from London England extracting the signal from the noise it's the Kuhn covered discover 2015 brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise now your hosts John furrier and Dave vellante okay welcome back everyone we are here live in london england for HPE discover this is silicon angles the cube our flagship program we go out to the events and extract the signal from noise i'm john / with my co-host avalon say our next guest scott well our is SVP and general manager HP east technology services support group this guy welcome back you below many times every year great to have you on usually on though usually the first one on every time but now you've schedules packed i made on the last way this time right before questions for you now your last a baby for us welcome back thank you so give us the update from your standpoint it's just every year more and more stuffs happening yeah that requires services especially the technology services this year is composable right Dave and I were talking on the intro HP got it right with converged infrastructure you know right out of the gate and back then kinda people scratching their heads what's converge infrastructure looking back its mainstream now now you have the next bet on compostable we like it I love it a lot yeah now customers probably like oh my got another new thing so how do you guys doing right now with all the changes clouds pretty clear no public cloud good right a lot of private clouds that's yeah good stuff you've been building out right now composable what's the update so you like you said a lot going on we have in in a way reinvented the company which you don't do very often right but i think the the companies that can reinvent at the right times are the ones that survive and thrive and in particular pivoting our strategy around these for transformation areas is really is really important and you'll see the implications of that play out over time like you're seeing some of it now but it really changes the way we think about our customers what what their problems are what we're here to do for them and you're right it's there's a huge service element in that in fact you could even say that a lot of that is service led and so the transformation area work has led to probably 50 distinct solutions that are in every way pan HPE they involve you know it's a pan portfolio pan go to market kind of view on things and so right now you know we have competitors that are single plays you know storage competitors server competitors solution competitors and so we have to do the new we have to do this new view on the world as well as continue to be a fierce competitor right and these in these single play environments so so that's that's a a new challenge for us but I mean it's such an exciting time and just see this i'm actually very proud of what we've been able to do it's really interesting you certainly for your memoirs can put into the book this past couple years and certainly the past year I mean you had the operating as a split entity prior to the official date right huge IT track cross over the engine services workforce plus new hiring for the gaps you we talked about last time so congratulations on that I think really phenomenal yeah I love to drill down on that but I want to get to the point you just mentioned this is interesting in vague as we talked about the services piece viscosity the transformation was laid out them same four pillars right now you're seeing a lot of meat on the bone even how the show's organized it's not by org chart right it's by solutions we see oh yeah how to run your government booth over here that's not a division of age feeds a solution right so tell us what's of all I mean I love this services led angle Dave and I were just talking on the intro about IOT once you get them into the network the methodology for the customer depends on the customer or how they want to get the data function of what the device is right again just a random example but this is the the new normal the services led infrastructure it is and you know I can just tell you from the inside that that this is not market texture that you guys are seeing I mean this is real you know deep into the way the company not only operates and develop solutions and goes to market but again how do we think about what we're here to do for our customers how do we want to show up in in discussions with our customers so so this is a you know I wouldn't say that we're through that I mean we have a lot to learn a lot to do but this is this is definitely a reinvention a rotation for us and the reaction has been incredible and like you said we we made a conscious decision that we would show up here like that like it you know this is we're going to start to live what we really believe we need to do is this new company so it's got an indication of that it's not just market texture it's real it would be how you get measured by customers in it yeah and it used to be okay the projects on budget on time you know successful check and now that's table stakes Wow as you move toward these new four pillars solution areas are the ways in which you're measured changing right so what what we are seeing and experiencing is a shift from sort of like project technical project based of deliverables and have you done that to have you created the business outcome that I intended when I went down this path with Sheila Packard enterprise so and those outcomes are you know contextual their unique fairly unique to the customer situation and it can be anything from have you moved us to hybrid have you have you shown us how we can be a high velocity I tea shop have you have you brought devops into our context and shown us how to be successful so it's those kinds of things about you know are we you know ultimately without the specifics the question is are we helping our customers succeed through IT and and then the the specifics of that context will drive it but that that's really the difference it's not about project outcomes its business outcomes well that's a much more complicated equation for your zero because you check tick off the items and it'll fit you know the earlier days this is not what we delivered and oh the customer didn't exploit it you know because of XYZ man now they're holding you're responsible for the business outcome so how that basically talks some deeper business integration how is that changing the way you go to market your skill sets well you know a few years ago there was a whole question of do I just sell a product and then kind of the customers on their own to get some value out of it and actually for all of us as consumers if we don't use a product we don't we don't know whether we got any benefit obviously and so the companies that make those product would really like us to use them and and and so good things happen when you actually help customers realize the value of their investments with us you take that to the next step and you say you know if you care about whether the customer actually got to what they were planning for intending by working with us that that's a different mindset and it doesn't have to be contractual necessarily it starts with a mindset and then you can write it into contracts and there are ways to do that and we're seeing some of that but really more it's it's a mindset and what are we there to do for them and and yes you you begin just you begin to think about well you know you know maybe this project this this deployment didn't really achieve what they wanted what are we going to do about that together with the customer one of the things that we talked about yesterday with some of the channel partners was his reinvention isn't blurring the lines between of a band a bar and a reseller and distributor right and Carrie Bailey was on from the cloud group and really saying hey you know we should identify the value points and focus on that but I want to ask you on that on that thread because now that brings up the conscience we had again in Vegas which is there's so much work to do on the services side it's almost ridiculous to think about mind blowing and most like how many reference architectures it could be at me right variations it could be so we know you're busy work it away on that now but also now the channel partners are there and there's also the channel conflict so how do you guys because there's a lot of work to do how do you separate what you guys going to do with in HP and go direct to the customers and or right provide to the channel partners in the form of reference architectures because now they're taking the ball yeah and going to the front lines as well so seems to be that's a nice area you guys have managing that what's the thoughts there what's your vision so you know my belief is that actually simplicity is the better outcome you don't want to have a buffet of reference architectures or even products you know you I think our customers and our partners expect us to do our homework segment the market understand what business we're in and have you know enough but no more in terms of products use reference architectures and so on that's part of being a thought leader in this industry from there you're right it comes down to the kind of channel relationships you want the kind of plays you want to run with the channel in some cases it means the channel does everything in some cases it means that the channel you know does one piece of it and the direct is the other piece of it and we're so big and we're global so we have all kinds of buyers you know and we have we have direct customers who buy direct from so for some things and actually work with partners for other things so it's all of the above and we have to harmonize that we have to rationalize that for sure but at times they might not have the capabilities right so well it's down to the balance between roles and delivery right and that's the and that's the other piece of it is the partners get really upset with us when we're not innovating if they can do everything that we do then they wonder why in the world there partner program so so there is a creative tension right we're always going to be innovated sometimes that leads us down paths that overlap you know the forward leaning partners sometimes it works itself out so so but that is a constant dance and it's a good thing actually because our partners teach us a lot and and good checks and balances but you're also going to be an enabler right I mean yes you can leverage a lot of the work you're doing just pass it on that's as you get to movies converge and integration yes yeah yeah and and you know the channel piece is interesting because the channel is going through a massive transformation like everybody else yeah and you know let's face it most of the channel revenue today is moving tin and then but that's changing your rapidly because that business is kind of going away what happened overnight yeah so the lines are blurring but my understanding Scott and from speaking in the past is that that you're open to the channel white labeling your services they do that talk to many of your channel partners that are happy to do that and you allow that it doesn't have your not dogmatic about it's got to be the HP brand can you talk about that philosophy yeah so I think that's correct in that assertion so generally it's that that's not the way we kind of view the world we have a few what would we call partner branded programs and those are very very specific and targeted generally speaking what we want to do is pour a ton of investment into innovation and we ask our partners where there's there's you know where we have clear innovation and clear leadership to sell our brands we authorize them to do that we pay them to do that we encourage them to do that and we have multipliers on how they can earn with us you know the more for more model but in a few cases we do we do have a partner branded program and and sometimes that has to do with geography sometimes it has to do with a product and the competitors that are that are in the market with that product I see okay so so it really is selective and you're really trying to to have that HP branded service but the the partner can resell that service and make the partner can resell and they can deliver against it as well and again we make it worth their while through our partner programs you guys have a great track record with the channel excuse got a great history there's why I asked but the innovation things what I was getting at night so I gotta ask you since Vegas what's the top seller what product is working the most right now well I mean I mean I mean come joking but I want to kind of know where's the traction what's the most hot yeah what's hot well you know you were there when we introduced proactive care for example three years ago that's become possibly the fastest selling product in HP's history and most of it is done through the channel so here's the case where we're able to offer proactive in sight backed by analytics and reporting that most partners don't have either the time the breath the visibility to do and again that's where they said hey thank you thank you for innovating he look back at enterprise we would like to take that to our customers composable services what's going on there it's news right out of the gate so it's a new announcement right Rio T stuff again we love the IOT messaging though got a rouble wireless out there ya bought with a great leader transition right so I'll take them in order so so first of all composable you know what what all what every ops and I tea shop will know is that it's really hard to provision right it it's labor intensive it's is error prone its disruptive sometimes it's not very secure depending on where you get your images and so from and so with with the with synergy what we've done is we've said look we want to make provisioning happen at runtime we want the gear to self-assemble why can't the gear kind of discover itself and self assemble that kind of makes sense right but but nobody's done this right so we're really excited about that capability and then on top of that it has native exposure for this this infrastructure as code paradigm which now now you begin to excite the developer community about this being a target right versus the morass that they sometimes feel that I T is presenting back to them so it's high velocity IT it's in the paradigm that they want and from the knobs perspective a lot easier to live with I mean the livability of synergy versus conventional gear is so much better so we're trying to take the hassle factor out of being an ops person and also encourage a collaboration that eventually you know DevOps is all about but not everybody is there yet and and it's going to take time so we've just been discussing John and I a week whether synergy is evolutionary or revolutionary from the services perspective you haven't a good angle on that yeah and if it is evolutionary what does it mean from a services perspective what's your take synergy composable infrastructure that you've announced evolutionary or revolutionary and when I think lican I mean I think that could be a fun debate i'm not sure but i think you know for me for me i think it's going to feel quite revolutionary to customers and that's the reaction we're getting of course we pull the analysts all through the development cycle about what do you think and what do you think this is going to mean and they're really excited it's a cinema big weighing in at river there that I think I think they would say is revolutionary and from a certain perspective look at what's the abyss you know from a service perspective on one level it's no different than any other product there are more potentially more seams or fewer seams for my business to kind of deal with on behalf of the customer but it's also going to mean that we have the ability to now to kind of fulfill what I've laid out is our vision which is we need to be about making sure that customers are successful through IT and do that over the long term independent of market headwinds and independent of technology changes and so this is to me it's an enablement of what we're trying to do generally and then the rest of our service just wrap around it as they always do were you was your team asked to help dog food with the split and did you get tired of that well yeah remember all on the payroll it is but but but yes in fact you know we talked about how like in a couple weeks we had to build 4,000 servers well my team got involved with that why wouldn't we right we have the expertise yeah so in the long face and a lot of yeah a lot of my team were involved in the various you know behind the scenes aspects of it and but again that's something to be proud of because now people look and say wow that's almost like a benchmark for what how things should happen right and and so and we've actually made a business out of helping other companies do similar things whether it's divestiture or merger it's quite an accomplishment i think it's worth capturing and documenting as a use case because to do that a death scale at that level of that edge speed is really agile dan again it's for it is purest yeah non-dogmatic form yes I mean agile in terms of development I get that but to move that kind of scale yeah in that you know I think about it like a man on the moon in a decade we will do XYZ and that's and you know we in one year we are going to be two separate companies and we did it awesome well I gotta get your take on the overall vibe actually actually first IOT I want to get that the coyote is really an opportunity moonshots now being yeah I disagree gated opportunities there so so first of all there are cycles right you know mainframe client-server on on and on IOT moving compute to the edge is is the the latest cycle and it's going to last a long time because as much as we'd like to put in the sensors there's a cost right if the sensors are all super smart now they can't proliferate so putting compute on the edge is a nice architecture and moonshots a perfect vehicle for that the thing that for the service business there's a there's sort of an edge where I'm not going to take it further in other words our edge the true edge in other words I will provide support for the IOT aggregation right the aggregation quite the compute point but people say well why don't you you know isn't isn't a you know a RFID tag just you know part of the architecture well yes it is well I don't have people who can go into hazardous environments like I don't have people who are trained to go into medical facilities to grow that last mile right so when it comes yeah when it comes to talk about this right of service night around from us from Hewlett Packard Enterprise it'll go it'll go up to the compute layer or edge and then we'll work with other people and that'll be part of our overall big solution when you talk about big solutions like we might you know might be doing for an airline or for the health industry in general so we have advising people to define that edge yeah and we added one way element to that which is not only the provisioning of the labor of the training is also power and internet and the 30 patients and yes everything everything about that so it's a very it becomes a collaborative play like people say well why wouldn't you want to do smart meters well I don't have meter readers in my workforce for example and it's all going to be automated anyway so if you face to though I mean the reality now is that the addressable market now is the edge of the network your true edge and then I OT everything yes let's try to go outside the bounds of that true edge as you were pointing out you start getting into over your skis yes and you get into all these little fatal flaw trip wires well not only that but you know we can't forget that the companies to build the sensors are quite interested in the value chain of all this to ya so this is where I think we'll meet in the middle will collaborate yeah and and it's actually very exciting I in my past I was involved heavily in telematics and so I know that I know the drill and but I completely agree with this huge huge opportunity well you interesting that's a point about leading in the middle that actually favors HP with the ecosystem play yeah absolutely put you guys right if we will out so yeah interesting we're kind of stitches together in real time we had a great statement on that great great visibility workplace productivity I've been trying to figure out what the heck that that transformation pillar is all about it's like it's splendid right oh yeah yeah the product guy I'm trying to get a product out of it but you got development you got user experience it seems mazi to me can you clarify that for what that means we service isn't so the very first maybe the you know glaringly obvious part of that is mobility right and with our Aruba acquisition we have I think we have a great position there and this notion that you know years ago we talked about work-life balance sometimes it became kind of a joke but the work-life balance doesn't exist really it's like I'm working now in two seconds from now I'm going to be on my life because I'm interacting with my kid or whatever on text back to work and that the only way that actually happens is if you can essentially be connected everywhere yeah and and back to IOT you know what what we're doing is you know you've heard about data center care where we wrap around arms around all the gear in a data center we are doing the same thing is it'll be called campus care or something like that but how do you provide that kind of integrated single point of contact experience for a campus network right so that you can you can create that experience so so that moves us but it's fuzzy because that's just way the world is it's fuzzy it's splendid that's the way wins that's why we work i'm on the sidelines watch my kids lacrosse game and I answering email in between apps right so you know exactly is that bad or good i get actually he's a product it just is so I gotta ask you I know we're getting close on time but you brought up wireless and you mentioned right ampas huge refresh opportunity in campus networking right now and wireless it seems to be the top item for all user experience yes does that on your Lily on your road map right now in terms of delivery because I can imagine yeah the refresh cycles from went you know yeah remotely connected with wired or Wireless now I mean nobody's running wires anymore yeah so but yes the refresh the the the first placement stadiums you know places where where you were lucky if you could have a cell phone signal people want to show up and they want to watch the replays on their device and they you know it becomes an immersive experience all enabled through technology i Scott I know you got another appointment and really appreciate you taking the time great insight on IOT and as usual great insight across sport thanks for sharing the insight here all that big day to come in there on the cube for your in the services love the services lead I really believe that debris are now in a services led sure because the infrastructure is in different than every company so there's no boilerplate anymore it's harder for you but I'd get that get those reference architectures to be more of them congratulations I'm split thank you Scott Weller senior vice president Romero technology services group here Enterprise HP Enterprise hv discovery right back with more from the cube after this short break you