foreign [Music] Lisa Martin of the cube here hpe and AMD better together with Shi is the name of our segment and I'm here with four guests please welcome Charlie mulrooney Global pre-sales engineering manager at SHI John saw is also of shi joins us Global pre-sales Technical consultant and back with me are Terry Richardson North American Channel Chief and Dr John Fry Chief technologist of sustainable transformation at hpe welcome gang great to have you here all here Thank you Lisa thank you good to be here all right Charlie let's go ahead and start with you keeping the Earth sustainable and minimizing carbon emissions greenhouse gases is a huge priority for businesses right everywhere globally can you talk truly about what Shi is seeing in the marketplace with respect to sustainable I.T sure so starting about a year and a half two years ago we really noticed that our customers certainly our largest Enterprise customers were putting into their annual reports their Chairman's letters their SEC filings that they had sustainability initiatives ranging from achieving carbon neutral uh or carbon zero goals starting with 20 50 dates and then since then we've seen 20 40 and 2030 targets to achieve net neutrality and rfps rfis that we're Fielding certainly all now contain elements of that so this is certainly top of mind for our largest customers our Fortune 250 and Fortune 500 customers for sure where we're seeing an onslaught of requests for this we get into many conversations with the folks that are leading these efforts to understand you know here's what we have today what can we do better what can we do different to help make it an impact on those goals so making an impact top of Mind pretty much for everyone as you mentioned John Sal's let's bring you into the conversation now when you're in customer conversations what are some of the things that you talk about with respect to shi's approach to sustainability sustainable I.T are you seeing more folks that are implementing things tactically versus strategically what's going on in the customer space well so Charlie touched on something really important that you know the the wake-up moment for us was receiving you know proposal requests or customer meeting requests that were around sustainability and it was really around two years ago I suppose for the first time and those requests started coming from european-based companies because they had a bit of a head start uh over the U.S based global companies even um and what we found was that sustainability was already well down the road and that they were doing very interesting things to uh use renewable energy for data centers uh utilized they were already considering sustainability for new technologies as a high priority versus just performance costs and other factors that you typically had at the top so as we started working with them uh I guess that beginning was more tactical because we really had to find a way to respond uh we were starting to be asked about our own efforts and in regards to sustainability we have our headquarters in Somerset and our second Headquarters in Austin Texas um those are the gold certified we've been installing solar panels producing waste across the company recycling efforts and so forth charging stations for electric vehicles all that sort of thing to make our company more sustainable in in uh in our offices and in our headquarters um but it's a lot more than that and what we found was that we wanted to look to our vast number of supply of customers and partners we have over 30 000 partners that would work with globally and tens of thousands of customers and we wanted to find best practices and Technologies and services that we could uh talk about with these customers and apply and help integrate together as a as a really large Global uh reseller and integrator we can have a play there and bring these things together from multiple uh partners that we work with to help solve customer problems and so over time it's become more strategic and we've been uh as a company building the uh the the the forward efforts through organizing a true formal sustainability team and growing that um and then also reporting for CDP echovatus and so forth and it's really that all has been coming about in the last couple of years and we take it very seriously it sounds like it also sounds like from the customer's perspective they're shifting from that tactical maybe early initial approach to being more strategic to really enabling sustainable I.T across their organization and I imagine from a business driver's perspective John saws and Charlie are you hearing customers you talked about it being part of rfps but also where are customers in terms of we need to have a sustainable I.T strategy so that we can attract and retain the right investors we can attract and retain customers Charlie John what are your thoughts on that yeah that's top of mind with uh with all the folks that we're talking to uh I would say there's probably a three-way tie for the importance of uh attracting and retaining investors as you said plus customers customers are shopping their customers are shopping for who has aligned their ESG priorities in sustainable priorities uh with their own and who is going to help them with their own reporting of you know spoke to and ultimately scope three reporting from greenhouse gas emissions and then the attracting and retaining Talent uh it's another element now of when you're bringing on a new talent to your organization they have a choice and they're thinking with their decision to accept a role or not within your organization of what your strategies are and do they align so we're seeing those almost interchangeable in terms of priorities with with the customers we're talking to it was a little surprising because we thought initially this is really focused on investors attracting the investors but it really has become quite a bit more than that and it's been actually very interesting to see the development of that prioritization more comprehensive across the organization let's bring Dr John Fry into the conversation and Terry your neck so stay tuned Dr Frey can you talk about hpe and Shia partnering together what are some of the key aspects of the relationship that help one another support and enable each other's aggressive goals where sustainability is concerned yeah it's a great question and one of the things about the sustainability domain in solving these climate challenges that we all have is we've got to come together and partner to solve them no one company's going to solve them by themselves and for our Collective customers the same way from an hpe perspective we bring the expertise on our products we bring in a sustainable I.T point of view where we've written many white papers on the topic and even workbooks that help companies Implement a sustainable I.T program but our direct sales forces can't reach all of our customers and in many cases we don't have the local knowledge that our business partners like Shi bring to the table so they extend the reach they bring their own expertise their portfolio that they offer to the customer is wider than just Enterprise Products so by working together we can do a better job of helping the customer meet their own needs give them the right Technology Solutions and enhance that customer experience it's because they get more value from us collectively it really is better together which is a very appropriate name for our segment here Terry let's bring you into the conversation talk to us about AMD how is it helping customers to create that sustainable I.T strategy and what are some of the differentiators that what AMD is doing that that are able to be delivered through Partners like Shi well Lisa you use the word enabling um just a short while ago and fundamentally AMD enables hpe and partners like Shi to bring differentiated solutions to customers so in the data center space We Begin our journey in 2017 with some fundamental Design Elements for our processor technology that we're really keenly focused on improving performance but also efficiency so now the the most common measure that we see for the types of customers that Charlie and John were talking about was really that measure of performance per watt and you'll continue to see AMD enable um customers to to try to find ways to to do more in a sustainable way within the constraints that they may be facing whether it's availability of power data center space or just needing to meet overall sustainability goals so we have skills and expertise and tools that we make available to hpe and to Shi to help them have even stronger differentiated conversations with customers sounds like to me Terry that it's that AMD can be even more of an more than an enabler but really an accelerator of what customers are able to do from a strategic perspective on sustainability you're right about that and and we actually have tools greenhouse gas TCO tools that can be leveraged to really quantify the impact of some of the the new technology decisions that customers are making to allow them to achieve their goals so we're really proud of the work that we're doing in partnership with companies like hpe and Shi Better Together as we've said at the beginning and just a minute ago Charlie let's bring you back in talk to us a little bit about what Shi is doing to leverage sustainable I.T and enable your customers to meet their sustainability goals and their initiatives so for quite a while we've had uh some offerings to help customers especially in the end user compute side a lot of customers were interested in I've got assets for you know let's say a large sales force that had been carrying tablets or laptops and you know those need to be refreshed what do I do with those how do I responsibly retire or recycle those and we've been offering solutions for that for quite some time it's within the last year or two when we started offering for them guarantees and Assurance assurances of how they can if that equipment is reusable by somebody else how can we issue them you know credits for uh carving credits for reuse of that equipment somewhere else so it's not necessarily going to be E-Waste it's uh something that can be recycled and reused we have other programs with helping extend the life of of some systems where they look at boy I have an awful lot of data on these machines where historically they might want to just retire those because the the sensitivity of the data needed to be handled very specifically we can help them properly remove the sensitive data and still allow reuse of that equipment so we've been able to accomplish some Creative Solutions specifically around end user compute in the past but we are looking to new ways now to to really help extend that into Data Center infrastructure and Beyond to really help with what are the needs what are the the best ways to help our customers handle the things that are challenging them [Music] that's a great point that you bring up Charlie and the security kind of popped into my head here John saw his question for you when you're in customer conversations and you're talking about or maybe they're talking about help us with waste reduction with recycling where are you having those customer conversations I know sustainability is a board level it's a c-level discussion but where are you having those conversations within the customer organization well so it's a it's a combination of um organizations within the customer these are these Global organizations typically when we're talking about asset like cycle management asset recovery how do you do that in a sustainable Green Way and securely the customers we're dealing with I mean security is top sustainability is right up there too obviously but uh um Charlie touched on a lot of those things and these are Global rollouts tens of thousands of employees typically to to have mobile devices laptops and phones and so forth um and they often are looking for a true managed service around the world that takes into consideration things like the most efficient way to ship products to to the employees and how do you do that in a sustainable way you need to think about that does it all go to a central location um or to each individual's home during the pandemic that made a lot of sense to do it that way I think the reason I wanted to touch on those things is that well for for example one European pharmaceutical that the states and their reports that they are already in scope one in scope two they're fully uh Net Zero at this point and and they say but that only solves three percent of our overall sustainability goals uh 97 is scope three it's travel it's shipping it's it's uh it's all the all these things that are out of their direct control a lot of times but they're coming to us now as a as a supplier and ask and and we're filling out forms and rfps and so forth uh to show that we can be a sustainable supplier in their supply chain because that's their next big goal so sustainable supply chain absolutely Dr John Fry and Terry I want to kind of get your perspectives Charlie talked about from a customer requirements perspective customers coming through RFP saying hey we've got to work with vendors who have clear sustainability initiatives that are well underway hpe and AMD hearing the same thing Dr Fry will start with you and then Terry sure absolutely we receive about 2500 customer questionnaires just on sustainability every year and that's come up from a few hundred so yeah absolutely accelerating then the conversations turn deeper can you help us quantify our carbon emissions and power consumption then the conversation has recently gone even further to when can hpe offer Net Zero or carbon neutral Technology Solutions to the customer so that they don't have to account for those Solutions in their own carbon footprint so the questions are getting more sophisticated the need for the data and the accuracy of the data is climbing and as we see potential regulatory disclosure requirements around carbon emissions I think this trend is just going to continue up yeah and we see the same thing uh we get asked more and more from our customers and partners around our own corporate sustainability goals but the surveying that the survey work that we've done with customers has led us to you know understand that you know approximately 75 percent of customers are going to make sustainability goals a key component of their rfis in 2023 which is right around the corner and you know 60 of those same customers really expect to have business level kpis uh in the new year that are really related to sustainability so this is not just a a kind of a buzzword topic this is this is kind of business imperatives that you know the company the companies like hpe and AMD and the partners like Shi that really stand behind it and really are proactive in getting out in front of customers to help are really going to be ahead of the game that's a great point that you make Terry there that this isn't we're not talking about a buzzword here we're talking about a business imperative for businesses of probably all sizes across all Industries and Dr Farr you mentioned regulations and something that we just noticed is that the SEC recently said it's proposing some rules where companies must disclose greenhouse gas emissions um if they were if that were to to come into play I'm going to come back to Charlie and John saws how would Shi and frankly at hpe and AMD be able to help companies comply if that type of Regulation were to be implemented Charlie yeah so we are in the process right now of building out a service to help customers specifically with that with the reporting we know reporting is a challenge uh the scope 2 reporting is a challenge and scope three that I guess people thought was going to be a ways out now all of a sudden hey if you have made a public statement that you're going to make an impact on your scope three uh targets and you have to report on them so that that has become really important very quickly uh as word about this requirement is rumbling around uh there's concern so we are actually working right now on something it's a little too early to fully disclose but stay tuned because we have something coming that's interesting definitely peaked my ears are are parked here Charlie well stay tuned for that Dr Brian Terry can you talk about together with Shi hpe and AMD enabling customers to manage access to the data obviously which is critical and it's doing nothing but growing and proliferating key folks need access to it we talked a little bit about security but how are from a Better Together perspective Dr Fry will start with you how are you really helping organizations on that sustainability journey to ensure that data can be accessible to those who need it when they need it and these days what is real-time requirements yeah it's an increasing challenge in fact we have changed the HP Story the way we talk about hpe's value proposition to talk about data first modernization so how often do you collect data where do you store it how do you avoid moving it how do you make sure if you're going to collect data you get insights from that data that change your business or add business value and then how long do you retain that data afterward and all of that factors into sustainable I.T because when I talk to technology Executives what they tell me again and again is there's this presumption within their user community that storage is free and so when when they have needs for collecting data for example if if once an hour would do okay but the system would collect it once a minute the default the user asks for of course is once a minute and then are you getting insights from that data or are we moving it that becomes more important when you're moving data back and forth between the public cloud or the edge because there is quite a network penalty for moving that equipment across your network there's huge power and carbon implications of doing that so it's really making a better decision about what do we collect why do we collect it what we're going to do with it when we collect and how we store it and for years customers have really talked about you know modernization and the need to modernize their data center you know I fundamentally believe that sustainability is really that Catalyst to really Drive true modernization and as they think forward um you know when we work with with hpe you know they offer a variety of purpose-built servers that can play a role in you know specific customer workloads from the larger supercomputers down to kind of general purpose servers and when we work with Partners like Shi not only can they deliver the full Suite of um offerings for on-premise deployments they're also very well positioned to leverage the public Cloud infrastructure for those workloads that really belong there and that certainly can help customers kind of achieve an end-to-end sustainability goal that's a great point that that it needs to be strategic but it also needs to be an end-to-end goal we're just about out of time but I wanted to give John saws the last word here take us out John what are some of the things Charlie kind of teased some of the things that are coming out that piqued my interest but what are some of the things that you're excited about as hpe AMD and Shi really help customers achieve their sustainability initiatives sure um a couple of comments here um so Charlie yeah you touched on some upcoming capabilities uh that uh Shi will have around the area of monitoring and management see this is difficult for all customers to be able to report in this formal way this is a train coming at everybody very quickly and um they're not ready most customers aren't ready and if we can help um as as a reseller integrator assessments to be able to understand what they're currently running compared to different scenarios of where they could go to in a future state that seems valuable if we can help in that way that's those are things that we're looking into specifically uh you know greenhouse gas emissions relevant assessments and and um and what in the comments uh of Terry and John around the power per watt and um the vast um uh portfolio of technologies that they that they had to address various workloads is uh is fantastic we'd be able to help point to Technologies like that and move customers in that direction I think as a as an integrator and a technical advisor to customers I saw an article on BBC this morning that I I think if we think about how we're working with our customers and we can help them maybe think differently about how they're using their technology to solve problems um the BBC article mentioned this was ethereum a cryptocurrency and they have a big project called merge and today was a go live date and BBC US news outlets have been reporting on it they basically changed the model from a model called The Power of work which takes a a lot of compute and graphic GPU power and so forth around the world and it's now called a power of stake which means that the people that validate that their actions in this environment are correct they have to put up a stake of their own cryptocurrency and if they're wrong it's taken from them this new model reduces the emissions of their um uh environment by 99 plus percent the June emissions from ethereum were it was 120 uh terawatts per per year terawatt hours per year and they reduced it um actually that's the equivalent of what the Netherlands needed for energy so the comparable to a medium-sized country so if you can think differently about how to solve problems it may be on-prem it may be extremely it may be that may be the public cloud in some cases or other you know interesting Innovative Technologies that the AMD hpe other partners that we can bring in along along with them as well we can solve problems differently there is a lot going on the opportunities that you all talked about to really make such a huge societal impact and impact to our planet are exciting we thank you so much for talking together about how hpe AMD and sha are really working in partnership in Synergy to help your customers across every organization really become much more focused much more collaborative about sustainable I.T guys we so appreciate your time and thank you for your insights Thank you Lisa thank you my pleasure for my guests I'm Lisa Martin in a moment Dan Molina is going to join me he's the co-president and chief technology officer of nth generation you're watching the cube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage [Music]

>> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. I've got three guests with me here today. They're going to be talking about the partnership between HPE and AMD. Please welcome George Hope, Worldwide Head of Partner Sales at HPE, Terry Richardson, North American Channel Chief for AMD, and Peter Chan, the Director of EMEA Channel Sales at AMD. Gentlemen, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> George: Well, thanks for having us, Lisa. >> We're excited to talk to you. We want to start by talking about this partnership, Terry let's go ahead and start with you. HPE and AMD have been partners for a very long time very long history of collaboration, talk to us about the partnership. >> HPE and AMD do have a rich history and collaboration spinning back to the days of Opteron and then when AMD bought the first-generation AMD EPYC processors to market back in 2017, HPE was a foundational partner providing valuable engineering and customer insights from day one. AMD has a long history of innovation in creating a high performance CPU roadmap for value partners like HPE to leverage in their workload optimized product portfolios. Maximizing the synergies between the two companies, we've kicked off initiatives to grow the chain of business together with workload focused solutions and together we define the future. >> Thanks Terry, George let's get your perspective as worldwide head of partner sales at HPE. Talk to me about HP's perspective at that AMD partnership. >> Yeah Lisa, the introduction of the third generation AMD EPYC processors, we've doubled our AMD based ProLiant portfolio. We've even extended it to our Apollo systems. And with this, we've achieved a number of world records across a variety of workloads, and I've seen real-world results. The third generation AMD EPYC processor delivers a strong performance, expandability, in the security our customers need as they continue their digital transformation. We can deliver better outcomes and lay a strong foundation for profitable apartment growth. And we're incorporating unmatched workload optimization and intelligent automation with 360 degree security. And of course, with an ASA service experience. >> But ASA service experience, becoming even more critical as is the security, as we've seen some of the groundbreaking numbers in data breaches in 2020 alone, Peter, I want to jump over to you now. One of the things that we see HPE and AMD talking about are solutions and workloads that are key areas of a focus for both companies. Can you explain some of those key solutions and the value that they deliver for your customers? >> Absolutely Lisa, (indistinct) to HPC, to the cloud and everything in between AMD and HPE have been focused on delivering not just servers but meaningful solutions that can solve customer challenges. For example, we see here in EMEA, the DL325 has been really powerful for customers who want to deploy VDI. HPE and AMD have worked together with IC partners in the industry to tune the performance and ensure that the user experience is exceptional. This is just one example of many, of course, for instance, the 345 with database, 365 for density deployment is key (indistinct) that has led the way in big data analytics. The Apollo 6500 breaking new path in terms of AI and machine learning, quite a trending topic and AMD and HPE are always in the news when it comes to groundbreaking HPC solutions. I know by the way, we're able to do these, during commitment to the data center on longterm laser focused execution on the AMD roadmap. >> Excellent. Thanks Peter. Let's talk about the channel expansion a little bit more, Terry with you again, you and the team here channel chief focused on the channel. What is AMD doing specifically to expand your channel capabilities and support all of the channel partners that work with AMD? >> Great question, Lisa. AMD's investing in some areas around the channel. Let's start with digital transformation, Our channel partners consistently provide us feedback that customers need to do more with less. Between AMD and HPE, we have solutions that increase capabilities and deliver faster time to value for the customer looking to do more with less. We have a tool on our website called the AMD EPYC server virtualization TCO estimation tool that allows you to visually see the savings. We also have lots of other resources such as technical documentation, AMD arena for training and demo CPU's that partners can take advantage of. Aside from solution examples, AMD is investing in headcount internally at our channel partners. I'm actually an example of the investment AMD is making to build out the channel. One more thing that I'll mention is the investment that our CEO, Lisa Su and AMD are making to build our ecosystem from headcount to code development, AMD is investing to have a more powerful user experience with our software partners in the ecosystem. From my discussions with our channel partners, I'm glad to see AMD expanding our channel through the many initiatives and really broadening that ecosystem. >> Terry, another question for you, as channel chief I'm just curious in the last year speaking to me, talked about digital transformation we've seen so much acceleration of the adoption of that since the last 15 months has presented such challenges. Talk to me a little bit about some of the feedback from your channel partners about what you, AMD and HP are doing together to help those customers that needed to deliver that fast time to value. >> You know, so really, it's all about close collaboration. We work very closely with our counterparts at HPE just to make sure we understand partner and customer requirements, and then we work to craft a solutions together from engaging technically, to collaborating on my products will be shipped and delivered to also just what are we doing to identify the next key workloads and projects that are going to be engaged in together. So it really brought the companies, I think even closer together. >> That's excellent. There's a COVID catalyst, as I say, there's a lot of silver linings that we've seen and it sounds like the collaboration, Terry that you mentioned has become even stronger. George, I want to go to you, HPE has been around for a long time. My first job in tech was Hewlett Packard by the way, many years ago, I won't mention how long but talk to me about the partnership with AMD from HPE's perspective is this part of HPE's DNA? >> Absolutely, partnering is our DNA. We've had 80 years of collaboration with an ever expanding ecosystem of partners that all play a key role in our go to market strategy. We actually design and test our strategic initiatives in close collaboration with our partners so that we can meet their most pressing needs. We do that through like partner advisory boards and things of that nature, but we have of the most profitable partner programs in the industry, two to three times higher rebates than most of our competitors. And we continue to invest in the partner experience and creating that expertise. So partners can stand out in a highly competitive market. And AMD is in direct alignment with that strategy. We have strong synergies and a common focus between the two companies. >> May I also imagine George one follow on question to that, there's tremendous value in it for your end user customers, especially those that have had to everyone pin it so many times in the last year and talk to me a little bit about George what you're seeing from the customers perspective. >> Well, as Antonio Neri said, a couple of years back the world is going to be hybrid and I think he was right, we continue to see that evolution and we continue to deliver solutions around a hybrid digital world with GreenLake. And the new wave of digital transformation that we refer to now as the age of insight. Customers want a cloud experience everywhere and 70% of today's workloads can't easily be refactored to the public cloud, or they need to stay physically close to the data and other apps at the emerging edge or in colos or in the data centers. So as a result, most organizations are forced to deal with the complexity of having two divergent operating models and they're paying higher costs to maintain them both. With GreenLake, we provide one consistent operating model with visibility and control across public clouds and on-prem environments. And that applies to all workloads. You know, whether it's cloud native or non-cloud native applications. We also have other benefits, like no cloud lock-in or no data egress charges. So you don't have to pay a steep price just to move workloads out of the public cloud. And then we're expanding collaboration opportunities within for our partner ecosystem so that we can bring that cloud experience to a faster growing number of customers worldwide. So we've launched new initiatives in support of the core strategy as we accelerate our as a service vision and then work with partners to unlock better customer outcomes with GreenLake. And of course, HPE compute of which AMD is part of is the underlying value added technology. >> Can you expand on some of those customer outcomes as we look at, as I mentioned before this very dynamic market in which we live, it's all about customer outcomes, what are some of those that from a hybrid cloud environment perspective with GreenLake that you're helping customers achieve? >> Well Lisa, GreenLake has come out with about 30 different offerings that package up some solutions. So you're not just buying infrastructure as a service. We have offerings like HPC as a service, so we have offerings like a VDI as a service, ML ops as a service. So we're packaging in technology, some are ours, some are not ours, but in to completing some solutions. So it create the outcome that they, the customers are looking for. >> Excellent. Thanks, George. And Peter, last question to you. Again, with the hybrid cloud environment being something that we're seeing more and more of, the benefits that GreenLake is delivering through the channel, what's your perspective from AMD side? >> Absolutely, Lisa. So, I mean I think it's clear with AMD based systems 'cause we're getting the benefit of performance, security and fast time to value when they're deployed on-prem and the cloud, on a hybrid model. So please come try out our HPC system based on AMD processors and see how we can accelerate and protect your obligations. Thank you, Lisa. >> Excellent. Peter, George, Terry thank you for joining me today. I'm sure there's a lot more that folks are going to be able to learn about what AMD and HPE are doing together on the virtual show floor. We appreciate your time. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of HPE discover 2021. (uplifting music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's theCUBE... covering Accelerate '19. (electronic music) Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are at Fortinet Accelerate 2019 in Orlando, Florida. I'm Lisa Martin with Peter Burris. We've been here all day talking with Fortinet executives, with partners, really understanding the evolution of cybersecurity and how they are helping customers to combat those challenges to be successful. We're pleased to welcome back to theCUBE alumni John Bove, the VP of North America's channel for Fortinet. John welcome back to the program. >> Thanks for having me, great to see you both again. >> Likewise, so, so much going on today, some news coming out. The keynote this morning started with a lot of electricity around Fortinet's industry leadership, product leadership, there was a lot of growth numbers shared >> John: Yup >> There's also a lot of people here about close to four thousand. >> John: Close to four thousand people, yup. >> And you saying that a good percentage of that is partners, forty countries represented. What are some of the things from your perspective, that you've observed today, in terms of the reaction from the channel to all of this news coming out. >> Yeah so first off, the heritage of this event really was a partner conference going back to its infancy and you know as Fortinet continues to grow and our customer profile continues to you know, move up market, we've now invited customers. So it's really great the synergy that we have. We've got a number of partners with their customers coming to meetings and meeting with executives, and so it's just really fantastic. You know relative to the announcements about the partner program, we've seen really positive feedback. I think the program was introduced about a decade ago and it really was time for a refresh, and so, what we've done is, we want to bring a program to our partner community that, allows them to engage with us in how they see fit, and then we want to build the go to market that's a little bit more in tune with the market that exists here, as we're moving into the year 2020 and beyond. So we're really assimilating a reseller, MMSP and Cloud as types of partner go to markets, and organizing that all underneath the Fortinet partner program umbrella. We'll also be introducing a consultancy track because we want to insure that the assets within the network security expert program are available to those consultants that are working with customers on their journey to the Cloud, for instance, or through this digital transformation. And then finally we're introducing what we're calling a competency focus. So as Fortinet continues to grow as a company there's a number of competencies that we feel if we enable partners appropriately they're going to be able to benefit from. They're going to build a stronger business around the Fortinet Security Fabric. So, we're going to focus on SD-WAN, we're going to focus on Fabric, we're going to focus on Data Center, operational technologies and then S.A.C., because we do think, you know, S.A.C. operations, is an area, that cybersecurity and the number of tool sets are introduced, it's an area that we need to grow into as a company as well. >> Lots going on. >> Lot's going on, yes. >> So as you consider some of the challenges that your partners face, we talked a little bit about this with Patrice, partners, throughout the industry are hurting as they try to transition from a more traditional hardware to whatever's going to be the steady state, >> John: That's right >> with the Cloud and the Edge having such an impact. Education is crucial. You not just get your customers educated about how cybersecurity works, but your partners need to be increasingly educated so they can find those opportunities, niches, stay in business, help you engage, how's that playing out? >> My number one initiative as the channel leader is to drive partner competency and preference. And so, going back to competency, if we can build partner competencies, they're going to build a healthier, more margin rich business around the Security Fabric, which then, selfishly, is going to lead them to delivering more preference around Fortinet. But there's no doubt, it's a changing dynamics. Business models are changing on the fly. We're seeing evolution of VAR to MSP, and MSP to MSSP, and we are laser focused on capitalizing that. Our FortiSIEM technology for instance is, I really view as a Beachhead technology for us to go capitalize that MSP market in the mid-market. I think that the evolution of consumption to more of a consumption model away from a transactional acquisition, also lends itself to new and innovative programs that need to be delivered. In fact with our North American distributors, in the past six months, we've introduced hardware as a service, to reduce, you know, to position things as an operational expense, which may be more in tune with how customers are purchasing today, and we've introduced FortiSIEM for MSSP. The evolution of VAR to a service provider can be very capital intensive, and so one of the things that we've done with our hardware as a service and FortiSIEM for MSSP, we've really tried to reduce the cost of the entry point, and drive more day one margin opportunity for those partners. >> Let me build on that if I may Lisa, so Ken and Mike have done a pretty phenomenal job of steering Fortinet into the future and anticipating some of the big changes that have occurred. You guys have therefore pretty decent visibility into how things are going to play out, and are now large enough that your actually participating in making the future that >> Right >> Everybody else is thinking about. When you introduce a product, I mean, it takes a period of time for your partners to get educated, to up-skill, to really set themselves up to succeed in this dynamic world. Are you introducing educational regimens, competency tests, providing advice and council about the new competencies they're going to need, in anticipation to some of these, some of the roadmap of the, to the future that you see? >> Yeah, so two things I'll touch on there is you know, the NSC program has been wildly successful program for ... >> Peter: No what does NSE stand for? >> Network Security Expert so it's a training course where for a partner and you've got new team members coming on board, the NSE113 really enables them of how to position, you know, Fortinet, and what the challenges are in a network in a cybersecurity environment today. With the elements four through eight being more technical. We've seen over 200,000 certifications being adopted globally, so, I think, part of the visionary capabilities that Michael and Ken have, is they've incorporated the education piece of it, and so carrying that along, and so as we do introduce new products, it's built into the NSE modules. I'll point to one of the most successful things we did in 2018 was called Fast Tracks, and so we've basically taken the NSE content and put it into consumable two hour, hands on, technical labs for our partners and customers. We had a goal in 2018 to hit about a thousand people going through the Fast Track program, we hit over eight thousand people. So, we know that there is a thirst for knowledge out there and the company's done a really good job, through the NSE program, the Network Security Expert Program, through out Network Security Academy Program, and through our Fast Tracks to drive that necessary enablement. >> Peter: That's very exciting. >> Yeah I know absolutely, I mean, it's a fantastic time to be at Fortinet, its a fantastic time to be a Fortinet partner, and I think with the announcements that we made today, we're really trying to set our partners up for success, and help them build a all encompassing business around the Security Fabric. It's a very noisy industry out there. There's a lot of point based solutions that, that lack the integration and really you need an integrated set of solutions in this, you know, expanding digital footprint that customers are faced with. >> So when we talk about education and I'm glad that you guys brought that up, that was a big topic, it was a pillar that Ken talked about, that Patrice talked about as well, it was one of the core pillars that was talked about at the World Economic Forum that was just a couple of months ago. So as we talk about education and educating your partners, I'd like to kind of flip that and ask how are your partners educating you on, these are the trends and concerns and the issues that we're seeing in the market today, to help influence the direction of Fortinet's technology? >> Yup, you know it's funny that you say that, I've been in partner meetings all day today, and it's great I get to spend, I don't think I've ever been this popular and definitely not in high school or college, but in spending time with partners and understanding their challenges it's good to see that our focus on the competency and preference and providing consumption modeling, fits to exactly the challenges that they're faced with, because VARS will tell you that the transition from being a reseller to an MSP can be very, very expensive. And so, with FortiSIEM for MSSP and the as of service offerings, we're reducing that. And so, there are , they're resonating to that. But the other thing is, for the mid-market customer, the Security Fabric alleviates the need for the Cyber skills gap, right? We can't hire fast enough, and so, by depending upon the broad integrated and automated posture that this Fortinet Security Fabric allows, it really allows partners and customers to overcome some of the challenges, just from a head count standpoint. And I think that the NSE program also does a very good job of filling that gap as well. >> So the partner used to mean, these are the, for that group of customers, who our direct sales organization can't make money on, we will give them to partners, or the very, very large, for a very, very large company that's owned by Accenture or owned by Dimension Data, or something like that, >> Yup >> We'll work with them and deliver it. And that kind of middle was kind of lost. But even today, that Loewen, that idea of segmenting purely on the basis of how big they are, is problematic because there's a lot of small companies happening because of this digital transformation they're going to very rapidly grow into some very, very big footprints. >> Absolutely >> So how is that line between what Fortinet does, what the partner does, what the customer does, to achieve these outcomes, starting to shift? >> We're going to be introducing an ecosystem based approach. It's called Partner to Partner Connect, and it is to actually do that very thing. For those partners that may be in the mid-market, that need those expertise, we're going to allow partners to create almost a marketplace of service offerings so they can fill their gaps and they can build meaningful practices, leveraging what Fortinet is doing, but also leveraging somewhat some of our other partners are doing. We're seeing this immediately done with our distribution partners, in North America, and we're going to be introducing the Partner to Partner Connect later this year, and accessible through our Partner Portal. >> And those competencies that are associated with the NSE and the education, then become part of those Partner to Partner brands >> John: Absolutely >> Which makes it easy for those partners to be more trustworthy of whatever accommodations they put together to serve customers. >> Yup, I'll give you an example. So, we're also going to be announcing tomorrow afternoon in our North America breakout session, a Cloud Channel Initiative, and so our goal with this Cloud Channel Initiative, is to allow partners to build meaningful security and networking businesses in the public Cloud. We're going to utilize blueprints for reference architectures, we're going to align with education and certification, and then we're going to guide them through enablement to go to market. That's one of the things also we released this week was the NSE7 for public and private Cloud. So again, as we introduce new technologies and we introduce new opportunities, we're also aligning that to education as well, so the partners can be self service, because the better job a partner does is developing that competency , then the more services rich they're going to be able to deliver to the end customer themselves. >> What are some of your expectations in terms of FY19, I know this is a 20% year on your growth that Fortinet as a company achieved last year, I imagine a good amount of that was driven and influenced by the channel, but as this momentum continues to grow, as we saw this morning, and we've heard throughout this show today, what are some of your expectations about growing the number of partners in the programs that you talked about, like by the end of this year? >> Yes, we recognize, you know, first of all we appreciate our partners so much, and we want to ensure that we are enabling their business we're absolute in active recruitment mode. You know, we're currently going through recruitment and reactivation campaigns with partners that we want or maybe have done business with us before. We see we're coming off of a quarter in which we set a record for the most deal registrations and so that's really the metric in which we look for partner impact. They bring us an opportunity, we give them additional margin and we protect them. So, Q1, fiscal Q1 for us, was our largest deal registration quarter we've ever had. And in 2018 we saw a 52% increase in closed opportunities through our deal registration program. So the impact of the North American Channel is absolutely being felt and we're really excited about the new partner program and what it's going to allow us to do as we expand more into the MSP market, more into the Cloud market, and then hopefully go enable that whole consultancy layer that's out there as well, to help customers on their journey. >> So in terms of your session tomorrow, 'Transforming Your Profitability with Fortinet's Tailor Made Programs,' you mentioned some of the new announcements, what are like the top three take aways that attendees from that session are going to walk away with? >> Well it's going to be, we want to drive partner initiated revenue, we want to do that through competency development, through Widespace account penetration, and through meaningful investments that allow our partners to scale their business. >> Lisa: Lot of momentum, John thank you so much for visiting with Peter and me on theCUBE this afternoon, we can't wait to hear what great news you have next year. >> I look forward to it, thank you both. >> Excellent, our pleasure. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from New Orleans, it's the Cube. Covering VeeamOn 2017. Brought to you by Veeam. >> We're back, Dave Velante with Stu Menamin. This is the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. Kevin Rooney is here. He is the vice president of North American Channel Sales at Veeam, good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're welcome, so the channel is where it's at in your company from day one, right? >> From day one I have to say that Veeam did a wonderful job in terms of their go to market was always through the channel. We're not changing DNA of the company in terms of getting them to engage with our partners and figure out how to work well with them. It's been the case since the beginning. >> How are you guys organized? Obviously you've got a sales force as well and that's what, an evangelist force? They're an overlay, they're sort of catalyst? How does that all? >> From a channel perspective we want to work to enable our partners obviously, understand the technology, understand how do we solve customer challenges. Then we align ourselves to our segment teams. So from an end-users sales standpoint we have the traditional enterprise, commercial S and B sled-fed teams. But really from a general standpoint I look at our salespeople and we carry quota. I mean, we are salespeople so we're not just in the enablement game, we're also in helping our partners to get closer to their customers and deliver the solutions that really do solve the problems that our customers are facing. >> So when you're real tiny company we know the channel. The channel wants to make money. How do I make money with you guys? Veeam had a hot product so the channel said okay good, I'm there. Now as you're a larger company moving upmarket, you know it's really got to provide more support and training and deal with your deal reg and all kinds of things. Can you talk about that transformation and what people are asking you for? >> Yeah, one of the things that I love about Veeam, and I've been on board for about 15 months. I've come from some larger companies certainly in my past. Even though we're getting bigger we're staying very entrepreneurial in our approach. We realize that we have to be very proactive in our approach with working with partners. We need to provide them the complete story. So profitability is certainly a component. Our partner program is consistently rated as one of the best in the business. It's because it allows partners to be profitable, but again the product and the solution is so complete. It just works, that it's the right fit for shared our customers. As we've gotten bigger we need to continue to make sure that we're staying very much engaged with our partners. We focus on our enablement. We make sure that they have the right level of training. We make sure that they understand what is our sales pitch into the customer base. Why is it that Veeam is a better option than what else they might be looking at. We started in the S and B, right? The company started in the S and B eight and a half, nine years ago when we started selling products. But absolutely were on that journey into the enterprise space. Without forgetting that S and B's we were born and bred. >> Kevin, one of the great things about Veeam is there's really a simplicity to the product set. Can you explain kind of the segmentation? You've got the S and B, you've got the enterprise. Does the product differentiate itself? Is there pricing and bundling, incentives? How does that break up when you go to market? >> Great question, the reality is that the solution is the same. It's funny that as companies you segment a market and the customers don't see themselves as any different whether they're 100-man shop or a Fortune 50. They have business problems that they have to solve. So the solution is the same, but we really realize that we need to make sure we dedicate a part of our end-user sales force against each of the segments to make sure they get the right level of service. The way that we do it is that everything below 250 seats we classify as S and B. We have a very significant commercial space that is almost everything else. Then we name about 1,000 accounts that we go after from an enterprise standpoint. But the reality is every single customer is just as important as the next. So it really was a matter of how do we best service them as opposed to hey, we treat them differently, we give them different pricing. None of that exists. It is just really a matter of our level of service for them. >> We talked to Peter Mackay earlier, he said about 30% of revenue is with service providers. How does that fit into the whole channel mix? >> That's a part that's growing each and every day. As the cloud becomes more and more important our cloud service providers become a more significant portion of our business. So it's really, it's the full spectrum. We work with the traditional resellers that are simply interested in the typical infrastructure, software sales. Then you have the cloud service providers that get more into that type of model. Then we certainly have the folks that do both. It's really, I think that's our next big jumping off point is that cloud business because literally there's no better solution for our customers and therefore our partners to do that hybrid model than Veeam. >> Speak a little bit to the channel readiness for cloud. I remember a few years ago it was like 10 or 15% of the channel was ready. I think a much higher percentage at least understands cloud, or trying to figure out how cloud fits into their practice. Are you riding that wave? Are you educating them on that next wave? >> I think we're all learning together. I mean it's a brand new world if you will. I think you're going to see, and we have seen, the folks that can't make that transition into what is required by our customers which is truly that hybrid. I do need on-premise, and I do need off-premise. >> We're all learning together. So we're educating. We're figuring out what are the right programs with the right sales approach. What is the right level of support? And I think that if we don't make this transition together there will be people left behind. >> Help us understand the make up of the channel. Sorry for the pejorative, but you've got the box sellers, you've got the cloud service providers, you've got solution providers, and you have this maybe I don't know what you call them, the DevOps, the hoodie crowd. This is more of an influencer than anything of our channel. The traditional guys that just move boxes, they're either evolving or they're going to probably die. Solutions guys, okay well the SAP, Oracle, Veeam Ware obviously, some of those guys. Then it was to say the cloud service providers and the DevOps, how do you refine that little model that I just painted? Is that a viable picture of the channel? >> It is, and I think you said it well. Those that don't make that transformation into what is really required by our customers, they dictate what we need to become, right? We can all sit back in think tank rooms and say what do we think we want to go out and be? But if it doesn't apply to solving the business challenges that our customers are facing, it doesn't matter. So those box pushers as you put it, they're going to go away. If they don't transform their business to truly meeting the requirements that the business is driving today, they won't be around. So we're working to try to identify and I think for the most part a lot of us in the technology sector recognize the partners that have made that transition or that are in the process of making that transition and we're investing heavily into them. They're the ones that have a deep and wide services bench. They're the ones who have the ability to do massive deployment type of activities. I mean, for the first time in the history of the channel the last two years we've seen over 50% of the revenues come from services. So if you're not working with partners that have that deep and wide services engagement ability then you're probably working with the wrong people. >> So what's that total ecosystem? >> Revenues over the last two years have now tilted to the majority being in the services side from the traditional infrastructure sales. Really that just lends itself to the fact that we're getting into more complex deployments. We're getting into longer engagements. So for those of us as vendors that are looking out for the partners that are going to help take these solutions to the next level for our shared customers, we have to have partners that have that ability to deliver those services to have those lengthy engagements. >> So the conversation that you're having with customers is changing as well, obviously. >> It's interesting, there was a day and it wasn't that long ago, that you sat down and you talked features. This is what my product does. That isn't the way that customers want to talk any longer. Yes, embedded in the discussion is the fact that our software can deliver all kinds of features and functionality. But you start out with what keeps you up at night? What do you worry about? What is it that your leadership is putting pressure on you, Mr. IT leader? I mean IT is no longer just a support mechanism for businesses, it's a way to make revenue. And if it's not done properly you're missing a tremendous opportunity. When we go in with our partners and they're having these discussions the correct way as well, is that we sit there and say what is it that we need to solve? We don't sit there and say let me tell you what Veeam 10.0 brings you. Yes, that is embedded into the conversation when we tell you how we can solve your problems. But we don't start with that. >> With 45,000 partners obviously that's a lot of partners. You're going to span all those constituencies that we had just talked about. How do you look at the ROI of partnership and where you invest and how you sort of manage that portfolio? It's a great question and it's a great challenge. Because look, we want as many people out as we possibly can delivering the Veeam value proposition. That said, we understand that we need to identify the partners that are actually investing back on ourselves. And that we're building a business together as opposed to customer asked for it, I provided it. That's going to happen and that's great. But we have to identify where it makes sense to place our bets, if you will. So whether that's from our field resources, whether it's from our dollars investment we're identifying the partners that have a deep and robust bench of services opportunity, understand the value of really data availability. That's what it is any longer. It's no more about high availability, it's business availability, it's data availability. And those partners that are willing to take the leap with us and start to invest and do the technical certifications, sales certifications, build a practice where Veeam is a part of it, that's where we're putting our investments. >> Kevin you spend a day with partners yesterday. Can you give our audience a little bit of insight. What are some of the key things you're doing? What feedback you're getting, what advice you are giving to the channel partners? >> All I say is it's been a wonderful ride. As I stated in the opening I've only been onboard for about 15 months so I can't take credit for all the greatness that has been going on at Veeam. (laughter) But the reality is it's been a great ride. But the ride we're about to take out for the next five to ten years is going to be entirely different and it's going to be a wonderful one. What we're telling partners is thank you for being a part of this to this point but boy is this going to be really interesting here as we go out over the next one, two, five years. I mean the work that we're doing with our alliance partners, the product we iterate on it every six to 12 months. I mean, a lot of the people in our space and I won't name names, but they sit on the same technology that's been in place for years. So they're not out looking to try to solve the next customer problem. My message to the partners is this is only going go get better. We are enterprise ready. We were born in that S and B space and we love that space and we're never going to look away from it. But come along with us because we solve all customer problems. So if I'm a partner sitting in the audience yesterday or today or in these meetings that we're having in the Expo Center, I feel pretty confident that I've hitched my ride into the right player. >> Well it talks to relevance. The partners wants to work with the company that is relevant, that has momentum. You guys have got a lot of tailwinds behind you. Kevin, thanks very much for coming on the Cube, it was great to see you. >> I appreciate it, thanks guys. >> All right you're welcome. Keep it right there, Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this. This is the Cube, we're live from New Orleans, VeeamOn. (upbeat digital music)