(lighthearted music) >> Okay. We're here with Keith White, Senior Vice President and General Manager for GreenLake at HPE, and George Hope, who's the Worldwide Head of Partner Sales at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome gentlemen. Good to see you. >> Awesome to be here. >> Yeah. Thanks so much. >> You're welcome. Keith, last we spoke, we talked about how you guys were enabling high performance computing workloads to get GreenLake right, for enterprise markets. And you got some news today which we're going to get to, but you guys, you put out a pretty bold position with GreenLake, basically staking a claim, if you will. The Edge, Cloud, as a service, all in. How are you thinking about its impacts for your customers so far? >> You know, the impact has been amazing. And, you know, in essence, I think the pandemic has really brought forward this real need to accelerate our customers' digital transformation, their modernization efforts, and, you know, frankly help them solve what was amounting to a bunch of new business problems. And so, you know, this manifests itself in a set of workloads, a set of solutions, and across all industries, across all customer types. And as you mentioned, you know, GreenLake is really bringing that value to them. It brings the Cloud to the customer in their data center, in their Colo or at the Edge. And so frankly, being able to do that with that full Cloud experience all as a pay per use, you know, fully consumption-based scenario, all managed for them, so they get that, as I mentioned, true Cloud experience, it's really sort of landing really well with customers. And we continue to see accelerated growth. We're adding new customers, we're adding new technology and we're adding a whole new set of partner ecosystem folks as well that we'll talk about. >> You know, it's interesting, you mentioned that, just as a quick aside. The definition of cloud is evolving, and it's because customers ... It's the way customers look at it. It's not just vendor marketing. It's what customers want, that experience across Cloud, Edge, you know, multi clouds on prem. So George, what's your take? Anything you'd add to Keith's response? >> I would, you've heard Antonio Neri say it several times and you probably see it again for yourself. The cloud is an experience. It's not a destination and digital transformation is pushing new business models and that demands more flexible IT. The first round of digital transformation focused on a Cloud first strategy, where our customers were looking to get more agility. As Keith mentioned, the next phase of transformation will be characterized by bringing the Cloud speed, the agility to all apps and data, regardless of where they live. According to IDC, by the end of 2021 80% of the businesses will have some mechanism in place to shift the cloud centric, infrastructure and apps, and twice as fast as before the pandemic. So the pandemic has actually accelerated the impact of the digital divide. Specifically in the small and medium companies, which are adapting to technology change even faster and emerging stronger as a result. You know, they, the analyst degree cloud computing and digitalization will be key differentiators for small and medium business in years to come and speed and automation will be pivotal as well. And by 2022, at least 30% of the lagging SMBs will accelerate digitalization. But the focus will be on internal processes and operations the digital leaders, however, will differentiate by delivering their customers dynamic experience. And with our partner ecosystem we're helping our customers embrace our as a service vision and stand out wherever they are on their transformation journey. >> Well thanks for those stats. I always liked the data. I mean, look, if you're not a digital business today I feel like you're out of business and-- I'm sure there's some exceptions but you got to get on the, on the digital bandwagon. I think pre pandemic, a lot of times people really didn't know what it meant. We know now what it means. Okay, Keith. Let's get into the news when we do these things. I love that you guys always have som-- something new to share. What do you have? >> No, you got it. And you know, as we said, you know the world is hybrid and the world is multi-cloud and so customers are expecting these solutions. And so we're continuing to really drive up the innovation and we're adding additional cloud services to GreenLake. We just recently went to a general availability of our ML ops, mach-- machine learning operations and our containers for cloud services along with our virtual desktop which has become very big in a pandemic world where a lot more people are working from home. And then we have shipped our SAP HEC customer edition which allows SAP customers to run on their premise whether it's the data center or the Colo. And then today we're introducing our new bare metal capabilities as well as containers on bare metal as a service, for those folks that are running cloud native applications that don't require any sort of hypervisor. So we're really excited about that. And then second, I'd say similar to that HPC as a service experience, we talked about before where we were bringing HPC down to a broader set of customers. We're expanding the entry point for our private cloud which is virtual machines, containers, storage compute type capabilities in workload optimized systems. So again, this is one of the key benefits that HPE brings is it combines all of the best of our hardware, software, third-party software and our services and financial services into a package. And we've workload optimized this for small, medium, large and extra large. So we have a real sort of broader base for our customers to take advantage of and to really get that cloud experience through HPE GreenLake. And, you know, from a partner standpoint we also want to make sure that we continue to make this super easy. So we're adding self service capabilities or integrating into our distributors through a core set of APIs to to make sure that it plugs in for a very smooth customer experience. And this expands our reach to over a hundred thousand additional value add resellers. And, you know, we saw just fantastic growth in the channel in Q1 over 118% year over year growth for GreenLake cloud services through the channel. And we're continuing to expand our ex-- extend and expand our partner ecosystem with additional key partnerships. Like our Colos, that co-location centers are really key. So Equinix, Cirrus 1 and others that we're working with. And I'll let George talk more about that. >> Yeah. I wonder if you could pick up on that George I mean, look, if I'm a partner and and I mean, I see that I see opportunity here. Maybe, you know, I made a lot of money in the in the old days moving iron, but I got to move. I got to pivot my business. You know, COVID is actually, you know accelerating a lot of those changes, but, but there's a lot of complexity out there and partners can be critical in in helping customers make that journey. What do you see this meaning to partners, Georgia? >> So I completely agree with Keith the-- through and through in with our partners, we we give our customers choice, right? They don't have to worry about security or cost as they would with public cloud or the hyperscalers we're driving special initiatives via Cloud 28, which we run which is the World's largest Cloud aggregator. And also in collaboration with our distributors and their marketplaces. As, as Keith mentioned, in addition customers can leverage our expertise and support of our service provider ecosystem, our SIs, our ISBs to find the right mix of hybrid IT and decide where each application or workload should be hosted. Because customers are now demanding robust ecosystems, cloud adjacency, and efficient, low latency networks and the modern workload demands, secure compliant highly available, and cost optimized environments. And Keith touched on co-location, we're partnering with co-location facilities to provide our customers the ability to expand bandwidth, reduced latency and get access to a robust ecosystem of adjacent providers. We touched on Equinix a bit as one of them but we're partnering with them to enable customers to connect to multiple clouds with private on demand interconnections from hundreds of data center locations around the globe. We continue to invest in the partner and customer experience, you know making ourselves easier to do business with we've now fully integrated partners in GreenLake central. And can provide their customers end to end support in managing the entire hybrid IT estate. And lastly, we're providing partners with dedicated and exclusive enablement opportunities. So customers can rely on both HPE and partner experts and we have a competent team of specialists that can help them transform and differentiate themselves. >> Yeah. So I'm hearing a theme of simplicity. You know, I talked earlier about this being customer driven to me what the customer wants is they want to come in. They want simple, like you mentioned, self-serve. I don't care if it's on prem in the cloud, across clouds at the edge, abstract, all that complexity away from me make it simple to do not only the technology to work you know, you figure out where the workload should run and let the metadata decide. And that's a, that's a bold vision and then make it easy to do business. Let me buy as a service if that's the way I want to consume. And, and partners are all about, you know, making, you know reducing friction and driving that. So anyway guys, final thoughts. Maybe Keith, you can close it out here and maybe George-- >> Yeah. You summed it up really nice. You know, we're excited to continue to provide what we view as the largest and most flexible hybrid cloud for our customers apps, data, workloads, and solutions and really being that leading on-prem solution to meet our customer's needs. At the same time, we're going to continue to innovate. You know, our ears are wide open and we're listening to our customers on what their needs are, what their requirements are. So we're going to expand the use cases, expand the solution sets that we provide in these workload optimized offerings to a very very broad set of customers as they drive forward with that digital transformation and modernization efforts. >> Great. George, any final thoughts? >> Yeah, I would say, you know, with our partners we work as one team and continue to hone our skills in and embrace our confidence. We're looking to help them evolve their businesses and thrive, and we're here to help now more than ever. So, you know, please reach out to our team and our partners so we can show you where we've already been successful together. >> So that's great. We're seeing the expanding GreenLake portfolio partners are key part of it. We're seeing new tools for them and then this ecosystem evolution and build out an expansion. Guys, thanks so much. >> You bet, thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> You're welcome.

(bright upbeat music) >> Announcer: We are entering an age of insight where data moves freely between environments to work together powerfully, from wherever it lives. A new era driven by next generation cloud services. It's freedom that accelerates innovation and digital transformation, but it's only for those who dare to propel their business toward a new future that pushes beyond the usual barriers. To a place that unites all information under a fluid yet consistent operating model, across all your applications and data. To a place called HPE GreenLake. HPE GreenLake pushes beyond the obstacles and limitations found in today's infrastructure because application entanglements, data gravity, security, compliance, and cost issues simply aren't solved by current cloud options. Instead, HPE GreenLake is the cloud that comes to you, bringing with it, increased agility, broad visibility, and open governance across your entire enterprise. This is digital transformation unlocked, incompatibility solved, data decentralized, and insights amplified. For those thinkers, makers and doers who want to create on the fly scale up or down with a single click, stand up new ideas without risk, and view it all as a single agile system of systems. HPE GreenLake is here and all are invited. >> The definition of cloud is evolving and now clearly comprises hybrid and on-prem cloud. These trends are top of mind for every CIO and the space is heating up as every major vendor has been talking about as-a-Service models and making moves to better accommodate customer needs. HPE was the first to market with its GreenLake brand, and continues to make new announcements designed to bring the cloud experience to far more customers. Come here from HPE and its partners about the momentum that they're seeing with this trend and what actions you can take to stay ahead of the competition in this fast moving market. (bright soft music) Okay, we're with Keith White, Senior Vice President and General Manager for GreenLake at HPE, and George Hope, who's the Worldwide Head of Partner Sales at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome gentlemen, good to see you. >> Awesome to be here. >> Yeah. Thanks so much. >> You're welcome, Keith, last we spoke, we talked about how you guys were enabling high performance computing workloads to get green-late right for enterprise markets. And you got some news today, which we're going to get to but you guys, you put out a pretty bold position with GreenLake, basically staking a claim if you will, the edge, cloud as-a-Service all in. How are you thinking about its impacts for your customers so far? >> You know, the impact's been amazing and, you know, in essence, I think the pandemic has really brought forward this real need to accelerate our customer's digital transformation, their modernization efforts, and you know, frankly help them solve what was amounting to a bunch of new business problems. And so, you know, this manifests itself in a set of workloads, set of solutions, and across all industries, across all customer types. And as you mentioned, you know GreenLake is really bringing that value to them. It brings the cloud to the customer in their data center, in their colo, or at the edge. And so frankly, being able to do that with that full cloud experience. All is a pay per use, you know, fully consumption-based scenario, all managed for them so they get that as I mentioned, true cloud experience. It's really sort of landing really well with customers and we continue to see accelerated growth. We're adding new customers, we're adding new technology. And we're adding a whole new set of partner ecosystem folks as well that we'll talk about. >> Well, you know, it's interesting you mentioned that just cause as a quick aside it's, the definition of cloud is evolving and it's because customers, it's the way customers look at it. It's not just vendor marketing. It's what customers want, that experience across cloud, edge, you know, multiclouds, on-prem. So George, what's your take? Anything you'd add to Keith's response? >> I would, you've heard Antonio Neri say it several times and you probably saying it for yourself. The cloud is an experience, it's not a destination. The digital transformation is pushing new business models and that demands more flexible IT. And the first round of digital transformation focused on a cloud first strategy. For our customers we're looking to get more agility. As Keith mentioned, the next phase of transformation will be characterized by bringing the cloud speed and agility to all apps and data, regardless of where they live, According to IDC, by the end of 2021, 80% of the businesses will have some mechanism in place to shift the cloud centric, infrastructure and apps and twice as fast as before the pandemic. So the pandemic has actually accelerated the impact of the digital divide, specifically, in the small and medium companies which are adapting to technology change even faster and emerging stronger as a result. You know, the analysts agree cloud computing and digitalization will be key differentiators for small and medium business in years to come. And speed and automation will be pivotal as well. And by 2022, at least 30% of the lagging SMBs will accelerate digitalization. But the fair focus will be on internal processes and operations. The digital leaders, however, will differentiate by delivering their customers, a dynamic experience. And with our partner ecosystem, we're helping our customers embrace our as-a-Service vision and stand out wherever they are. on their transformation journey. >> Well, thanks for those stats, I always liked the data. I mean, look, if you're not a digital business today I feel like you're out of business only 'cause.... I'm sure there's some exceptions, but you got to get on the digital bandwagon. I think pre-pandemic, a lot of times people really didn't know what it meant. We know now what it means. Okay, Keith, let's get into the news when we do these things. I love that you guys always have something new to share. What do you have? >> No, you got it. And you know, as we said, the world is hybrid and the world is multicloud. And so, customers are expecting these solutions. And so, we're continuing to really drive up the innovation and we're adding additional cloud services to GreenLake. We just recently went to General AVailability of our MLOps, Machine Learning Operations, and our containers for cloud services along with our virtual desktop which has become very big in a pandemic world where a lot more people are working from home. And then we have shipped our SAP HEC, customer edition, which allows SAP customers to run on their premise whether it's the data center or the colo. And then today we're introducing our new Bare Metal capabilities as well as containers on Bare Metal as a Service, for those folks that are running cloud native applications that don't require any sort of hypervisor. So we're really excited about that. And then second, I'd say similar to that HPC as a Service experience we talked about before, where we were bringing HPC down to a broader set of customers. We're expanding the entry point for our private cloud, which is virtual machines, containers, storage, compute type capabilities in workload optimized systems. So again, this is one of the key benefits that HPE brings is it combines all of the best of our hardware, software, third-party software, and our services, and financial services into a package. And we've workload optimized this for small, medium, large and extra-large. So we have a real sort of broader base for our customers to take advantage of and to really get that cloud experience through HPE GreenLake. And, you know, from a partner standpoint we also want to make sure that we continue to make this super easy. So we're adding self-service capabilities we're integrating into our distributors marketplaces through a core set of APIs to make sure that it plugs in for a very smooth customer experience. And this expands our reach to over 100,000 additional value-added resellers. And, you know, we saw just fantastic growth in the channel in Q1, over 118% year over year growth for GreenLake Cloud Services through the channel. And we're continuing to expand, extend and expand our partner ecosystem with additional key partnerships like our colos. The colocation centers are really key. So Equinix, CyrusOne and others that we're working with and I'll let George talk more about. >> Yeah, I wonder if you could pick up on that George. I mean, look, if I'm a partner and and I mean, I see an opportunity here.. Maybe, you know, I made a lot of money in the old days moving iron. But I got to move, I got to pivot my business. You know, COVID's actually, you know, accelerating a lot of those changes, but there's a lot of complexity out there and partners can be critical in helping customers make that journey. What do you see this meaning to partners, George? >> So I completely agree with Keith and through and with our partners we give our customers choice. Right, they don't have to worry about security or cost as they would with public cloud or the hyperscalers. We're driving special initiatives via Cloud28 which we run, which is the world's largest cloud aggregator. And also, in collaboration with our distributors in their marketplaces as Keith mentioned. In addition, customers can leverage our expertise and support of our service provider ecosystem, our SI's, our ISV's, to find the right mix of hybrid IT and decide where each application or workload should be hosted. 'Cause customers are now demanding robust ecosystems, cloud adjacency, and efficient low latency networks. And the modern workload demands, secure, compliant, highly available, and cost optimized environments. And Keith touched on colocation. We're partnering with colocation facilities to provide our customers with the ability to expand bandwidth, reduce latency, and get access to a robust ecosystem of adjacent providers. We touched on Equinix a bit as one of them, but we're partnering with them to enable customers to connect to multiple clouds with private on-demand interconnections from hundreds of data center locations around the globe. We continue to invest in the partner and customer experience, you know, making ourselves easier to do business with. We've now fully integrated partners in GreenLake Central, and could provide their customers end to end support and managing the entire hybrid IT estate. And lastly, we're providing partners with dedicated and exclusive enablement opportunities so customers can rely on both HPE and partner experts. And we have a competent team of specialists that can help them transform and differentiate themselves. >> Yeah, so, I'm hearing a theme of simplicity. You know, I talked earlier about this being customer-driven. To me what the customer wants is they want to come in, they want simple, like you mentioned, self-serve. I don't care if it's on-prem, in the cloud, across clouds, at the edge, abstract, all that complexity away from me. Make it simple to do, not only the technology to work, you figure out where the workload should run and let the metadata decide and that's a bold vision. And then, make it easy to do business. Let me buy as-a-Service if that's the way I want to consume. And partners are all about, you know, reducing friction and driving that. So, anyway guys, final thoughts, maybe Keith, you can close it out here and maybe George can call it timeout. >> Yeah, you summed it up really nice. You know, we're excited to continue to provide what we view as the largest and most flexible hybrid cloud for our customers' apps, data, workloads, and solutions. And really being that leading on-prem solution to meet our customer's needs. At the same time, we're going to continue to innovate and our ears are wide open, and we're listening to our customers on what their needs are, what their requirements are. So we're going to expand the use cases, expand the solution sets that we provide in these workload optimized offerings to a very very broad set of customers as they drive forward with that digital transformation and modernization efforts. >> Right, George, any final thoughts? >> Yeah, I would say, you know, with our partners we work as one team and continue to hone our skills and embrace our competence. We're looking to help them evolve their businesses and thrive, and we're here to help now more than ever. So, you know, please reach out to our team and our partners and we can show you where we've already been successful together. >> That's great, we're seeing the expanding GreenLake portfolio, partners key part of it. We're seeing new tools for them and then this ecosystem evolution and build out and expansion. Guys, thanks so much. >> Yeah, you bet, thank you. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> You're welcome. (bright soft music) >> Okay, we're here with Jo Peterson the VP of Cloud & Security at Clarify360. Hello, Jo, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hello. >> Great to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> You're welcome, all right, let's get right into it. How do you think about cloud where we are today in 2021? The definitions evolve, but where do you see it today and where do you see it going? >> Well, that's such an interesting question and is so relevant because the labels are disappearing. So over the last 10 years, we've sort of found ourselves defining whether an environment was public or whether it was private or whether it was hybrid. Here's the deal, cloud is infrastructure and infrastructure is cloud. So at the end of the day cloud in whatever form it's taking is a platform, and ultimately, this enablement tool for the business. Customers are consuming cloud in the best way that works for their businesses. So let's also point out that cloud is not a destination, it's this journey. And clients are finding themselves at different places on that road. And sometimes they need help getting to the next milestone. >> Right, and they're really looking for that consistent experience. Well, what are the big waves and trends that you're seeing around cloud out there in the marketplace? >> So I think that this hybrid reality is happening in most organizations. Their actual IT portfolios include a mix of on-premise and cloud infrastructure, and we're seeing this blurred line happening between the public cloud and the traditional data center. Customers want a bridge that easily connects one environment to the other environment, and they want end-to-end visibility. Customers are becoming more intentional and strategic about their cloud roadmaps. So some of them are intentionally and strategically selecting hybrid environments because they feel that it affords them more control, cost, balance, comfort level around their security. In a way, cloud itself is becoming borderless. The major tech providers are extending their platforms in an infrastructure agnostic manner and that's to work across hybrid environments, whether they be hosted in the data center, whether it includes multiple cloud providers. As cloud matures, workload environments fit is becoming more of a priority. So forward thinking where the organizations are matching workloads to the best environment. And it's sort of application rationalization on this case by case basis and it really makes sense. >> Yeah, it does makes sense. Okay, well, let's talk about HPE GreenLake. They just announced some new solutions. What do you think it means for customers? >> I think that HPE has stepped up. They've listened to not only their customers but their partners. Customers want consumable infrastructure, they've made that really clear. And HPE has expanded the cloud service portfolio for clients. They're offering more choices to not only enterprise customers but they're expanding that offering to attract this mid-market client base. And they provided additional tools for partners to make selling GreenLake easier. This is all helping to drive channel sales. >> Yeah, so better granularity, just so it increases the candidates, better optionality for customers. And this thing is evolving pretty quickly. We're seeing a number of customers that we talked to interested in this model, trying to understand it better and ultimately, I think they're going to really lean in hard. Jo, I wonder if you could maybe think about or share with us which companies are, I got to say, getting it right? And I'm really interested in the partner piece, because if you think about the partner business, it's really, it's changing a lot, right? It's gone from this notion of moving boxes and there was a lot of money to be made over the decades in doing that, but they have to now become value-add suppliers and really around cloud services. And in the early days of cloud, I think the channel was a little bit freaked out, saying, uh-oh, they're going to cut out the middleman. But what's actually happened is those smart agile partners are adding substantial value, they've got deep relationships with customers and they're serving as really trusted advisors and executors of cloud strategies. What do you see happening in the partner community? >> Well, I think it's been a learning curve and everything that you said was spot on. It's a two way street, right? In order for VARs to sell residual services, monthly recurring services, there has to have been some incentive to do that and HPE really got it right. Because they, again listened to that partner community, and they said, you know what? We've got to incentivize these guys to start selling this way. This is a partnership and we expect it to be a partnership. And the tech companies that are getting right are doing that same sort of thing, they're figuring out ways to make it palatable to that VAR, to help them along that journey. They're giving them tools, they're giving them self-serve tools, they're incentivizing them financially to make that shift. That's what's going to matter. >> Well, that's a key point you're making, I mean, the financial incentives, that's new and different. Paying, you know, incentivizing for as-a-Service models versus again, moving hardware and paying for, you know, installing iron. That's a shift in mindset, isn't it? >> It definitely is. And HPE, I think is getting it right because I didn't notice but I learned this, 70% of their annual sales are actually transacted through their channel. And they've seen this 116% increase in HPE GreenLake orders in Q1, from partners. So what they're doing is working. >> Yeah, I think you're right. And you know, the partner channel it becomes super critical. It's funny, Jo, I mean, again, in the early days of cloud, the channel was feeling like they were going to get disrupted. I don't know about you, but I mean, we've both been analysts for awhile and the more things get simple, the more they get complicated, right? I mean the consumerization of IT, the cloud, swipe your credit card, but actually applying that to your business is not easy. And so, I see that as great opportunities for the channel. Give you the last word. >> Absolutely, and what's going to matter is the tech companies that step up and realize we've got this chance, this opportunity to build that bridge and provide visibility, end-to-end visibility for clients. That's what going to matter. >> Yeah, I like how you're talking about that bridge, because that's what everybody wants. They want that bridge from on-prem to the public cloud, across clouds, going to to be moving out to the edge. And that is to your point, a journey that's going to evolve over the better part of this coming decade. Jo, great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE today. >> Thanks for having me. (bright soft music) >> Okay, now we're going to into the GreenLake power panel to talk about the cloud landscape, hybrid cloud, and how the partner ecosystem and customers are thinking about cloud, hybrid cloud as a Service and of course, GreenLake. And with me are C.R. Howdyshell, President of Advizex. Ron Nemecek, who's the Business Alliance Manager at CBTS. Harry Zarek is President of Compugen. And Benjamin Klay is VP of Sales and Alliances at Arrow Electronics. Great to see you guys, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> Good to be here. >> Okay, here's the deal. So I'm going to ask you guys each to introduce yourselves and your companies, add a little color to my brief intro, and then answer the following question. How do you and your customers think about hybrid cloud? And think about it in the context of where we are today and where we're going, not just the snapshot but where we are today and where we're going. C.R., why don't you start please? >> Sure, thanks a lot, Dave, appreciate it. And again, C.R. Howdyshell, President of Advizex. I've been with the company for 18 years, the last four years as president. So had the great opportunity here to lead a 45 year old company with a very strong brand and great culture. As it relates to Advizex and where we're headed to with hybrid cloud is it's a journey. So we're excited to be leading that journey for the company as well as HPE. We're very excited about where HPE is going with GreenLake. We believe it's a very strong solution when it comes to hybrid cloud. Have been an HPE partner since, well since 1980. So for 40 years, it's our longest standing OEM relationship. And we're really excited about where HPE is going with GreenLake. From a hybrid cloud perspective, we feel like we've been doing the hybrid cloud solutions, the past few years with everything that we've focused on from a VMware perspective. But now with where HPE is going, we think, probably changing the game. And it really comes down to giving customers that cloud experience with the on-prem solution with GreenLake. And we've had great response for customers and we think we're going to continue to see that kind of increased activity and reception. >> Great, thank you C.R., and yeah, I totally agree. It is a journey and we've seen it really come a long way in the last decade. Ron, I wonder if you could kickoff your little first intro there please. >> Sure Dave, thanks for having me today and it's a pleasure being here with all of you. My name is Ron Nemecek, I'm a Business Alliance manager at CBTS. In my role, I'm responsible for our HPE GreenLake relationship globally. I've enjoyed a 33 year career in the IT industry. I'm thankful for the opportunity to serve in multiple functional and senior leadership roles that have helped me gather a great deal of education and experience that could be used to aid our customers with their evolving needs, for business outcomes to best position them for sustainable and long-term success. I'm honored to be part of the CBTS and OnX Canada organization. CBTS stands for Consult Build Transform and Support. We have a 35 year relationship with HPE. We're a platinum and inner circle partner. We're headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. We service 3000 customers generating over a billion dollars in revenue and we have over 2000 associates across the globe. Our focus is partnering with our customers to deliver innovative solutions and business results through thought leadership. We drive this innovation via our team of the best and brightest technology professionals in the industry that have secured over 2,800 technical certifications, 260 specifically with HPE. And in our hybrid cloud business, we have clearly found that technology, new market demands for instant responses and experiences, evolving economic considerations with detailed financial evaluation, and of course the global pandemic, have challenged each of our customers across all industries to develop an optimal cloud strategy. We now play an enhanced strategic role for our customers as their technology advisor and their guide to the right mix of cloud experiences that will maximize their organizational success with predictable outcomes. Our conversations have really moved from product roadmaps and speeds and feeds to return on investment, return on capital, and financial statements, ratios, and metrics. We collaborate regularly with our customers at all levels and all departments to find an effective comprehensive cloud strategy for their workloads and applications ensuring proper alignment and cost with financial return. >> Great, thank you, Ron. Yeah, today it's all about the business value. Harry, please. >> Hi Dave, thanks for the opportunity and greetings from the Great White North. We're a Canadian-based company headquartered in Toronto with offices across the country. We've been in the tech industry for a very long time. We're what we would call a solution provider. How hard for my mother to understand what that means but what our goal is to help our customers realize the business value of their technology investments. Just to give you an example of what it is we try and do. We just finished a build out of a new networking endpoint and data center technology for a brand new hospital. It's now being mobilized for COVID high-risk patients. So talk about our all being in an essential industry, providing essential services across the whole spectrum of technology. Now, in terms of what's happening in the marketplace, our customers are confused. No question about it. They hear about cloud, I mean, cloud first, and everyone goes to the cloud, but the reality is there's lots of technology, lots of applications that actually still have to run on premises for a whole bunch of reasons. And what customers want is solid senior serious advice as to how they leverage what they already have in terms of their existing infrastructure, but modernize it, update it, so it looks and feels a lot like the cloud. But they have the security, they have the protection that they need to have for reasons that are dependent on their industry and business to allow them to run on-prem. And so, the GreenLake philosophy is perfect. That allows customers to actually have one foot in the cloud, one foot in their traditional data center but modernize it so it actually looks like one enterprise entity. And it's that kind of flexibility that gives us an opportunity collectively, ourselves, our partners, HPE, to really demonstrate that we understand how to optimize the use of technology across all of the business applications they need to run. >> You know Harry, it's interesting about what you said is, the cloud it is kind of chaotic my word, not yours. But there is a lot of confusion out there, I mean, what's cloud, right? Is it public cloud, is it private cloud, the hybrid cloud? Now, it's the edge and of course the answer is all of the above. Ben, what's your perspective on all this? >> From a cloud perspective, you know, I think as an industry, I think we we've all accepted that public cloud is not necessarily going to win the day and we're in fact, in a hybrid world. There's certainly been some commentary and press that was sort of validate that. Not that it necessarily needs any validation but I think is the linkages between on-prem and cloud-based services have increased. It's paved the way for customers more effectively, deploy hybrid solutions in in the model that they want or that they desire. You know, Harry was commenting on that a moment ago. As the trend continues, it becomes much easier for solution providers and service providers to drive their services initiatives, you know, in particular managed services. >> From an Arrow perspective is we think about how we can help scale in particular from a GreenLake perspective. We've got the ability to stand up some cloud capabilities through our ArrowSphere platform that can really help customers adopt GreenLake and to benefit from some alliances opportunities, as well. And I'll talk more about that as we go through. >> And Ben, I didn't mean to squeeze you on Arrow. I mean, Arrow has been around longer than computers. I mean, if you Google the history of Arrow it'll blow your mind, but give us a little quick commercial. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I've been with Arrow for about 20 years. I've got responsibility for Alliance organization in North America, We're a global value added distribution, business consulting and channel enablement company. And we bring scope, scale and and expertise as it relates to the IT industry. I love the fast pace that comes with the market that we're all in. And I love helping customers and suppliers both, be positioned for long-term success. And you know, the subject matter here today is just a great example of that. So I'm happy to be here and look forward to the discussion. >> All right, we got some good brain power in the room. Let's cut right to the chase. Ron, where's the pain? What are the main problems that CBTS I love what it stands for, Consult Build Transform and Support. What's the main pain point that customers are asking you to solve when it comes to their cloud strategies? >> Sure, Dave. Our customers' concerns and associated risks come from the market demands to deliver their products, services, and experiences instantaneously. And then the challenge is how do they meet those demands because they have aging infrastructure, processes, and fiscal constraints. Our customers really need us now more than ever to be excellent listeners so we can collaborate on an effective map with the strategic placement of workloads and applications in that spectrum of cloud experiences while managing their costs, and of course, mitigating risks to their business. This collaboration with our customers, often identify significant costs that have to be evaluated, justified or eliminated. We find significant development, migration, and egress charges in their current public cloud experience, coupled with significant over provisioning, maintenance, operational, and stranded asset costs in their on-premise infrastructure environment. When we look at all these costs holistically, through our customized workshops and assessments, we can identify the optimal cloud experience for the respective workloads and applications. Through our partnership with HPE and the availability of the HPE GreenLake solutions, our customers now have a choice to deliver SLA's, economics, and business outcomes for their workloads and applications that best reside on-premise in a private cloud and have that experience. This is a rock solid solution that eliminates, the development costs that they experience and the egress charges that are associated with the public cloud while utilizing HPE GreenLake to eliminate over provisioning costs and the maintenance costs on aging infrastructure hardware. Lastly, our customers only have to pay for actual infrastructure usage with no upfront capital expense. And now, that achieves true utilization to cost economics, you know, with HPE GreenLake solutions from CBTS. >> I love focus on the business case, 'cause it's measurable and it's sort of follow the money. That's where the opportunity is. Okay, C.R., so question for you. Thinking about Advizex customers, how are they, are they leaning into GreenLake? What are they telling you is the business impact when they experience GreenLake? >> Well, I think it goes back to what Ron was talking about. We had to solve the business challenges first and so far, the reception's been positive. When I say that is customers are open. Everybody wants to, the C-suite wants to hear about cloud and hybrid cloud fits. But what we hear and what we're seeing from our customers is we're seeing more adoption from customers that it may be their first foot in, if you will, but as important, we're able to share other customers with our potentially new clients that say, what's the first thing that happens with regard to GreenLake? Well, number one, it works. It works as advertised and as-a-Service, that's a big step. There are a lot of people out there dabbling today but when you can say we have a proven solution it's working in our environment today, that's key. I think the second thing is,, is flexibility. You know, when customers are looking for this hybrid solution, you got to be flexible for, again, I think Ron said (indistinct). You don't have a big capital outlay but also what customers want to be able to do is we want to build for growth but we don't want to pay for it. So we'll pay as we grow not as we have to use, as we used to do, it was upfront, the capital expenditure. Now we'll just pay as we grow, and that really facilitates in another great example as you'll hear from a customer, this afternoon. But you'll hear where one of the biggest benefits they just acquired a $570 million company and their integration is going to be very seamless because of their investment in GreenLake. They're looking at the flexibility to add to GreenLake as a big opportunity to integrate for acquisitions. And finally is really, we see, it really brings the cloud experience and as-a-Service to our customers. And with HPE GreenLake, it brings the best of breed. So it's not just what HPE has to offer. When you look at Hyperconverged, they have Nutanix, they have Cohesity. So, I really believe it brings best of breeds. So, to net it out and close it out with our customers, thus far, the customer experience has been exceptional. I mean, with GreenLake Central, as interface, customers have had a lot of success. We just had our first customer from about a year and a half ago just reopened, it was a highly competitive situation, but they just said, look, it's proven, it works, and it gives us that cloud experience so. Had a lot of great success thus far and looking forward to more. >> Thank you, so Harry, I want to pick up on something C.R. said and get your perspectives. So when I talk to the C-suite, they do all want to hear about, you know, cloud, they have a cloud agenda. And what they tell me is it's not just about their IT transformation. They want that but they also want to transform their business. So I wonder if you could talk, Harry, about Compugen's perspective on the potential business impact of GreenLake. And also, I'm interested in how you guys are thinking about workloads, how to manage work, you know, how to cost optimize in IT, but also, the business value that comes out of that capability. >> Yeah, so Dave, you know if you were to talk to CFO and I have the good fortune to talk to lots of CFOs, they want to pay the costs when they generate the revenue. They don't want to have all the costs upfront and then wait for the revenue to come through. A good example of where that's happening right now is you know, related to the pandemic, employees that used to work at the office have now moved to working from home. And now, they have to connect remotely to run the same application. So use this thing called VDI, virtual interfacing to allow them to connect to the applications that they need to run in the office. I don't want to get into too much detail but to be able to support that from an an at-home environment, they needed to buy a lot more computing capacity to handle this. Now, there's an expectation that hopefully six months from now, maybe sooner than that, people will start returning to the office. They may not need that capacity so they can turn down on the costs. And so, the idea of having the capacity available when you need it, but then turning it off when you don't need it, is really a benefit of the variable cost model. Another example that I would use is one in new development. If a customer is going to implement a new, let's say, line of business application. SAP is very very popular. You know, it actually, unfortunately, takes six months to two years to actually get that application set up, installed, validated, tested, then moves through production. You know, what used to happen before? They would buy all that capacity upfront, and it would basically sit there for two years, and then when they finally went to full production, then they were really value out of that investment. But they actually lost a couple of years of technology, literally sitting almost sidle. And so, from a CFO perspective, his ability to support the development of those applications as he scales it, perfect. GreenLake is the ideal solution that allows him to do that. >> You know, technology has saved businesses in this pandemic. There's no question about it. When Harry was just talking about with regard to VDI, you think about that, there's the dialing up and dialing down piece which is awesome from an IT perspective. And then the business impact there is the productivity of the end users. And most C-suite executives I've talked to said productivity actually went up during COVID with work from home, which is kind of astounding if you think about it. Ben, we said Arrow's been around for a long, long time. Certainly, before all of us were born and it's gone through many many industry transitions during our lifetimes. How does Arrow and how do your partners think about building cloud experiences and where does GreenLake fit in from your perspective? >> Great question. So from an Arrow perspective, when you think about cloud experience in of course us taking a view as a distribution partner, we want to be able to provide scale and efficiency to our network of partners. So we do that through our ArrowSphere platform. Just a bit of, you know, a bit of a commercial. I mean, you get single quote, single bill, auto provision, multi supplier, if you will, subscription management, utilization reporting from the platform itself. So if we pivot that directly to HPE, you're going to get a bit of a scoop here, Dave. And we're excited today to have GreenLake live in our platform available for our partner community to consume. In particular, the Swift solutions that HPE has announced so we're very excited to share that today. Maybe a little bit more on GreenLake. I think at this point in time, that it's differentiated in a sense that, if you think about some of the other offerings in the market today and further with having the the solutions themselves available in ArrowSphere. So, I would say, that we identify the uniqueness and quickly partner with HPE to work with our ArrowSphere platform. One other sort of unique thing is, when you think about platform itself, you've got to give a consistent experience. The different geographies around the world so, you know, we're available in North of 20 countries, there's thousands of resellers and transacting on the platform on a regular basis. And frankly, hundreds of thousands end customers. that are leveraging today. So that creates an opportunity for both Arrow, HPE and our partner community. So we're excited. >> You know, I just want to open it up. We don't have much time left, but thoughts on differentiation. Some people ask me, okay, what's really different about HPE and GreenLake? These others, you know, are doing things with as-a-Service. To me, I always say cultural, it starts from the top with Antonio, and it's like the company's all in. But I wonder from your perspectives, 'cause you guys are hands on. Are there other differentiable factors that you would point to? Let me just open that up to the group. >> Yeah, if I could make a comment. GreenLake is really just the latest invocation of the as-a-Service model. And what does that mean? What that actually means is you have a continuous ongoing relationship with the customer. It's not a sell and forget. Not that we ever forget about customers but there are highlights. Customer buys, it gets installed, and then for two or three years you may have an occasional engagement with them but it's not continuous. When you move to our GreenLake model, you're actually helping them manage that. You are in the core, in the heart of their business. No better place to be if you want to be sticky and you want to be relevant and you want to be always there for them. >> You know, I wonder if somebody else could add to it in your remarks. From your perspective as a partner, 'cause you know, hey, a lot of people made a lot of money selling boxes, but those days are pretty much gone. I mean, you have to transform into a services mindset, but other thoughts? >> I think to add to that Dave. I think Harry's right on. The way he positioned it it's exactly where he did own the customer. I think even another step back for us is, we're able to have the business conversation without leading with what you just said. You don't have to leave with a storage solution, you don't have to lead with compute. You know, you can really have step back, have a business conversation. And we've done that where you don't even bring up HPE GreenLake until you get to the point where the customer says, so you can give me an on-prem cloud solution that gives me scalability, flexibility, all the things you're talking about. How does that work? Then you bring up, it's all through this HPE GreenLake tool. And it really gives you the ability to have a business conversation. And you're solving the business problems versus trying to have a technology conversation. And to me, that's clear differentiation for HPE GreenLake. >> All right guys, C.R., Ron, Harry, Ben. Great discussion, thank you so much for coming on the program. Really appreciate it. >> Thanks for having us, Dave. >> Appreciate it Dave. >> All right, keep it right there for more great content at GreenLake Day, be right back. (bright soft music) (upbeat music) (upbeat electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe it's theCUBE, with coverage of SUSECON Digital. Brought to you by SUSE. >> Stu: Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Apeda Welcome to the program Vincente Moranta, who is the Vice President of Offer Management of Enterprise Linux Workloads on Power. Vincente, pleasure to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Vincente: Hey Stu and thank you for having me. >> All right, so we know that SUSE lives on a lot of platforms. We're going to talk a bit about applications specifically, primarily SAP. Give us a little bit, Vincente, about what you're working on, and the relevance to the partnership with SUSE. >> Sure, absolutely. So, the last five years I've been responsible for offering management at IBM. Focused on solutions that live on IBM powered systems. In particular, we started with SAP HANA, and obviously SAP and SUSE, with their fantastic relationship, was a big part of that and continues to be as we have grown the platform for the last five years. >> Excellent. So, SAP of course, critical workload, we've been seeing SAP go through those transformation. So, help us understand what work needs to be done to integrate these things? Make sure that companies can run their business. >> Yeah, I think primarily as clients are making their transition from a traditional type of an ERP, CRM, and even BW type workloads, they're looking for a way to make those transitions. Really get in to the whole digital transformation and all of the spaces of being able to leverage technology in a way that creates value to the client, in almost real time. But they want to do it with technology partners that are going to enable the client to do it with minimal risk, with high flexibility and with partners who are there for them to, in some cases, do things that are not necessarily all too forwarded or ready to go yet. But really giving the customer the ability to adapt to things. And when we started with SAP HANA, as I mentioned, the customers in the market who were doing HANA on X86 platforms were limited to certain set of capabilities, certain set of support statements, and things like that. And a big part of that was bare metal implementations which still to this day remain the most popular way to deploy HANA in an X86 environment. But when we got together with SUSE and with SAP and we started the partnership around HANA, the thing that became very clear was that customers needed flexibility. They needed to be able to adapt to changing environments, very interesting challenges that they were trying to tackle with these HANA projects. But the capabilities of the servers that they were using, were not allowing them to have that flexibility. And then, even if SUSE was trying to do certain things and give some flexibility to those clients, if the infrastructure cannot handle it, or vice verse, it really just is a one-party trick and it doesn't work. So the focus with SUSE, almost from the beginning, has been on tool innovation. And we've been able to accomplish really amazing things together with them and SAP. Things that could not have been possible without that very strong collaboration. And one of them that is very recent, is shared processor pool. Right? In a world where HANA is deployed bare-metal systems, IBM Power is always doing virtualization, and together with SUSE, we were able to come up with a solution. And with SAP, obviously. That allowed customers to share source in a virtual way across many HANA instances. So completely revolutionizing the DCO and the ROI for clients working with HANA. Without trading out any of the resiliency, any of the performance, and everything else. So, that's the balance that a lot of these customers are looking for is flexibility, and better returns, especially now more than ever. Without trading out all of the things that they need for an S/4 HANA project or an ERP or a BW project. >> You talked about the flexibility and the returns that customers get on this. I wonder if you step back for a second, where is this hitting on a CIO's priority list? What has changed in today's Cloud era? Couple weeks ago, IBM Think was going on, heard a lot about customers, how they're going through their journey in the cloud. We know there's a lot of options there so. SAP solutions specifically, there's a lot of ways that we can do this. So how does a CIO figure out what the best solution for their skill-set and the technology partner that they work with. >> Yeah, I think at a high-level where the CIO's are basing nowadays, is kind of, it's a good time to be a CIO, I think, because you get a chance to have a broad range of deployment options. Without having to trade out from the features. I'm sure some CIO's will disagree and will say there's plenty of other challenges that are making their lives complicated. But if we just focus on the fact that you can deploy HANA - you can deploy it in the cloud, you can deploy it in hybrid, you can deploy it on premises. And the largest then, and especially with our capabilities, and together with SUSE, the CIO doesn't have to make a choice on trade out of things that they have to lose if they make one of the other. I think that is what helps them to feel comfortable to go in to SAP and being able to adapt. If a project becomes too large or the data transfer requirements become too complicated or too expensive, it's easy enough to bring it back and to maybe leave dev test in a cloud and move the rest of the production environment to on premise. Through a number of partnerships that we have done over the last few years, there's a number of very large MSP's and CSP's including SAP HANA Enterprise Crowd - HEC - and very soon IBM cloud as well. Who can provide all of these capabilities that SUSE and Empower allow for a HANA deployment to be done in a Cloud. So from our perspective, even though I'm a hardware guy, and some people may think I only care about on premises business, the reality is when a customer says, or a CIO as you were asking. When a CIO is trying to make a decision we don't want that CIO to be thinking they have to make a decision between IBM supporting them only if it's on premises or only if it's on Cloud. We can do both. And they don't have to do, it's not a hard trade off to decide. You can start with one, you can go to the other one. We can have capacity for them like we're doing with SAP HEC today, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. They're using Power9 technology. The customers benefit in regardless of which deployment option they choose. Both with SUSE underneath it. I think we're trying to make it simpler for them to make those choices without infrastructure becoming the sticky point. >> Yeah, and you talked about the support that users can get, of course, from IBM. At SUSECON, a lot of the discussion about the community there. >> Absolutely. >> So, what can you tell us about, you've got thousands of customers that are running SAP HANA on Power, how do you help them rally together and be part of (muted). >> Yeah, so, you and I have known each other for a while and I think when we started working together at a prior company it was around communities practice. And the organizational network and social network. A big part of what we have done is just going to that same approach. Of just connecting people with people. Right? Connecting people from SUSE with people from IBM, with clients and trying to foster valuable interaction between those clients. Whether it's TechU, IBM TechU Conferences, SAP TechEd, SUSECON, you name it. We're always kind of looking for ways to bring people together. And I'll put in a plug for a client entity, a client council called the SAP Power Customer Council, which is a group of clients that decided on their own to get together and bring other customers who are doing SAP deployments on AIX, on Linux, obviously with SUSE and HANA, and come together once a year. We also have almost monthly interlock and workshops with them. But that is one way where the SUSE folks, IBM Power, SAP Development, all come together with a whole bunch of clients and they're giving us feedback. But also identifying things for us to work on next. From a support perspective, as you said, we have thousands of clients nowadays, and the really fantastic thing has been very few issues and the issues that we have had, SUSE, SAP and IBM, all three of us together, have been able to resolve them to the customers satisfaction. So it just kind of demonstrates that regardless of where something is invented SUSE with SLES, SAP with HANA, us with our hardware and our hypervisors, when it comes to the clients we all work very closely together for their success. >> Great. Those feedback loops are so critically important to everyone involved. I guess last thing, maybe if you've got a customer example that might highlight the partnership between IBM and SUSE? >> Yeah, there's a number of them and we have, I think it's over 60 public references together with SUSE of clients who are doing an SAP HANA with SUSE Empower. But a couple that come to mind, obviously Robert Bosch is a fantastic client for all of us. A fantastic partner. And they've been with us almost from the very beginning, together with SUSE and together with us. And they helped us to identify early on some things that they would like to be able to see supported. Some capabilities that they expected to be able to have, especially given that Bosch had a strong knowledge of IBM technology, IBM product. And they wanted to be able to apply some of the same capabilities around Live Partition Mobility and large size L-bars for HANA and things like that. And they worked very closely with SUSE and with us, and with SAP, to not just give us the requirement, but really help us to identify okay, how should this work? Right, it's not just creating the technology and adding more and more features but how do we integrate it, how do we integrate it in to Bosch, who had created a fantastic self-provisioning type of a portal for all of their clients, all of their internal entities around the world. That was really cool and it really kind of helped us to highlight how we could integrate into tools, monetary, and reporting, etc that our clients have. Another example if I can, is Richemont. Richemont International is based in Geneva. Luxury brand. And Helga Delterad who was the Director of Idea at the time, kind of came to me and gave me a challenge. He said, "Look, I love HANA Power. I love that we can do all of these things with it. But I really would like be able to share processors across multiple HANA instances. That would really reduce the bill. It would really reduce the cost. And Richemont would be able to achieve a much quicker return on investment than we had anticipated." So, he gave us a challenge. The challenge went to everybody. It went to SUSE, to us and to SAP, we all got together and again with Helga being the executive sponsor on the client side, he really kind of worked with all of us. Brought us together and it was a power of the possible type of situation that now is generally available to all clients. And it's thanks to Helga, thanks to Richemont, who brought us together and gave us that challenge. >> Excellent. Well Vincenta Morante, great to catch up with you. Thanks so much for sharing the update on IBM Power and the partnership with SUSE. >> Thanks Stu. >> All right, we'll be back with more coverage from SUSECON Digital '20. I'm Stu Miniman and as always, thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music plays)