>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP Discover Virtual experience brought to you by HP. >>Hi. And welcome back to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover 2020. The virtual experience. I'm stew Minimum and happy to welcome back to the program. One of our cube alumni, Partha Narasimha He is the chief technology officer of Aruba. Which, of course, Aruba is an H p e company. Partha. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Alright, so HP Discover is a big event. But, you know, for the networking people, of course, Aruba has its own event atmosphere, which happened, you know, just ahead of Discover you gave a keynote there some news there that we'll talk about. But, you know, just, you know, we bring our audience up to speed a little bit about, you know, the role of the networking inside of HP with Aruba. >>And so you know, when everybody's primary focus is networking and security. Uh, we really have expanded in the past few years and scope of the problems that we work on, what we call the intelligent edge and we define the edge is where people are, where the action is And how do you think about the kinds of experiences that end users care about? In addition to just connecting security into their absence of data on the upside, but also about the experiences in the physical world? And then there are these stakeholders that care about in an efficiency, productivity and so on. So the intelligent edge is it includes networking and security, but it really focuses on people and businesses. Hooks. >>Yeah, that's great. You know, Often we talk. It's, you know, the business outcomes that matter and experiences. It's you know so much about people. The current global pandemic absolutely has put a real focus on people. Um, you know, from a networking standpoint, of course, everybody's working from home a lot more. Um, you know, VPN services need to be considered. And you know what? I'm curious the impact from your business and your customers as to what's happening. >>I think this is where you know the focus on on the intelligent edge on people's experiences and business outcomes. Uh, is actually it was being having now, with the presence of endemic, if you're defining and go back to the definition of the edge as where people are and where the action is in the last 2 to 3 months. A lot of that exists in people's hearts in all of our homes. That's where that's where I am right now. And that's where we all of being, Um, so what does that mean for where the edges? And so we kind of see at least three phases in here, where right now we're focused on business continuity, Which is how do you know enable employees to continue to stay productive and connect securely to be enterprise data? Perhaps, but also, when you know some of the subsides, how do you bring people back safely? Go into physical spaces? And that's what we call business recovery. And then, as I talk to customers, you know, there's there's a spectrum of opinions about what is going to stake. And, you know, if you call that the new normal Andi, when an image goes out of our in our lives, it doesn't look like they're all going back to everywhere in January of Apple Siri. And so what is the new normal? And how do you how does a painful that's that's really what we're focused. >>Yeah, it's so important right now. Parts you know, when you look at enterprise is rapidly adjusting to to ah, situations is not necessarily what we think of. Of course, in the last few months, we've had to move very fast to be able to enable the workforce. Uh, I would love to hear what you're hearing from CEOs that there and customers and, you know, how are you helping them react to things you know much faster than they might have. >>So a lot of the business part unity. Actually, the focus is on 19 right? Because you know, how do you deploy technologies are actually leverage the technologies that have already been deployed in order to allow employees to stay productive from their homes? And there's been a spike in demand from for work from home solutions. Believe it or not, Aruba had we have built a solution for the remote access point way back in 2005 or 2006 when there was a different endemic, a time as a business continuity solution. But given the intensity of how this pandemic is affected all of our lives there was a strike and demand for work from home solutions not just from a connectivity and security perspective, but also every employee is home eyes very different, right? Based on the speed of your Internet connection. How many other people are home? How many other devices are connecting to the home network and what else is happening in the three Netflix streams running in parallel? And in this case, in that kind of environment, how do we now provide some visibility for key help employees getting there? So while we built a remote access point as a security solution, we ended up realizing that would be really solved. For the end user was a better user experience where they just see the same network that they see in the office. They see that home but more again, helping I t get some visibility and maybe troubleshoot some issues employees might have. So all three of these have been integral components of that solution and, you know, it became even more front and center well, when the wind and make it in terms of the site. >>Yeah, you know, when I think about security, has really, you know, in the last five years or so escalated only to the C suite. But the board level for constant consideration, has Has the current situation really raise the visibility of networking, you know, to the C suite. >>It has essentially, you know, the focus Until now. Could be in that. Okay, I my all of my employees get into the office and also and create an environment within the office building that allows for collaboration that allows for seamless connectivity and security. Um, but the pace at which we all have to go to this work from home situation, what's the time? And I was so shocked. I have to respond quickly on day after this phone, quickly where, you know, they could have done with a few dozen office buildings to now thousands of employees homes, and so >>be bigger. >>The all of the effort that we put in to create that solution earlier now pick off because we were already but this for for this situation. Even though, you know, we all live in interesting times, and I never want to see this again in my lifetime. But the fact that you know we had a focus on it for the last 15 years or so made it ready for us. But more importantly, as we look at, you know, as the business community face was about I p the business recovery, which is which is probably very a starting point right now. How do we now bring people back safely into lying to physical spaces? Now the stakeholders are you know, that set is expanding, right? Whether it's, you know, maybe we have the steam called the crisis management that is looking at Okay, how do I now manage Not just the crisis, but bringing people back in facilities is important, because if things space has to get rearranged in order to make certain density or spacing objectives, so they know they have some interest in there marketing. If you're a retailer, you know, hospitality and so on, they get interested in it. So there's a lot of other stakeholders now the lie on the infrastructure that I be has deployed primarily for security and security. Now that same infrastructure, it's gonna go benefit other stakeholders so that you get a competitive advantage in the business recovery face. Like if I'm able to safely brain a lot of my key employees that are required to be in physical spaces back in while addressing all of their concerns about the health and the safety associated with the recovery. That definitely gives me a competitive. And I believe that the solutions and Aruba has provided to I t. Until now are now. There's a There's a spark like Chinese on it because a lot of people, a lot of other stakeholders, could benefit from that infrastructure. That is already, >>Yeah, there's a lot of conversation going on in the industry about what things look like post endemic. And, you know, while there is still obviously a lot of uncertainties, we really think there will be some hybrid modes going on. So, you know, work from home might not stay permanent. But many companies, we're talking about being more flexible. So how does that impact? You know what you're offering? Cause, you know, I think about, you know, from the enterprise. You know, I needed a certain density. Now I need to think about Okay. How do I make sure that whether you're in the office or working remotely that I can have you participate and have the same kind of experience wherever you >>are? And, you know, this is again this is where we rely on the network infrastructure, right? Because if you dig ah, connected with the network that enables mobility is secure and is always available, it drives participation. That participation leverages net flow data to provide visibility toe into physical space. Right, And you think about even the recovery face. And we see, actually, three achieves three interesting scenarios and organizations with customers on how the network can help them in the recovery face. And it points to dispensing requirements are how do I reduce density so that I get some level of increased distancing amongst my employees. So that way you can look at naked data and figure out okay where the hearts thoughts are in terms of people density and can go make changes to those to try and lower that meet my internal guidelines or public safety guidelines to shared spaces are also medium of transmission, you know, off this particular virus or disease, and so shakes faces like conference route cafeteria tables and others that we can again use the network to figure out usage of those and potentially provide guidelines to cleaning crews to pay more attention to certain spaces in favor of others necessarily seeing the same level of usage on three. If in the unfortunate situation that some individual becomes a person of interest, we can quickly figure out all of the spaces that they have seen in the past. A certain window, including who else they could have overlap are being close to within that space, right? So at least you're not relying purely on human memory for contact tracing, there's a certain level of additional data that can be used to enhance a refresh human memory. That is really what we see happening in the business recovering. But you made a good point on what is the new normal. Because as we again after customers, I'm trying to gauge what is going to stick beyond the beyond the recovery feet, striking that you fast forward, let's say, a year from now we have a vaccine and the viruses control. We are going to go back to everywhere before the widest entered our lives in and on. The common opinion seems to be that some things are here to stay, and you look at work from home. You made a reference to that. You know, a lot of our customers do believe that there is gonna be an increased amount of work from home that stays with us, even even after the biases off all of our lives. That again, the special things we built for the business continuity continues forward. Even as you know, some of you know we start to get back into physical spaces security again. It's paramount rate the home, essentially as far as I t is concern is an uncontrolled in mind because they just don't have control over many things that happen in brackets homes. And so how do we bring in a layer of visibility and some degree of control in an environment that is inherently not subject to that level through the same way that that an office building can be? And those are the kinds of things that we're looking at. When we talk to higher education customers, for example, they are looking at plans for them. You know this upcoming fall semester, or for the next I can make your off running the classrooms at 30% occupancy. So if you had 100 students sign up for a class physically in the classroom, they only want to have the respondents and the other 70 could be on campus, but they're all dialed in remotely online past. But how do you manage this process or which study people get to be in the classroom learning way? And we believe that a lot of these work, the work flows and interesting use cases that directly address the intelligent edge are gonna become important as we get into that. >>Alright. And I'm glad you talked about the intelligent edge. So your keynote that you gave that atmosphere was accelerating innovation at the edge. And you have the tough task of being right before the Space X Speaker two. So give us a little bit our audience a little bit about you know, the innovation. How should we be thinking about the edge? >>So atmosphere visitor Two weeks ago, we announced the manage services platform on the SP for sharp and it's a little bit of a play because we really believe that we're building solutions that have 1/6 sense in in sensing what end users looking for what stakeholders looking for when problems show up and how do we quickly resolve that right, So that degree of focus on our data driven AI operations was key in us starting to coin the term DSP on it services platform. So it really looks at addressing not just connectivity connect and protect. We're also analyze and act because the telemetry data coming out of the network is really the same data that is that helps with the business recovery. But we won't actually bubble that up and put it into a common daily that helps us deliver a better connection and connectivity and security services, but also enable all of these experiences and outcomes at the edge. And so the CSP or then Ed services platform was the key announcement atmosphere this year. And we see that as the the foundation on which everything that we're gonna do starting now is going to get >>Yeah, I'm curious. You know, we talked about some of the the things that have been accelerated due to the current situation. After that respond work from home in the and the like. When you look at edge environment, is that something that you know? Is that something you see people, you know, accelerating them or they pausing them. Is it just kind of happening at the same pace any data or sense that you have from users right now. >>So edge is going to become even more important that we used to focus on the edge. We had the focus on edge for a while, but uncle, now until the pandemic it us. The assumption is always that people are going to show up in physical spaces and then let's focus on the experiences of the hour. I believe with the pandemic coming in, some of the power of choice has shifted towards the towards the user of the person in choosing whether they want to consume a particular service experience by going to a physical space or by staying at home and doing it on the radio. I look at the past few weeks, we've had a few. Both parties were used to me in person, and now we are doing it over a zoom or other video conferencing policies. So that choice moving over to the person means that we can't just assume that people are going to show up in physical spaces and then focus only on okay once they show up, what can I do about the experience of the outcomes? The focus on edge is now shifting to where we have even before, we have even look at enabling the technologies and experiences that entice people that convince people come into the physical space and consume that service on. But our experience and that means that the scope of what we do at the intelligent edge actually is gonna increase is gonna whiten. And that's the reason why it was timely that we were working on the ed Services platform. Even, you know, it started working on it long before the panoramic ever showed up. But that focus is now putting us in the right place. You know, from a competitive perspective, leverage all of the technologies that people so far, the package it up together to offer our customers something that is far beyond just connectivity and security. >>Great final question I have for you. You're talking about these, you know, not necessarily in person. Experience is here. We have, you know, did the Discover virtual experience give our audience just a little bit as to what they expect from Ruba and what you want people to take away from the Discover virtual experience when it comes to Aruba and networking at hp, >>right? And you know, the common way we kind of when we talked to some customers is always an association off of the Aruba brand todo a wireless lan. And you know what time in the past five years is being part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise? We've kind of expanded that into other networking and some some of the security functions that we also. But more importantly, I encourage everybody to go look at some of the technologies that we packaged together as orderly it services platform and how they can help. Our customers are not just like we are also all of the other stakeholders within their organizations, but to create that compelling experiences and outcomes at the edge. >>Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate all the updates. >>Thanks. Thanks for having me. >>Alright. Stay tuned for more coverage. HP discover virtual experience. I'm Stew Minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.