>> Narrator: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, coming to you from our Palo Alto studios today for a Cube conversation. I'm really excited to have our next guest on. You see them all over on social, a very active community member. And we have not heard from him for a little while, so I'm psyched to have him on. He's Bobby Allen. He is a tech and Cloud evangelist. Bobby, how you doing? >> I'm good, Jeff, how are you? >> Good, so, I'm just to have the obligatory check-in. So, you're getting through this madness of COVID, and family's good, everything's good? >> Yeah, everybody's good. I've got a teen and a twin. They haven't driven us crazy yet. So, so far, everybody's healthy and everybody's good. >> Good, good. So, let's jump into it, Bobby. You know, people talk about Cloud as being, there's a lot of great benefits to Cloud, you know, kind of, cost savings, and agility, and more importantly, really as a driver of innovation which I think most people are kind of late to the party there, they think really more on cost savings versus innovation, but now, it's been around, you know, AWS has been around kind of, broke open the door in terms of public Cloud, and then everything was a public Cloud and not because of public Cloud, and then we have hybrid Cloud and we have multicloud. And now, things are kind of, settling down. So, when you talk to people about Cloud, how should they think about the reality of it once they kind of, leave the trade show and they're getting back to their desk, and they actually have to start implementing some things? >> So, great question, Jeff, First of all, thank you for giving me that opportunity to answer that. This is how I think about Cloud. So, we often talk about Cloud in terms of gym memberships, right? Like going to the Cloud is like buying a gym membership. I actually argue that the Cloud is actually more like weights. If you apply weights to a good form you're going to get stronger, if you apply weights to a bad form you're going to hurt yourself. And what we found is that a lot of these companies, Jeff, are applying Cloud and automation to things that really didn't make a lot of sense. And so, they're wasting more money, they're getting more frustrated, and they're wondering why Cloud was not this magic bullet that just solved everything. It didn't fix world peace and global hunger, and now, they're worse off than they were before. There are a couple of reasons I can go into about that but hopefully, that answers the question at first. We're training the wrong way, Jeff. We're adding weight to things that don't make sense and we're hurting ourselves. >> So, it it just I picked the wrong application or are they operating it in a way as they operated it when it was on-prem? 'Cause the thing I always think of, which is interesting, right? Is everybody always talks about spinning up capacity, right? Spin up capacity. You're running a promotion on the Superbowl, and you're going to have a bunch of people hitting your coupon but they'd never talk about spinning it down. And I went to a really interesting presentation one time where a guy talked about their application. He's like, we like when you turn it off, when you turn off our application, we're not making any money, but it tells that you know, kind of how to operate this thing, which is turn it on, but don't forget to turn it off. And I think, you know, we had a situation on one of our little applications that we left open and let something run and ended up with a bill that we weren't necessarily anticipating, not because we did anything wrong, but we just didn't do the right thing, which was to turn off that particular service when we didn't need it. So, what's the wrong way, what's the wrong exercise? Why are people screwing this up? >> So, I think the problem, Jeff, is actually more upstream. So, my personal mantra for 2020 has been, tech is the easy part, data and behavior are the hard parts. And I think you nailed it, right? That Cloud is only about what you need to buy, not what you need to change, then you're going to be woefully disappointed with the results. And so, when I'm saying go upstream, what I'm finding is, missed expectations, Jeff, sink more projects than bad code broken APIs or large bills? The thing that we're missing is, we're thinking that technology replaces the need to have a conversation. So, for example, when we say we want to do something better in the Cloud, what does better actually mean? So, let's talk about food for a second. Hopefully, I don't make your people hungry 'cause it's around lunchtime. But if we think about Cloud application like a recipe, are we tryna make a mediocre recipe better or make a good recipe at scale, right? 'Cause if you take a nasty recipe and scale it out, you're just going to go broke faster. So, really the question is, which problem are we trying to solve? What is the issue that we're really wrestling with? And so, we need to have a better vocabulary, more descriptive conversations. And so, let me give you one that I often talk to customers about, right? We talk about technical debt a lot of times. And technical debt, Jeff, in my opinion, is being used as a misnomer. So, they're kind of, different sorts of debt that I see often in the C-suite. So, there's technical debt where I don't like what we're running, there's data debt where I don't know what we're running, and there's brain debt where I don't know what we want. And Jeff, I would argue that a lot of things that are masquerading as technical debt in the C-suite are really brain debt. I haven't figured out what we want to do, I haven't thought about what we're willing and able to change. And so, that's why the Cloud is a disappointment because we haven't figured out what we want for lunch. (laughs) >> So, it's a classic like people process technology program, you know, problem. And we hear about it all the time, right? And everyone loves to focus on the technology. I haven't heard it really explained that well, but that's what you're saying. It's like, we'll just jump to that part so we don't have to actually ask the hard questions, right? And the thing that makes me think of it when you talked about that is it's kind of like the whole data aggregation problem and all the big data adventures when half the time people don't know what data is where, so, even just going through the exercise of cataloging, finding, organizing, cleansing, all that kind of stuff before you really start to think about what can you do with the big data project? You got to get the baseline down before you can get into the fancy stuff. Sounds kind of like, what you're talking about. >> You nailed it, Jeff. And I'm actually going to piggyback on something you said. This is actually the problem that I think we're wrestling with in Cloud and in life. There it is, right? And we're got to put a fine point in it for the listeners. We are struggling, Jeff, with how to evaluate better versus different. And so, what Cloud has done more importantly, Cloud has shortened the amount of time that we're willing to spend on something before we just start over again. And so, the question that we wrestle with is, do I need to do the same thing a little bit differently? Do I need to tweak it or is there something better that's come along where I need to throw everything away, start all over again, and wipe the slate clean. And so, here's what ends up happening, right? The challenge that we have building on that is how we choose, Jeff, is more important than what we choose because a lot of us are making choices but we're not developing a framework to choose in a world where different things are pushed at us really every day and every night, right? Amazon and Azure are changing literally thousands of things every night. And if I feel like there's something new out there, I have to understand, is this noise, or is this something I pay attention to? Is this a size for a project or is this something that helps my value? If you don't have a way to choose, Jeff, every new option is going to just lead to more confusion and more decommitment. >> Right, well, I mean, you raised a really interesting point which is how do CIOs keep up with all this stuff? I mean, how do they possibly keep the lights on, you know, run digital transformation, kind of, keep up with the, Lord knows, how many changes like you said, get made at Amazon every single day I mean, the feature set when Andy stands on stage at re-invent and lists all the services. I think he's using like a two-and-a-half point font on a 200 foot video screen. I mean, there's so much there. So, how do you help people take a step back from, it's like driving, you know, a car with headlights through snow at night. You know, it's just like kuchu chu chu. How do you help people take a step back and be a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intentional, a little bit more circumspect to lay a good foundation which is going to be what the rest of the house is built on. If you don't have it, it's just going to crumble, if you have it, then at least you have a chance of success. How do you help guide them and get out of that snow storm? >> So, I'm going to give you a new acronym, Jeff, but I think it starts with humility. It starts with us admitting that we don't have this all figured out yet. I often tell a lot of customers, Cloud is that best a teenager that just learned how to drive. And Cloud similar to teenagers, the ability of what it can do is, kind of, in conflict with what it can comprehend in terms of unintended consequences. And so, if Cloud is changing all the time, let's not talk about, we crushed it, we nailed it, we knocked it out of the park. Let's raise our hand and say, you know what? I humbly need some help, because here's what we do, Jeff. In this industry, we throw around acronyms and terms all the time. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BDaaS, DBaaS, whatever. I'm going to introduce the term CaaS, but that's not containers as a service job. I think what we're getting is confusion as a service. (laughs) There's so many things that are changing that people are overwhelmed but because we want to act so much like we're crushing it on social media, we really need to say, I need help, I can't do this in a spreadsheet anymore. Please are there solutions out there that can help me automate some of this stuff so that I'm not a victim of my own ignorance. So, humility, right? Embrace other people that have solved some of this problem before, somebody has solved this problem. There are companies out there that are taking in the data, that are automating the decision-making, and that can help you, right? Bring people in, bringing outside help. >> Right, well, the other piece you just talked on is automation, and it goes back to your earlier comment about, you know, scale, bad things at scale are not good. So, if you don't get things dialed in now, and you start applying automation, and you start applying machine speed, you know, then things can get really squirrely really quick. So, that's even another kind of, you know, danger zone coming ahead, start to plan and make sure you've got your stuff organized or now you're going to automate it at machine speed, IOT, 5G, and really run things ragged super quickly. >> Jeff, I agree a hundred percent with that. I want to go back to something you talked about before. People process technology. I want to tweak that. I think we really need to evolve into people, process, product, or people, process, problem. It's got to go back to what am I creating or what am I solving this helping someone? And the technology is something that I will use or not if that helps me meet that outcome. But as technologists, Jeff, a lot of us are getting lazy. I want to play with Kubernetes. I want to play with containers. I want to play with serverless. I want to play with IOT. Who is that actually solving a problem for? Is what we've got to come back to because if I'm not doing that, the less you submit that I'm playing with this, but I'm not really making something better for a customer or adding more value to the business. >> So, again, what are your tips and tricks? 'Cause things are not going to get less complicated, right? As we've talked about Amazon's rolling out new services all the time. Google is really starting, you know, Google Cloud is really starting to rage. Obviously, Satya has done an amazing job with Microsoft, and then there's Oracle Cloud and IBM Cloud, and all these secondary Clouds, Equinix, and that acceleration is only going up. So, how do you, you know encourage people, coach people, tell people to make sure that they're taking a step back and being organized and thoughtful, and not just racing ahead at the next bright shiny object? >> So, great question again, Jeff. I think people have to have to be careful that just because you hear about something a lot doesn't mean it's proven to scale. Social media is dangerous in the sense that we think that we hear something a hundred times then a means that is polished. And I think that as enterprises and as businesses, you know, go with something that's proven, but dip a toe in the water, if you're not sure about it. So, maybe you are experimenting with some things in DevTests, but here's some practical tips that I'll give. Three things, right? I recommend that people typically start here with Cloud strategy, the three D's of data are what I recommend people begin with. Don't begin with the widgets, the shiny objects, begin with data storage, begin with data transport and begin with data organization. We know that data is the lifeblood of the enterprise, right? That's what all of us are focused on right now, right? Data is collected from watches, from websites, from things like self-driving cars, eventually. So, how is my data going to be stored? 'Cause that's the most important part of likely what we're doing as a corporation. How is it going to be transported? Am I okay with spending X amount of dollars on Egress? Do I have latency issues? And then when it comes to data organization, databases, data warehouses, data lakes, I would start with my philosophy, Jeff, on how I plan to leverage that information across any of the multi or hybrid providers that I plan to spin up, because if I start with the data that connects me better to the customer, how am I going to leverage this data then make something better for them? And then any venue honestly, Jeff, that I choose to execute in we'll have tools and utilities and packages that I can leverage to make something better for someone. >> The piece you didn't mention though, was the application. So, where's the application? Say you still start with the data foundationally, and then go to the application or? >> Yes. >> But most of the initiatives driven kind of, at the application level layer? >> They are, and I'm glad you mentioned that. So, practically speaking, let me go down a level to double-click on stuff. Well, people want to be Cloud native, right? 'Cause we don't want to run servers. We don't want to run boxes, we don't even really want to do VMS anymore. One thing that I recommend, that I believe is high reward and low risk is that people strongly consider adopting database as a service, and this is the reason why. It gives us a format to go to something that's Cloud native that doesn't have to be totally rewritten. So, the juice is worth the squeeze there because I'm reducing labor, I'm reducing maintenance, I'm reducing cycles, the DBaaS that people like that have to do, but I'm not paying to refactor an application. Where we struggle, Jeff, and maybe this is another topic, we really struggle with the value of applications, and because we don't know the value of an app, we're using the cost of an app as a proxy. And so, if you don't know the value of something, you're always going to be at risk of over or under improving it. This is why I like database as a service. I can be more nimble, I can reduce labor, and I'm not rewriting an application and spending more to rewrite it than the app is worth. If I totally refactor, or if I totally replatform, the cost may outstrip the value. DBaaS is almost always a slam dunk, 'cause I'm going to reduce manual things that my people are doing that freeze them up, to focus more on customers and evolve in the end. That's what I see pretty consistently in the enterprise. >> That is really scary. That statement that you said that people don't necessarily know the value of the app and using cost as a proxy is not good. You know, I had Butch Rizzo on recently, and he did a study on, you know, trying to figure out the value of data, versus the the value of an app. And he did some research of that UCSF, and what they did is they basically said the value of the data is dependent on the business process that you can improve, or the business project that you want to do. You make an estimate as to what the ROI in that process is, and then you basically see if it's worthwhile to do. And that case and point was, you know, running a promotion at Chipola 'cause bill loves Chipola, but he had a real concrete way that, you know, if we can increase sales at the target stores by, you know, 10%, or we can increase the average ticket by 20 cents or we can increase the average number of items ordered by 0.5 or whatever. So, you know, real far metrics that tie back to real numbers, that tie back to value that you can make an assessment of that project, and that project is enabled by data. So, I hope people are doing that far applications 'cause cost is not the way to figure out value >> The challenge that we have, Jeff, when we look at a lot of the things in the Cloud, there's a big difference between if I have "big C" customers, someone who's literally pulling out a wallet or a credit card to pay for my service or product versus "little C" customers like internally. If I'm paying for a streaming service, and the cost of the streaming service goes up the value of that's likely also going up because I'm serving more big C customers. If the cost of a password reset manager goes up and internal application that nobody was likely paying for, and that's really the dilemma that a lot of folks have in the enterprise, Jeff. Am I going to take something that has limited value like a password application, and put it in a place that can have unlimited spend. Now, if I'm a Netflix or Disney plus, if my spend is going up, my value is going up because I'm serving more big C people that are going to pull out their credit card and give me money. So, a lot of the struggle is when we drill down into this in the enterprise is the people that have the little C customers that don't have anybody paying them 'cause they're tryna understand this is like funny money in our houses job. My kids are teenagers. If I was to charge them, right? For room and board or for dinner, they don't have any money. So, the value of what they think about my cooking on the weekend, right? It's hard to put a value on that because they're not paying me, but if I had a food truck, it's easy to put a value on that, are people buying it or not? So, again, the challenges between internal or external customers and asked me to get any things I charged back and show back, we need a model to understand, is this something that you're tolerating or something that you're actually choosing and are you willing to spend money on it? >> Yeah, and it's a complicated issue, right? Because the other thing is you'd say, you take this conversation over to the security space, which I always find fascinating 'cause investigating security is kind of like investing in insurance and you can't use all your money to insure everything a hundred percent or else you just, why would you even do it? But you have to have some, and it's not a real clear ROI, but the potential downside is pretty huge. So, it's this kind of, balancing act, as you said, it's not really clean as to what the true value of that is unless you tie it back to some specific event, a breach, you know, some type of pins getting stolen, et cetera. So, these are not hard questions, but it's funny 'cause they're not technology questions, right? They're business value questions, and they're priority questions, and they're trade off questions. That's the other thing, right? You don't have infinite resources. So, even if you solve the model here you need to solve it within a portfolio of challenges, opportunities to then, as you said, you know, kind of rank order, where do you spend that next version of dollar? 'Cause it really can have a very a huge difference on the return. >> Okay, I think if I was going to give a, maybe a final piece of advice to the audience, Jeff, it would be to not confuse planning and analysis. That's something that I've talked about before. There's a big difference between those two things, and I often use the analogy of tax planning versus tax preparation. Jeff, when we collect our receipts, and our W-2s and 1099s, and go to our CPA at the beginning of the next year, we can't call that tax planning. That's tax preparation. It's already kind of done and dusted as long as you don't mess it up, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. And the enterprise is doing a lot of analysis and a lot of preparation, but really we need to do more planning. We need to look at the tools and the companies that are helping us simulate and plan for the future that's coming because then when we're talking about it, right? When you're sitting with your CPA and you're saying, what if I do this with my retirement or 401k, or real estate assets, when they can talk to you about what might happen, right? You're not in crisis, it's not a fire drill, it's not a dumpster fire, you can have a very easy conversation around the pros and cons of that. So, I think that's one thing we really have to embrace is press ahead, talk to those consultants and those solution providers, is this really planning or is this just analysis? Is this looking backwards or is it really looking forward and giving me some insight into the things that are coming so that I feel smarter going into the next season? >> And the opportunity to make a change before you hit December 31st. I mean, I think that's a really great analogy. Well, Bobby, a lot of great stuff squeezed in in a few short minutes, it's super fun to catch up, and I just love all your analogies and your stories because at the end of the day, it is about people, and it's about priorities, and it's about business, it's not about the technology. So, thank you so much for sharing your insight. >> Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> Oh, absolutely, all right. He's Bobby Allen, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto studio. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (bright music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP. Discover Virtual experience Brought to you by HP. >>Welcome to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover 2020 Virtual Experience. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm pleased to be joined by two guests from HP longtime partner Tech Data. We have calling Blair the vice president of sales and marketing of I. O. T. And Data Solutions and David Smith, H P E Pre Sales Field Solutions are common. And David, Welcome to the Cube. Thanks, Lisa. Great to see. So let's start with the calling. HP and Technical have been partners for over 40 years, but tell our audience a little bit about tech data before we get into the specifics of what you're doing and some of the cool I o. T. Stuff with HP. I >>think that the Tech data is a Fortune 100 distributor. We continued to evolved to be a solutions aggregator in these next generation technology businesses. As you've mentioned, we've been serving the I T distribution markets globally for for 40 plus years, and we're now moving into next generation technologies like Wild Analytics, I O. T and Security bubble Lifecycle Management services. But to be able todo position ourselves with our customer base and the needs of their clients have. So I'm excited to be here today to talk a little bit about what we're doing in I, O. T. And Analytics with David on the HPC side >>and in addition to the 40 plus years of partnership calling that you mentioned that Detected and HP have you've got over 200 plus hp. Resource is David, you're one of those guys in the field. Talk to us about some of the things that you're working on with Channel Partners Table David to enable them, especially during such crazy times of living and now >>absolutely, absolutely so. What we can do is we can provide strong sales and technical enablement if your team, for example, wants to better understand how to position HP portfolio if they require assistance and architect ing a secure performance i o t. Solution. We can help ensure that you're technical team is fully capable of having that conversation, and it's one that they're able to have of confidence, weaken validate the proposed HP solutions with the customers, technical requirements and proposed use case. We can even exist on a customer calls, if it would, would benefit our partner to kind of extend out to that. We also have a a a deep technical bench that Colin can speak to in the OT space toe lean on as well. For so solution is that kind of span into the space beyond where HP typically operates, which would be edge, compute computing and network. Sic security. >>Excellent call and tell me a little bit about Tech Data's investments in I o. T. When did this start? What are you guys doing today? >>Sure, we started in the cloud space. First tackle this opportunity in data center modernization and hybrid cloud. That was about seven years ago. Shortly thereafter we started investing very materially in the security cyber security space. And then we follow that with Data Analytics and then the Internet of things. Now we've been in those spaces with our long term partners for some time. But now that we're seeing this movement to the intelligent edge and a real focus on business outcomes and specialization, we've kind of tracked with the market, and we feel like we've invested a little bit ahead of where the channel is in terms of supporting our ecosystem of partners in this space. >>So the intelligent edge has been growing for quite some time. Poland in the very unique times that we're living in in 2020 how are you seeing that intelligent edge expand even more? And what are some of the pressing opportunities that tech data and HPC i O T solutions together can address? >>So a couple. So the first is a Xai mentioned earlier just data center modernization. And so, in the middle of code 19 and perhaps postcode 19 we're going to see a lot of clients that are really focused on monetizing the things that they've got. But doing so to drive business outcomes. We believe that increasingly, the predominance of use cases and compute and analytics is going to move to the edge. And HP has got a great portfolio for not just on premise high performance computing but also hybrid cloud computing. And then when we get into the edge with edge line and networking with Aruba and devices that need to be a digitized and sense arised, it's a really great partnership. And then what we're able to do also, Lisa, is we've been investing in vertical markets since 2000 and seven, and I've been a long the ride with that team, most all of that way. So we've got deep specialization and healthcare and industrial manufacturing, retail and then public sector. And then the last thing we've kind of turned on here recently just last month is a strategic partnership in the smarter cities space. So we're able to leverage a lot of those vertical market capabilities. Couple that with our HP organization and really drive specialized repeatable solutions in these vertical markets, where we believe increasingly, customers are going to be more interested in a repeatable solutions that can drive quick proof of value proof of concepts with minimal viable what kinds of products. And that's that's kind of the apartment today with RHB Organization and the HP Corporation >>David. Let's double click into some of those of vertical markets that Colin mentioned some of the things that pop into minor healthcare manufacturing. As we know, supply chains have been very challenged during covered. Give us an insight into what you're hearing from channel partners now virtually, but what are some of the things that are pressing importance? >>So from a pressing and important to Collins exact point, and your exact point as well is really it's all about the edge computing space now from a product perspective Azaz Colin had mentioned earlier. HP has their edge line converged systems, which is kind of taking the functionality of OT and edge T Excuse me of OT and I t and combine it into a single edge processing compute solution. You kind of couple that with the ability to configure components such as Tesla GP, use in specific excellent offerings to offer an aid and things like realtime, video processing and analytics. Uh, and a perfect example of this is, ah so for dissing and covert space. If if I need to be able to analyze a group of people to ensure they're staying as far apart as possible or, you know within self distant guidelines, that is where kind of the real time that's like an aspect of things can be taken advantage of same things with with the leveraging cameras where you could actually take temperature detection as as well, so it's really kind of best to think of Edge Lines Solutions is data center computing at the edge kind of transition into the Aruba space. Uh Rubio says offerings aid in the island Security is such a clear pass device inside, which allows for device discovery of network and monitoring of wired and wireless devices. There's also Aruba asset tracking and real time location of solutions, and that's particularly important in the healthcare space as well. If I have a lot of high value assets, things like wheelchairs, things like ventilation devices, where these things low located within my facilities and how can I keep keep track of them? They also, and by that I mean HP. They also kind of leveraging expanse ecosystem of partners. As an example, they leverage thing works allow their i o t solutions as well, when you kind of tying it all together with HP Point. Next to the end, customers provided with comprehensive loyalty solution. >>So, Colin, how ready? Our channel partners and the end user customers to rapidly pivot and start either deploying more technologies at the edge to be able to deliver some of the capabilities that David talked about in terms of analytics and sensors for social distancing. How ready are the channel partners and customers to be able to understand, adopt and execute this technology. >>So I think on the understanding side, I think the partners are there. We've been talking about digital transformation in the channel for a couple of years now, and I think what's happened through the 19 Pandemic is that it's been a real spotlight on the need for those business outcomes to to solve for very specific problems. And that's one of the values that we serve in the channel. So we've got a solution offering that we call our solution factory. And what we do really says is we leverage a process to look outside the industry. At Gartner, Magic Quadrant Solutions forced a Wave G two crowd. You know, top leaders, visionaries and understand What are those solutions that are in demand in these vertical markets that we talked about? And then we do a lot of work with David and his team internally in the HP organization to be able to do that and then build out that reference architectures so that we know that there's a solution that drives a bill of materials and a reference architecture that's going to work that clients are going to need and then we can do it quickly. You know, Tech data. Everything's about being bold, acting now getting scale. And we've got a large ecosystem partners that already have great relationships. So we pride ourselves on being able to identify what are those solutions that we can take to our partners that they can quickly take to their end users where you know we've We've kind of developed out what we think the 70 or 80% of that solution is going to look like. And then we drive point next and other services capabilities to be able to complete that last mile, if you will, of some of the customization. So we're helping them. For those who aren't ready, we're helping them. For those who already have very specific use cases and a practice that they drive with repeatable solutions were coming alongside them and understanding. What can we do? Using a practice builder approach, which is our consultative approach to understand where our partners are going in the market, who their clients are, what skill sets do they have? What supplier affinities do they want to drive? What brand marketing or demand generation support do they need? And that's where we can take some of these solutions, bring them to bear and engage in that consultative engagement to accelerate being ready as, as you rightly say, >>so tech. It has a lot of partners. You in general. You also have a lot of partners in the i o T space calling What? How do you from a marketing hat perspective? How do you describe the differentiation that Tech data and HP ease Iot solutions delivered to the channel to the end user? >>A couple of different things? I think that's that's differentiation. And that's one of the things that we strive for in the channel is to be specialized and to be competitively differentiated. And so the first part, I say to all of my team, Lisa, is you know, whether it's our solution consultants or our technical consultants, our solutions to the developers or the software development team that works my organization. Our goal is to be specialized in such a way that we're having relevant value added conversations not only our channel partners, but also end users of our partners want to bring us into those conversations, and many do. The next is really education and enablement as you would expect. And so there's a lot of things that are specialized in our technical. We drive education certification programs, roadshows, seminars, one of the things that we're seeing a lot of interest now. Lisa is for a digital marketing, and we're driving. Some really need offerings around digital marketing platforms that not only educate our partners but also allow our partners to bring their end users and tour some of this some of these technologies. So whether it's at our Clearwater office, where we've got an I. O T. Solution center, that we we take our partners and their clients through or we're using our facilities Teoh to do executive briefings and ideation as a service that, you know, kind of understanding the art of the possible. With both our resellers and their clients work, we're using our solution. Our solution catalogs that we've built an interactive pdf that allows our partners to understand over 50 solutions that we've got and then be able to identify. Where would they like to bring in David and his team and then my consultants to do that, that deep planning on business development, uh, that we talked about a little bit earlier. >>So the engagement right now is maybe even more important than it has been in a while because it's all hands off and virtual David. Talk to me about some of the engagement and the enablement piece that call and talked about. How are you able to really keep a channel partner and their end user customers engaged and interested in what you're able to deliver through this from New Virtual World? >>That's a great, great question. And we work in conjunction with our marketing teams to make sure that as new technologies and quite in I O. T space as well as within the HP East base as well that that our channel partners are educated and aware that these solutions exist. I know for a fact that for the majority of them you kind of get this consistent bombardment of new technology. But being able to actually have someone go out and explain it and then being able to correspondingly position it's use case and it's functionality and why it would provide value for your end customer is one of the benefits of tech data ads to kind of build upon that previous statement. The fact that We have such a huge portfolio of partners, so you kind of have HP and the edge compute space. But we have so many different partners in the OT space where it's really just a phone call, an email, a Skype message, a way to have that conversation around interoperability and then provide those responses back to our partners. >>Excellent. One more question before we go. Colin for you, A lot of partners. Why HP fry Mt. >>So a couple of reasons? One of the one of the biggest reasons as HP is just a great partner. And so when you look at evaluating I. O. T solutions that tend to be pretty comprehensive in many cases, Lisa it takes 10 or 12 partners to complete a really i o t solution and address that use case that that's in the field. And so when you have a partner like HP who's investing in these programs, investing in demand generation, investing in the spectrum of technology, whether it's hybrid Cloud Data Center, compute storage or your edge devices and Iot gateways, then to be able to contextualize those into what we call market ready solutions in each one of these vertical markets where there's references and there's use cases. And there were coupling education that specific rest of solutions. You know HP can do all of those things, and that's very important. Because in this new world, no one can go it alone anymore. It takes it takes partnerships, and we're all better together. And HP really does embrace that philosophy. And they've been a great partner for us in the Iot space. >>Excellent. Well, Colin and David, thank you so much for joining me today on the Cube Tech data. H p e i o t better together. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking with you. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. Lisa. >>And four Collet and David. I am Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube's virtual coverage of HP Discover 2020. Thanks for watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.