(intro music) >> We're back on theCUBE unpacking HPE's GreenLake announcements. I'm here with Keith Townsend, the CTO advisor. Keith, always awesome to see you, man. >> Good to be back on theCUBE. >> So, let's talk about these announcements. Let's break it down. Where do you want to start? >> So-- >> Cloud services? >> Cloud services, one of the things that we've gone back and forth with HPE over the past few years is that I don't understand GreenLake. Like, is it a financial scheme? Is it a cloud services? And I think data services, the data services announcement around Zirdle and Marketplace really elevates GreenLake to a cloud service. Kind of on par with some of the hyperscalers on how they think about architectures around data centers and, and fabrics and services to enterprise customers. >> When you say on, par in what regard? >> So, one of the things I didn't get, separate to the GreenLake announcement, we've heard a lot about HPE's containers services, Ezmeral, and they have a data fabric and it does things that the storage solutions does. Okay. That seems like a marketplace upon itself. And then the data services with the Zirdle acquisition, completely different marketplace? No, HPE is bringing all of that together, logically. So a cloud architect, similar to how they could go to AWS's console, select some services, deploy those services in their AWS VPC. Now, I can conceptually do that with HPE. I can go to HPE's GreenLake console, choose the services I need to build my app, and deploy it. That is something new within all these traditional OEM providers. >> Because of the cloud nativeness on-prem, bringing that capability. >> So, bringing the Aruba Central concepts, you know, Aruba Central, I think I read a stat, a hundred thousand customers on Aruba Central with a million interactions an hour. So this scale is hyperscale scale. This base to have a centralized marketplace and have those on those cloud-like services, but on-premises or in Niccolo, I think puts HPE near the top, if not the top for building private cloud services on-premises. >> Lets say you're a CTO at an organization that's an HPE customer or an architect. You're all in, on HPE, been working with the company for a long, long time. Wouldn't you want a view of your estate, your applications and workloads, where you could manage on-prem, Cloud, whether it's AWS, Azure, Google, take advantage of the cloud native, go across cloud, abstract all that complexity away, maybe eventually go out to the edge. Is that what you want? >> That's what I want, it's aspirational. No one between Microsoft to HPE, no one is able to give me that today. So as a CTO, I'm looking at platforms and seeing is the building blocks there. We talked to the HP storage team of how they're building the abstractions, that they can take anything from their ProLiant line, build the necessary storage underlay, and then abstract that away with a GreenLake. You can do that with AWS EBC, Azure storage. It really doesn't matter because they're building that abstractions. So, aspirationally they're there, they have the right vision. It's about excecution. >> Okay, so that is the right direction in your view, you, I mean, I think that that is clearly where customers want to go. >> A lot of work >> Keith: A lot of work. to get there, and it's a race, right? I mean, that's, you know, I feel as though, as a service is good starting point, but there's, there's a long way to go. And, so how do you feel about HPE's chances there, how they're positioning relative to not only the, there other sort of on-prem competitors, but public cloud players. >> So they're asking the right questions. They're asking the right questions of the right players. It's about relationships. Dave, you know this more than anyone that if you don't have the right relationships inside of the customers, you're not going to get there. And I think that's HPE's number one struggle. The, no slant to the VP of operations, but the VP of operations doesn't want to change his operations. He doesn't want disruption. What COO was coming to you and saying, "I want to be disruptive." Same thing in VP of operations, IT operations, they don't want disruption, but this has been HPE's traditional customer. HPE needs to get into the chief data officers, the chief marketing officers' office, and have these very difficult conversations in sales so that they can eventually show that they can't execute. I think that's the one of their primary challenges. >> So, okay that's good. I'm glad you brought that up because I think Ezmeral starts to go in that direction, it feels as though the first phase is let's pick off analytics. Let's make analytics on-prem as attractive and simple as it is in the cloud. And then, beyond that, let's support this notion of decentralized data and federated governance. And that is aspirational today. But no, as to your point, nobody really has that. AWS really, you know, they're not going after that, across clouds at this point in time, Microsoft is with arc, I guess, and Google kind of has Anthos and they're kind of doing it, but, but yeah, I'm not sure you're going to trust your cloud provider to be that player. So it's kind of like jump ball here, isn't it? >> You know, AWS make a strategic partnership with one of HP's primary competitors, because there was a gap. We know Andy Jassy, former president and CEO of AWS, doesn't typically partner with traditional OEMs, unless there's a real gap in his portfolio that he needed to do and he did it with VMware and he did it with HPE's primary competitor in storage and one of their primary competitors in storage. HPE sees the opportunity. The question is, do they have the workforce? Do they have the field teams, the field CTOs, the solution architects that can go and talk the talk to these customers and this new audience that they need to convince that HPE is just as, as respected a snowflake in these, in this data area. >> Can partners fill that gap? >> Partners definitely can fill that gap, but HPE still has the same challenge for partners: transforming partners from speaking boxes to solutions. I've spent a short stint at VMware. I was surprised at how rigid the channel is and these large organizations and making that transition. >> The other thing, when you think about it as a service that at least that I look for when, if you could comment is the pace, you know, we all would go to, we go to these events, go to re-invent and it's just this fire hose of announcements. We're seeing HPE on a cadence. You know, it's not like a once a year dealio with GreenLake. We're seeing, you know, some stuff with HPC. We're seeing the acquisition of Zerto of the, the DR services, the data protection as a service, Ezmeral. Do you feel like that pace is accelerating? And is it fast enough? >> You know what, I famously said on theCUBE that VMware moves at the pace of the CIO. HPE needs to move a little bit faster than the CIO because the CIO isn't their only customer. They have the opportunity to get customers outside of the CIO and I think they're moving fast enough. This is really hard stuff. Especially when you start to deal with data and the most valuable asset of an organization. Can you move too fast? You absolutely can. One of the other analysts said that you don't want to become the, the forgotten about data services company of the other, of the two thousands. You don't want to make that mistake in the twenties. So I, right now, I think I feel as if HPE is making the right cadence, bringing along their old customers, new customers. Challenge of all of the big OEMs is how do you not erode your base customer base and, but still move fast enough to satisfy the move fast break stuff crowd. >> Keep close to your customers. Keith, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming back on theCUBE. >> I'd love to have you back. >> As always, Dave, great time. All right. And thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more great content from HPE GreenLake announcements. You're watching theCUBE.