How prevalent is that? Where do you see it going in the future? >> So I think is another train for the future, as I mentioned this morning in my presentation. So and Spark is actually doing the open-source memory engine process, is actually the core of this stuff. We see 60 to 70 time faster analytics, compared to not to use Spark. So many customer implemented Spark because of this. The requirement are that the customer needs an immediate response time, okay, for a specific decision-making that they have to do, in order to improve their business, in order to improve their life. But this require a different architecture. >> I have a question, 'cause you, you've lived in the United States, you're obviously global, and spent a lot of time in Europe as well, and a lot of times, people want to discuss the differences between, let's make it specific here, the European continent and North America, and from a sophistication standpoint, same, we can agree on that, but there are still differences. Maybe, more greater privacy concerns. The whole thing with the Cloud and the NSA in the United States, created some concerns. What do you see as the differences today between North America and Europe? >> From my perspective, I think we are much more for example take IoT, Industrial IoT. I think in Europe we are much more advanced. I think in the manufacturing and the automotive space, the connected car kind of things, autonomous driving, this is something that we know already how to manage, how to do it. I mean, Tesla in the US is a good example that what I'm saying is not true, but if I look at for example, large German manufacturing car, they always implemented these type of things already today. >> Dave: For years, yeah. >> That's the difference, right? I think the second step is about the faster analytic approach. So what I mentioned before. The Power the Intelligent Edge, in my opinion at the moment, is much more advanced in the US compared to Europe. But I think Europe is starting to run back, and going on the same route. Because we believe that putting compute capacity on the edge is what actually the customer wants. But that's the two big differences I see. >> The other two big external factors that we like to look at, are Brexit and Trump. So (laughs) how 'about Brexit? Now that it's starting to sort of actually become, begin the process, how should we think about it? Is it overblown? It is critical? What's your take? >> Well, I think it's too early to say. UK just split a few days ago, right, officially. It's going to take another 18 months before it's going to be completed. From a commercial standpoint, we don't see any difference so far. We're actually working the same way. For me it's too early to say if there's going to be any implication on that. >> And we don't know about Trump. We don't have to talk about it, but the, but I saw some data recently that's, European sentiment, business sentiment is trending stronger than the US, which is different than it's been for the last many years. What do you see in terms of just sentiment, business conditions in Europe? Do you see a pick up? >> It's getting better, it is getting better. I mean, if I look at the major countries, the P&L is going positive, 1.5%. So I think from that perspective, we are getting better. Of course we are still suffering from the Chinese, and Japanese market sometimes. Especially in some of the big large deals. The inclusion of the Japanese market, I feel it, and the Chinese market, I feel that. But I think the economy is going to be okay, so it's going to be good. >> Carlo, I want to thank you for coming on and sharing your insight, final question for you. You're new to HPE, okay. We have a lot of history, obviously I was, spent a long part of my career there, early in my career. Dave and I have covered the transformation of HP for many, many years, with theCUBE certainly. What attracted you to HP and what would you say is going on at HP from your standpoint, that people should know about? >> So I think the number one thing is that for us the word is going to be hybrid. It means that some of the services that you can implement, either on-premise or on Cloud, could be done very well by the new Pointnext organization. I'm not part of Pointnext. I'm in the EG, Enterprise Group division. But I am fan for Pointnext because I believe this is the future of our company, is on the services side, that's where it's going. >> I would just point out, Dave and I, our commentary on the spin merge has been, create these highly cohesive entities, very focused. Antonio now running EG, big fans, of where it's actually an efficient business model. >> Carlo: Absolutely. >> And Chris Hsu is running the Micro Focus, CUBE Alumni. >> Carlo: It's a very efficient model, yes. >> Well, congratulations and thanks for coming on and sharing your insights here in Europe. And certainly it is an IoT world, IIoT. I love the analytics story, foundational services. It's going to be great, open source powering it, and this is theCUBE, opening up our content, and sharing that with you. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Stay with us for more great coverage, here from Munich after the short break.