>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP Discover. Virtual experience Brought to you by HP >>Everybody welcome back to the Cube's continuous coverage of Discover 2020. That virtual experience. The Cube has been been virtualized really excited to have Marissa Freeman here. She's the chief brand officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And, of course, he joined by Jim Jackson. Who's the CMO of HP? Guys, Great to see you Wish we were face to face. But thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >>Great to be here. Hope that you and your family and your friends are safe and well, >>and we're back at you both. Jim, let me start with you. So, uh, this kind of got dumped on you with this pandemic. Different mindset. You have to do a bit flip to goto virtual you talk about some of the things that you focused in on some of the things you want to keep. And some of the things you knew you couldn't. And you had to do things differently. >>Yeah, You know, we pretty much had to rethink everything about this event platforms, how we thought about messaging, how we thought about content. Um audience acquisition demos, really everything. And for us, it really all boiled down to having a vision. And our vision was to bring the Discover experience, all that energy, the excitement that you get the in person event. We wanted to bring that to all of our customers and our partners and our team members around the world. So for us, it wasn't about virtualized discover. It was about bringing the Discover experience to a 12 inch screen. In many cases for our customers and our partners and our team members, I think another thing that was really eye opening for us. Waas thinking of opening up the aperture and thinking, Hey, we can now take this and drive. This is the true global events and we can reach people all over the world, reach customers and partners that can't come to discover because they can't physically come to the event. That was a couple of things that really we had to put a lot of thought into, and it was really exciting for us. I think one other thing is now customers, and how we think about their experience at the event became very, very important for us because you know, at an in person event, it's three days, and we can you know, there's a lot of things people can do, but you have three days of content, and then people move on for us. Now. Our customers might go through three weeks or three months, and we really needed to think about that experience in a very simple, seamless, easy way for them so that they could to consume the content digitally in a way that made the most sense for them. So a lot of new thinking for us. But we're really excited about the opportunities that virtual brings in that digital brings >>now immerse. So I gotta ask you so No, no meter boards at least know for a physical meter boards, you know, How did you think about continuing that branding in a virtual event? >>Well, it's, uh, it's really a beautiful experience when you look at the the intro of the platform that we're on. It's beautifully branded all the way throughout. The branding is really coming through, though, in the content, um, and in the people, So we always say, Jim and I always say every year, Gosh, if we could just have every estimate on every prospect come to discover they would see our brand come to life they would feel are our purpose. They would understand, just with a new and different energized and fully charged a company, we are they would get to meet Antonio and Security. And Liz and Jennifer Income are honored and Jim and feel for themselves, uh, the power of the company. And now everyone can So the brand really is coming to life through the people. I appreciate that you love the the beautiful graphics, and we work really hard. Um, I'm all of that stuff, Sure, but the real branding is in the content itself. So >>now, Jim asses. Well, you were kind of lucky in the sense that, you know, this show wasn't in March or April. You had some time. So to see what others were doing. And you saw early on when this thing first hit, there were some the missteps there, There's there, still are even. But So what do you What do you tell people that is really unique about the Discover virtual experience? >>Yeah, I think a couple things and you're right. We did have a little more runway, and that was to our advantage. But we feel like we've taken full advantage of it. I think the first is coming back to that global experience that I talked about. So we're delivering this on 10 different with translating into 10 different languages, and that makes it easy for people to consume our key content around the world. We're truly delivering our content on time zones that are very appropriate, or our customers and our partners again, all around the world, in different Geos, we're bringing in our geo MVS where they are now having geo lounges, um, specific addresses and other things locally that really enables us to have that local experience. But derive it is making it part of a global event. I think another thing, Dave and you've been Teoh Discover. But you've seen that amazing Discover Expo Hall that we have out there with, you know, literally thousands of people and lots of demos. We had to figure out How do we bring that to a a ah, digital or a virtual experience? And I think the teams have done just an amazing job here. So what we did is we have 61 demos, and this is part of really 150 sessions. But if you just think of demos, we're going to deliver these live over 1717 100 times the first week. That's really, really powerful. This is >>live, meaning >>somebody from HP, a subject matter expert, talking to our customers, answering questions in real time. So that's unique. I think another thing that we're doing is we're not stopping after the first week. The first week is going to be extremely powerful and we can't wait for it. And but, you know, we're gonna extend, if you will, the value we're gonna double click and follow on Wave focused on SMB. Focus on software and containers for more of a developer, audience, Cloud services and other things like that, as well as data and storage. And then finally, I'll say, You know, we're really excited about the great speakers that we have Marissa >>talks >>about. You know, Antonio Qwerty, Irv etcetera. But we've got some great outside speakers as well. Lewis Hamilton from Mercedes Formula 16 time Formula One champion Simone Biles, uh, who's Olympian and world champion, 25 medals. We've got Steve Kerr and they're going to be part of a panel talking about performing under pressure, and we're all doing that. But it's gonna be again a great story we've got, um, John Chambers is going to be joining Antonio and talking about what great companies do during a crisis and how they prepare to come out of this kind of a situation to deliver better solutions to their customers. Soledad O Brien, who is moderating, are women leaders in I t session, and this is one of our most powerful sessions. In fact, Marissa is part of that as well. So we're really excited about this, the amount of things that we were able to bring together. And of course, we also have our CEO Summit and our Global Partner Summit happening at the same time. So we've got a lot of things that we've been able to coordinate all of this and really think about the experience from a digital in a virtual expect perspective to make it great for our customers and our partners and our attendees. A >>lot of rich content layers. Yeah. So what if you could talk about that here here to help Sort of the cultural aspects of that. What it means to your customers, your clients, your employees and your just broader community. >>Well, you know, Dave one when covert first hit the United States, we We had a lot of social media out there, a lot of digital media out there. And even before it came to the United States, when Italy and China were really suffering, we gathered as a team and audited every piece of content that we had pulled all back in. I met daily Jim and I and Jennifer temples. Teams met daily to talk about what is our tone of voice? What are we saying? How are we helping our customers get through? This time we knew how difficult it was for us with business continuity, remote workforce, we needed to help our customers and let them know that we were at the ready right now to help. So we chose to speak through the voices of our leaders. Antonio did several blocks and videos, and we rallied and redid the website completely to be all about over response and how we had many solutions for our cost. Most implement immediately from $2 billion financing Teoh setting up remote workforces, too, doing WiFi in parking lots and turning ships into hospitals. It ran the gamut, Um, and so it was really important to us that we conveyed a message of here to help. Ultimately, we ended up doing a television commercial. Antonio's voice. It was a personal letter from Antonio to his fellows, business leaders and engineers and said, Look, we know what you're going through. We're going through it ourselves. We're here to help. Here's how and it's been really motivating and successful and joy and driving people to find out more about what HP could do to help. So >>I would just add >>to what >>Murtha said. She outlined it really well. But we have some great customer examples and great customer stories as well. They're very emotional talking about how customers really needed our help and our combination of technology. People really came together to enable them to get their businesses up and running, or to address a pain point or problem for their audiences. The first point you know, there's the concept of here to help with the recovery and then here to help with the transformation as well as they look to the future. >>So how are you guys thinking about just sort of growth marketing strategies, branding strategies not only for HP but in the spirit of helping customers in this post isolation economy. Merson. Maybe you could start start us off. >>Well, we we've been talking about how this crisis has brought the future forward, nor our doorsteps. So where our customers may have been on a digital transformation path and they were accelerating it. Now there's there's an impetus to do it right now. So whether you're in recovery, um, or whether you're one of the customers for whom this crisis created a surge of demand and you needed to scale way up, these are the moments of transformation that our company is. Is there to help you with Jim? Do you want to build on that? >>Now? I think you hit the highlights there, Marissa, you know, again for us, I think we wanted to just be authentic and true to who we are as a company. And, you know, our purpose is to advance the way people live and work. And I think we live that during this time and will continue to live that as we go forward. It it's really core to who we are. And what we saw is that many of our customers really valued the fact that when they needed us the most, we were there for them and we were there for them all around the world. And, um, you know, and our goal is to continue to do that and continue to delight them and to be the best transformation partner for the future. >>I mean, culturally, we obviously re observe all this stuff, but culturally, you kind of be kind of had a heads down approach to all of this. I mean, there was there was not a hint of ambulance chasing in what you got. How you guys approach this. So I mean, I think I think culturally that here to help message it seemed like a very strong roots in citizenship. Um, you know, And then, of course, with social uprising, respect for individuals that seemed to shine through. I don't know. I know versus deliberate or that's just again cultural. Maybe >>it's it's all of the above. You can't change who you are and we need at Hewlett Packard Enterprise are people who care about other people our purpose. As Jim said, Our purpose is to advance the way people live in or every one of us every day gets up and goes to work or goes to work at home at HP to do just that. That is who we are. And so it would be an authentic for I think, true to this crisis in any other way. >>I think I wanna make an observation and see if you guys to respond. So we always talk about technology disruptions. Mercy you mentioned about, you know, the future was put forward. I'm sure you've seen the wrecking ball. You know, the folks in the building, the executives very complacent. A digital transformation not in my day. And in the 19 wrecking bald covert 19 survey, you probably saw that Who's who's leading your digital transformation CEO CTO or Covert 19. But it's really now. I mean, if you're not digital, you're not doing business. So but my observation is that it seems like despite all this technology that global disruptions are going to probably have a bigger impact in this coming decade, whether it's pandemics of social upheaval, of natural disasters, etcetera. But technology can play a huge role in supporting us through those things. Jim, I wonder if you have any thoughts on that comment. >>I mean, I think it's it's a great question, you know, if you think about it, What what happened with the macro economy Cove? It It's been a catalyst for, I think, everybody to understand that they needed to really accelerate their digital transformation. And, more importantly, they need a partner who can help them on that journey as well. I mean, if you just look at what we're talking about here >>with >>this event, right, most of h p e. And, um, you know, our >>competitors to >>cancel their virtual events >>are canceled their physical >>events rather, and they're moving now to a digital event in any way. This is going to be the new normal for us, right? So I think as we go >>forward, we're gonna >>see this only continue to accelerate. And for us, you know, our edge to cloud platform as a service strategy plays really well to helping customers accelerate that digital transformation. And, you know, it just kind of comes back to what Marissa said. You know, here to help is very very HP in terms of it's authentic and it's here. We want to be here to help our customers in their biggest hour of need. And we're doing everything we can and will continue to do that for the future as well. >>Versus, you know, having done many, many discovers we've noticed over the last several years you guys made a much bigger emphasis on the sort of post discover which a lot of organizations don't have a big physical event, and it's sort of on to the next thing. And how do you see the post from a branding standpoint? Messaging, etcetera. How do you see taking advantage of that from a virtual standpoint? And what have you learned? >>Well, we've been on our own digital transformation journey, and, you know, through Jim's leadership, we have built a pretty serious digital engine, which allows us to have a personal relationship with the customer, meet them where they are on their terms. For example, with this platform, it's even using your now because we we actually will know what content would see what sessions, what demos someone interested in. Maybe they put it, you know, on their schedule, and then didn't get to do it. So we'll go back to them later and say, Hey, we saw that you wanted to do this. It's still here. Why don't you come and have a look and then watch to that We do sort of the Netflix engine, the been newsworthy playlist of If you like that, you like this. And if you like this, you like that and we bring them through the breadcrumbs all the way through. And it's a self directed journey, but we're there to help. And that is really the true power of digital is to have that interaction, that conversation with the customer and where they want to be and with what they want to learn and read about. We'll see. >>Yeah, And everything, of course, is instrumented gym. We'll give you the last word and you were involved, as was Marissa in sort of the new HP. The new branding and the whole purpose of that was really to get Hewlett Packard enterprise focus and really back to sort of the roots of innovation. And I wonder if you could comment on from a strategy standpoint, innovation and from a competitive standpoint, you know where you're at over the last several years, we've obviously transformed as a company and where you see your competitive posture going forward. >>Yeah, you know, for us, um, we're so excited about this event because this is a great opportunity for us to showcase progress against our edge to cloud platform as a service strategy, and we roll this out last year. It's differentiated. It's unique in the marketplace. It demonstrates the transformation happening across as a service and software at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. So we are a company in transition, aligned to what we feel, our companies, our customers, biggest pain points. And when you look at some of the acquisitions that we've made some of the organic investments that we've done, we're just very well positioned to deliver against, you know, some very unique pain points that our customers have. Plus, I think another thing is, at the end of the day, really, what our customers are saying is, help me take all this data and translate that data into insight and that insight into action. You're going to hear us talk about the age of insight and how we're really again unifying across edge the cloud to deliver that for our customers. Stone. We're excited for this event because you're going to hear a significant industry revealed, focused around cloud services around software and really a lot of the things that we've been talking about. And we're going to show a lot of progress as we continue on that journey. And then, you know, Murtha mentioned digital. I'm really excited about digital because that enables us to understand and learn and help our customers and deliver a better experience for them. And then finally, you know, huge opportunity for us. Two. Take this message out globally, you know? Ah, great opportunity for people all around the world who maybe haven't heard from HP for a while to see our message, to feel the new energy to see who we are to see. Uh, you know that we're doing some very interesting things that we can help them. So we're excited. There's a lot of energy right now inside the company, and, uh, we're ready to kick it off and get rolling here. >>Well, it's quite amazing. I mean, we started off 2020 with the gut punch, but the reality is, is that 20 twenties? A lot different than 20 pens. If it weren't for technology and companies like HP here to help center, you know, we would not be in such such good shape and good in quotes. But think about it. The technology is really helping his power through this. So Jim Morrison, Thanks so much for coming on the Cube. Thank you, HB. Everything you're doing for customers in the community. Really? Thank >>you for having us. Thank you for having me. Good to see you. >>Great to see you guys to and keep it right there. Everybody, this is Dave Volante for the Cube. Our continuous coverage of hpe discover virtual experience in 2020. We're right back right after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering HPE Discover 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (techno music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for the Cube's exclusive three-day coverage, we're on day two of HPE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover 2017. I'm John Furrier, my cohost Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Susan Blocher, Vice President of Marketing, Data Center Infrastructure Group, part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome back to the Cube, great to see you. >> Great to see you both again. >> So a lot of great stuff, so I want to just going to, a lot of buzz, Gen-10, a lot of new capabilities. Let's get right into it. Hard news, what's the update? What's going down at the show? >> We made the magic happen for this discoverer. It's just really exciting. So, hard news, we really focused on three areas for our customers: new levels of agility across their hybrid IT infrastructure, which means automation, better performance enhancements, taking things that used to be very manual and making them run sort of seamlessly, number one. Number two, security, and we're talking breakthrough security. So this is where we've been able to leverage some unique opportunities like the fact that we build our own silicane to put a silicane root of trust, or an immutable fingerprint, right into our silicane that can never be changed. That fingerprint will not let infected firmware startup. No matter, you know, as long as the firmware is the right firmware, it'll boot up seamlessly. If it's in any way been compromised you will, it will not let that server boot up. Super secure infrastructure. Last but not least, our customers were telling us economic control. We need economic control. We need cloud-like economics. We need pay-as-you-go. We need the ability to get capacity on demand. Those are the things that we really innovated on for this year. >> One of the things that's coming out, we had Bob Moran on the security thing. >> Yeah. >> And James Morrison >> Yes. >> I want to call him Jim Morrison >> Oh, exciting. >> I used to be >> I know. >> a big Doors fan. >> Yeah. >> I respect his name, I'm sure he gets that all the time. >> Yeah. The security on the silicane >> Yeah. >> is interesting to me because now you're seeing things like block changes, immutable environments wherevpeople have this trust relationship. That really hits the ransomeware side of things really in a big way. >> Susan: Yes. >> What else is that hitting? That is, to me, the big news, is that, is the security at the server-level because there's no perimeter anymore in this cloud-like environment, so this is kind of a cool way, explain more, just take minute to talk about the security piece because I think to me that's game-changer. >> It's super fascinating, and you know, I'm quoting somebody else, so I'm blatantly stealing somebody's line, but I was reading an article where somebody said firmware is a cesspool of Trojan horse opportunity for cyber attackers, and that took me aback because I was like, Boy, those are some strong words there, but really with all of the investment that companies have made over the years in data security, application security, network security, no one was focusing on the servers, and frankly, there's a million lines of code, and I'm sure Bob said that, there's a million lines of code booting up to get your servers up and running that no one has protected up until now. And so, we recognize about two years ago, that this was a huge threat, and increasing everyday, and boy, two years later, we're in the nick of time, to give customers really the peaace of mind of that security. >> One of the things that Wikibon just put out in terms of reports on research that I find fascinating that ties into this trend that I want to get your reaction on is, I think they're the only research firm that put this out actually, is they actually size the true private cloud market at about 260 billion, and that's not including the hybrid piece. That means, on-prem, cloud-like capabilities for on-premise data centers, which means, hey, that's not really going away, so it points to that narrative that, oh, data centers are moving to the cloud, so that's kind of probably not going to happen any time soon, but the cloud-like capabilities are there. But one of the interesting stats is that, is billions of dollars in cost-shift from labor, to hire differentiated, higher yield, or differentiated stuff inside the organization. So IT's not getting smaller, it's getting changing. >> Susan: That's right. >> So, how are you guys taking the Gen-10 and other things, and helping customers abstract away those tasks? >> Yeah, exactly. So look, all of our customers are really doing hybrid IT now, and so they're doing some things on-premise, they're doing some things off-premise, and frankly, it makes sense. But there's a tremendous amount of compromises that they have to make on both sides of the coin, and so what we've been talking about, a new compute experience, and that's really what we mean. It's not saying that you should have everything on-premise, or that you should move everything to the cloud. It's really saying, how do we give you the best end to end experience across agility, security, and economic control, so that the trade-offs that you're making, are not trade-offs on the pros or cons of those side loads of IT, but really looking at it from a what kind of business outcomes do I need to drive, and that's how I make my decisions. >> So, if you go back to around 2010, John, we were talking the Cube about a couple of observations. And it sort of coincided with the ascendancy of the public cloud. We said that the hyper-scale guys will spend time, engineering time, to save money, and then automate stuff, but the Enterprise guys, they'll spend money to save time. They don't have all of those engineering resources and we talked about that for a while, and it kind of got old and sort of boring. Fast-forward to 2017, and that's exactly what happened is vendors have put in a lot of effort to create cloud-like capabilities, and to John's point, is you're seeing a shift in staffing away from undifferentiated stuff, so talk about what that means for the data center infrastructure group, sort of how you position and how you talk to customers and message them about your role and how you add value. >> Yeah, absolutely. So look, first of all, we don't talk about just data center infrastructure. I think that's really where it starts because frankly, customers are talking about their data, they're talking about their applications, they're talking about how to bring intelligence to their hybrid IT experience, and so what we're talking to them about, is really how do we bring that together for them? We're talking about software-defined intelligence, how we're leveraging HPE One View to automate the deployment of applications across what could be a complex apology, but doing it absolutely in an automated seamless way. We're talking about how we're taking iLo and building the security in, but we're also doing things like intelligence system tuning where we're partnering with Intel and really figuring out how to take what is the Intel turbo-boost mode, from their processors, and make it even better. And so a lot of applications can't take advantage of the turbo-boost mode because there's a bit of when you hit that high frequency, you get a little bit of jitter, and that jitter creates latency, and so a lot of applications like core banking, video streaming, high frequency trading, they can't use turbo-mode because of that jitter that creates latency. We've been able to figure out, partnering with Intel, how to dampen a little bit of that speed, but still get turbo-mood and eliminate that jitter, so no latency. For the first time, these applications have been able to take advantage of turbo-mode. And what we figured out is even though we dampened it a little bit, they actually perform better with that little bit of dampening than they would've if we had shot them up with full turbo mode, right? So super exciting innovations with that. >> Sounds like Pied Piper. (laughter) >> But this is the kind of innovation that's going on in the systems world, and another observation we've seen on the Cube is, we go to a lot of events, is that systems is back. There's kind of an under current going on in the industry where hardware and operating systems folks are now part of big transformations, whether it's hyper-scale or in-service providor and Enterprise, so how are you guys looking at the compute differently if the notion of a server is shifting, and they're maybe consuming IT differently, where the channel partner might become a provider, and all these things are going on, how do you guys look at this new style of computer, our Meg says the changing landscape of compute. >> The changing landscape. It's all about really understanding our customers, and who they are, and how we can look at their unique needs and then segment our value and our portfolio toward them, so you talked about hyper-scale users, like service providers, cloud service providers, small and medium sized businesses, Enterprise customers, Telco environments, high-performance computing, super computing. What we realize is that one size does not fit all, and that's really what it comes down to, and that's one of the trade-offs of the public cloud environment, there's lots of good things about public cloud, but one of the trade-offs is it's kind of commodity hardware and one size fits all, but if you're trying to do any kind of mission critical applications, like I said, high frequency trading, you need super computing capabilities, you need deep analytics, machine-learning, whatever the case might be, it's not... You really need to specialize the infrastructure, and HPE is right there working with our customers regardless of their needs and their segments, we've got the solutions that will help them do that. >> So one of the things I'm inferring from some of your comments, I want to ask you about marketing. I always struggle with marketing. (laughter) You're shifting the message from product, product, product to business impact. >> Susan: Yes! >> Okay, that's clear. What else is working in marketing these days? It's never one silver bullet, but there's belly to belly, there's events like this, there's obviously old-school email marketing, there's social media. What are you finding as a marketing problem? >> We talk a lot about digital transformation for our customers, but digital transformation has come to marketing, so that's the biggest thing. We have made a huge shift at Hewlett Packard Enterprise in digital marketing. So everything that we're doing, even an event like this, which is physical, but it used to be kind of a one-off. We do all this prep, and then the week would go by, and it would disappear, and that would be the end of it. We're learning to build snackable content assets that have life after life after life, we're really embracing the social media, we've built a whole new digital marketing platform, we've shifted from what I would call traditional demand generation into really reaching our customers through digital marketing in every country globally. Huge, amazing metamorphosis, and frankly, with the announcement of the new HPE compute experience, and the Gen-10 platform, and the world's most secure industry-standard servers, it is the perfect timing of bringing all of this incredible innovation of technology to market at the same time that we're innovating around marketing, so the next 12 months, it's going to be super exciting. >> Eating your own innovations, if it were. >> That's right, that's right. >> Congratulations on the Gen-10 launch, and all the great goodness you guys got going on the security thing, a big deal. >> A big deal. >> Looking forward to following up on that further after the show, to keep it going. Certainly, there's digital aspects here in the Cube will be available on Youtube.com, slash and the name of course, the Cube Gems and highlights, all available. Thanks so much for joining us on the Cube, really appreciate it, more live coverage from HP Discover 2017. After this short break, stay with us. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante. We'll be right back. (techno music)