>> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain, it's The Cube covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by: Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to HPE Discover, 2017 in Madrid. This is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage, my name is Dave Vellante, I'm here to rap with my co-host, Peter Burris. >> Hey, Dave. >> Dave: Good couple a days. >> Oh, you know what I just discovered. I discovered The Cube is the antidote to jet lag. (laughs) >> That's right, when you get interesting people on. >> Oh, man. >> It pumps you up. >> Totally. Just unbelievable, exciting and it's all framed by... Well let's start where we talked about yesterday, we proposed that increasing what we're seeing in the industry is the new model of computing being established by Amazon and then the other poll, where it was known, we know that it's not all gonna be one cloud, it's not all gonna be a central cloud model, or essentialize cloud model. There's gonna be other places where data's gonna need to be processed. >> Dave: Well, that's what we believe. >> That's what we believe, and... There's physics behind that statement. There's legal regulations about data residency, behind that statement. But, we didn't know who was gonna step up and lead that other side and it's nice to see this conference indicate that HPE is in a position to help demonstrate, or help show the industry how cloud truly can go from centralized down to the edge. >> Yeah, and I think as I said a number of times, the strategy's coming into focus, you could debate it. You could say, "well, splitting it up was the wrong thing to do. "They lost their supply chain." But, Meg's argument, and then Antonio's argument always was, "look, we're gonna be more focused, "it's gonna allow us to do "a better job for our customers. "Yes, we're gonna be service's lead." They didn't say this. "Our margines are gonna be lower, "you don't have software anymore, "but that's okay, we can learn how to make money at that." And you know, the old HPE went through a similar transition. Kinda, got out of the HPEX business and got out of building it's own OS, and relying more on Microsoft and Intel and it made a lot of money. In those days. >> Peter: It did well. >> Did very well. It didn't invest under the herd regime the way it could have or should have and that hurt and then it spun out and made a lot of missteps but... Meg, to her credit, didn't make a lot of missteps. There was the initial entrance into the public cloud, they pulled back fast, they failed fast on that, good. Yeah, maybe there was some organizational issues early on but in general, the acquisitions have been solid, the strategy... >> And well integrated. >> And well integrated, absolutely. >> Peter: They've gotten value out of 'em. >> The strategies has been... I think clear internally, it wasn't always clear externally but they stayed calm about that, they didn't freak out about that. Helped that the stock price was going up a little bit, 'cause it was pretty depressed for a while. >> And shareholders weren't incontestable like they were for many years. >> That's right, and so, that gave them a little bit of time to bring it all together... It's finally here and I think Meg is stepping down at absolutely the right time. >> Or at a... She's stepping down at a good time, she's leaving a company that is much stronger than it was when she took it over. >> And that's what you want, one of the things I'm personally proud of when I left IDC it was in really good shape when I left, it wasn't a mess that I handed to somebody else. Had a lot of messes and IDC that I turned around as you well know. So, I think, I feel as though the company's in good shape and good hands. And, again, I think the... I don't know if you're a stock analyst or if you're pounding the table saying "buy this stock." 'Cause it is a relatively low margin business and there's a lot of competition, there's knife fights out there, it's not a high growth business, but on the flip side, it's clean, it throws off a lot of cash, they got a decent balance sheet and the customers love 'em. >> And that's the most important thing, it's the customers. Look, I... Disclosure, I actually did a significant consulting stint, here at HPE, right around the time of the compact acquisition and I saw what happened and for many years, the senior manager and team of HPE behaved as though they presumed that scale was it's own reward. If we get bigger, we'll find efficiencies, we'll find opportunities. Just being big, is the objective and I think that they have wandered in the desert trying to find those opportunities, that were the consequence of just being big and they never materialized. >> They weren't there. >> They never... It was like mirages on the horizon, they never materialized and I think if there's anything to your point that Meg has successfully done, is she's gotten the company to say, "don't chase the mirages, chase the customer. "Let's come back to what made HPE great for so long." And the idea that, if we stay focused on the customer and focus on technology, we can put them together in unique and interesting ways that will bind us to what customers are doing. And if you take a look at this event and the new messaging, and the things that they're focusing on it feels like, to me, that HPE is no longer wandering in the desert. You and I are smart guys, we are... Typically we can look at a company and we can see whether or not they know what they're doing and when you said, "well, you know what. "Maybe they had it all figured out inside, "and the rest of us couldn't see it." No, that's not the case. It was not figured out inside and that's what we saw but under Meg, it has become increasingly more figured out and the consequence of that... And it's been very, very plan full. She first was figured out and then she told Wall Street and Wall Street was happy with the numbers, and then she figured out and she started talking to customers when customers were there and now she's figuring it out, she's telling a broader market place. >> Well, and when she stopped by- >> And Antonio's got a great big story to tell. >> And both of those guys stopped by to see us. Meg spent 10 minutes with us, we were chatting here on the open mics and she was very good. Meg, one on one situation, in a small crowd is phenomenal. I've always said that about Meg. Not the greatest presence on stage, not a super dynamic speaker, she's not a Steve Jobs, obviously nobody is, but... But, man, is she credible in a one on one situation. One of the things she said to us was, "Y'know, we kinda got lucky..." My words, "with Aruba, we bought him "because we thought we could compete with "Cisco better, we bought him obviously "because it was a great business, a growth business," and boom all of a sudden, this intelligent edge thing hit. You sprinkle in a little Dr. Tom Bradicich and boom, off you go and you've got not only a great business, you got something that is becoming increasingly strategic for organizations. Great example, I mean the nimble acquisition. We heard, yesterday, Bill Philbin talking about, "well, when we got nimble-" was it Bill Philbin, no it was somebody else today it was... Alain Andreoli. He said, "we picked up nimble 'cause it was a great "flash company, but then we saw this inside thing, "we said, wow, we can spread this thing "across our entire portfolio." That's where- >> And the example he gave was: in six months, it's not running on... >> On three par and then it's gonna run... His goal, he says, "I'm not committing to this, "but my goal is by the end of the next year "it's gonna be running across the entire "server and storage and networking line." That would be a major accomplishment. If in fact, we'll see how much of this stuff is actually impactful to the business, how much it can actually save money you know, anticipate failures, I don't know. We'll see, it's AI, it's a perfect application. You guys have written a lot on the Wikibon team about AI for ITOM. >> Oh yeah, look... >> Dave: And this is a good example. >> I'm not the kinda guy, as you know, that gets all excited about technology for technology's sake. I like thinking about technology and how it's gonna be applied, more problems are gonna be solved and so as we, in Wikibon, started running around and getting all excited about AI, my challenge to the guys was: Well, show me the two concrete cases, where it's gonna have a material business impact and one of the most important cases is, it's got a material business impact and how IT runs itself because you cannot... IT cannot reduce the number of people it's got and take on these increasingly complex application, problems, and portfolios unless they get a lot of help and the best, most likely source of that help is by bringing a lot of these new AI technologies that are capable of taking concrete, real time action in response to what's happening within the infrastructure and the applications at any given time. >> Yeah, now... Couple other things, just observations. Ana Pinczuk came on, great leader, woman in tech, big proponent of advancing women's causes, especially in tech. She had mixed feelings about Meg stepping down, obviously you have a woman leader, I thought her comments there were... Were quite interesting, but she said, "But I am up for the challenge "to continue the mission." Which leads me to Antonio. Antonio is outwardly a humble guy, he may have a big ego I don't know, he's been on The Cube a number of times, but he certainly doesn't come across as a guy who's looking to get credit. He's a quiet but very competent leader, he knows the business very well. Really interesting to see what his relationship- >> Peter: Homegrown. >> Homegrown, which is 22 years at HPE, technology background, not a U.S... Born individual, now living in the U.S. obviously. But, somebody with international experience which is always been an attribute that's valued at HPE. Gonna be interesting to see what his relationship is with Wall Street. Will he be sort of a quiet leader that lets the CFO take front and center, which would be fine. Or will he slowly sort of advance, he's not been sitting on the earnings calls. I'm interested to see how he handles it, or he may just say, "you know what, "I'm gonna go execute in the business "and let the results speak for themselves." So, I'm kind of curious as to how that all... All plays out. It's a big job, it's a big role as you pointed out with me the other day. Big role for him, big job for him. Serious opportunities to make a mark in the industry. >> Again, and you raise a really great point. Meg had a very good reputation on Wall Street, the knock on her when she came on, was she didn't know customers. Antonio's got a great reputation with customers, you're asking the question: is he gonna get to know Wall Street? A great CEO has to be able to take care of customers and owners He seems very... Look, this is a, this whole simplification of how they're gonna bring cloud technologies to where their data's gonna require is apparently, based on what we heard, in large part Antonio's brain child. He conceived it, he invested in it, he nurtured it, he took risks for it, he put some skin in the game and now it's coming to fruition, that's great, and he's got customers lining up behind it. We'll see, this is another place where we'll see, but I don't think that there's... There's no reason to suspect, just looking at Antonio's track record, why Wall Street would abandon him. On the contrary, there's reasons to suspect that he will also be able to develop that set of skills that Wall Street needs to do their job. But, clearly this is a guy that's gonna turn on a lot of customers. >> Yeah, and as I say, it's gonna be interesting to see what his relationship, like look at a guy like Frank Slootman, who had a great relationship with Wall Street, everybody loved him 'cause he just performed but he's a hard-driving, in your face kinda guy, who developed close relationships with the street. It's gonna be, as they say, I gotta watch that, to see how Antonio interacts with them. I think it's important to have a relationship with... >> Peter: With your ownership, yeah it usually is. >> And I think that's the one big question mark here is, where has his presence been there but so we'll watch and I'm confident he'll step up to that. Okay. Let's see, The Cube... Next week? Cube-con? >> Peter: Yeah. >> Next week in Austin. Right, so development. You'll see The Cube expanding way beyond it's original infrastructure route, so obviously HPE Discover, big infrastructure show. But we're at Amazon Reinvent this week, it's our big cloud show. We obviously... All the IBM shows are being consolidated into one show called Think. This year The Cube will be there. But CES is gonna be January, we were there last year, likely be there again. Cisco live is on the radar, we're gonna be at Cisco live I think both in Barcelona and most likely in the states this year, so that's another big thing. A lot of developer shows, Docckercon, Kubecon, working with the Linux Foundation, developers are really the lynch pin, developers in cloud. Really big areas of growth. IOT, some IOT conferences that we're gonna be doin' this year. Obviously, our big data heritage we still do a lot of work there, so. It's been an unbelievable year, I think a 125 shows for The Cube. TheCube.net, new website, our new clipper tool, you see the clips that come out, so. A lot of innovation comin' out of Siliconangle Media, check out Siliconangle.com. Peter, the work that your team is doing on the Wikibon side, Wikibon.com. Unbelievable amounts of research that you guys are crackin' out. Digital business, AI, AI for ITOM stuff that we talked about, we still do some stuff in infrastructure, true private cloud. >> New computing architectures, memory based computer architectures. >> So, fantastic work there and... Yeah, so we're looking forward to another great year. Thanks everybody for these last two days, thanks to the crew, great job. Everybody at home. We're out. Dave Vellante for Peter Buriss from Madrid. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)