 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Discover 2016 Las Vegas. Brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live in Las Vegas for HPE Discover 2016. HPE for Enterprise, I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle. With Dave, my co-host Dave Vellante, this is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and expect the signal of noise. Our next guest is Michael Tenefoss, who's the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships with Aruba, an HPE company. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much for having me. So, talk about the HPE part. Aruba is obviously in the center of the proposition of wireless, but also now networking. What is your job at HPE Aruba? HPE Aruba. So, my responsibility is for strategic partnerships. Aruba provides solutions to customers, but typically they require additional technology and solutions to be combined together. So, for example, we partner with Microsoft on Skype for Business in Office 365 because a corporate customer wants their connectivity and they also want unified communication at the same time, same thing with partners like Palo Alto Networks. So, we have an ecosystem of about 180 technology companies that spans everything from explosion-proof access points all the way to cloud-based applications. So, heavily pardoned, I want to ask that question, I want to get on the table because you guys aren't just HP and wireless piece we talked about last time and real crown jewel for HP in terms of technology, but the wireless for IoT and overall backhaul is a great opportunity. So, how does it fit into the customer's environment? Because, again, you've got to work with multiple technology partners. There's also security. And now you've got IoT. So, the Aruba portfolio is very broad. So, it includes high-security wireless and wired infrastructure. It includes high-security remote access solutions, VPNs, includes network access control in our ClearPass product line and we just announced our new IoT device profiler for automatically fingerprinting new IoT devices before they connect to the network and ensuring that they're trustful before they're allowed to connect. It includes our Meridian location-based services, which is being used here at the show. It provides wayfinding, geofencing, and push messaging. And it also includes our AirWave product offering, which is a multi-vendor network management solution. So, we really cover the gamut of secure connectivity management and monitoring. And when you go into an IoT solution, you really don't know what you're going to find in terms of secure connectivity requirements. So, Aruba is obviously a key underpinning of HPE's IoT strategy it's offering. Can you take us through the high level and then where does Aruba fit in? Sure. So, at the high level, there are really three elements to Internet of Things. It's not really about the devices per se. It's about converting data that devices are generating into action. It's about unlocking those data from silos inside of an organization and providing life cycle management of those. And then it's about mining insights from those data. So, if you look at the broad portfolio of HPE product offerings, Aruba plays in the secure connectivity element. We also generate contextual information about users, location, devices, applications that they're running. And we can then pass that off to other groups like IDOL, Vertica. We can work in collaboration with the server team on the edge line products. So, for example, an offshore oil platform might have 5,000 or 10,000 sensors. They want to do pre-processing and derive insights locally because they can get that information faster. So, we'll work with the edge line team. They'll run, for example, maybe GE predicts or Vertica inside of a server on that oil platform, and then they'll use the Aruba VPN technology, which is called VIA, to securely send that information back to the data center. We also work with the universal IoT platform, which is part of the CMS group, which is providing remote management and monitoring. So, across servers, storage, networking, which is the group that I'm in, the big data group and the data security group with products like ArcSight, together we can put together a complete solution. Then there's also TSC, which is the consulting group, which can help customers figure out how to put all of these systems together to solve a business problem. So, if I were to ask you, sort of what's the difference between, you know, we do a lot of big data shows, right? What's the difference between you guys and the typical big data company? The answer would be, it's that end-to-end solution, maybe not withstanding some of the stuff that you did with GE, which provides the industrial equipment, but other than that, it's that end-to-end solution. Is that fair to say that you as Aruba alone would not have been able to position yourselves in this manner? Sure, that's part of the solution. So, HP Enterprise has big data solutions, but it's really a matter of how you apply them that really differentiates a generic solution from something that solves a specific business problem. So, we're able to tailor solutions. So, if you have a wind farm, for example, we have solutions that can be applied all the way from the data collection, processing, transporting it to the consumption of the data, and deriving insights using our Vertica platform, for example, or using our CMS platform. So, John and I talk a lot about, John, you always talk about eliminating the truck roll. So, when you think about IoT, everybody wants to instrument the windmill or the factory or whatever it is, but the key barrier there is connectivity. So, can you talk about what customers are doing in their businesses? I mean, what is an IoT business? What is an IoT opportunity? How are companies looking at that, and is it correct premise that it starts with the connectivity if, in fact, that's what you want to do? So, there are really four elements to the IoT value chain. It's visibility, security, profitability, and productivity. And these areas can be addressed with four questions. Am I fully connected? Am I fully protected? Am I fully innovating? And am I fully extracting knowledge from my business? When you ask a customer those questions, it starts unlocking the different elements of what's required for their particular IoT solution. So, for example, am I fully connected, asked or begs the question, am I reaching all of the devices from which I need to extract information to solve my business problem? The business problem might be I need to increase customer loyalty. I might need to increase basket size if I'm a retailer. I might need to improve the patient experience if I'm a hospital. So, in order to do that, what information do I need? Well, I might need to extract operational information from my MRI machine to predict downtime, for example, so I can get more patience through without doing a truck roll or taking a system out of operation. So, the answers and the kind of connectivity and security and data mining is going to vary. You need power as well, connected, assuming power. Consuming power, yes. So, on the IoT data piece, one of the things that people get really scared about, certainly with wireless, is the man in the middle attack because you got packets flying around. Talk about the secure piece, because that's really the big opportunity for people to come in, a new surface area to come in on attack. So, how about how you guys protect that? We can look at security from an outside in or an inside out. So, from the Aruba perspective, we cut our teeth on the security of our infrastructure. We go all the way up to classified, top secret over wireless. We support elliptic curve encryption, it's called sweet bee technology. So, in the Aruba infrastructure, we can encrypt at the source and we don't decrypt anywhere in the infrastructure only when it's delivered to the end application. So, it's very difficult to have a man in the middle attack or to even have visibility into the data. But there are also ways of inserting malware, for example, inside servers that could make them vulnerable. So, HPE, I think is unique in the industry in having trusted platform modules, TPMs built into the servers that are able to verify the authenticity of the BIOS itself, which then authenticates the operating system. So, you can protect against an attack from the inside out or using the Aruba infrastructure from the outside in. So, Mike, I want to get your thoughts on this IoT because everyone thinks, you know, GEO equipment, planes, turbines and windmills. IoT can be people too. It's also devices anywhere. So, it really is about the data and how businesses can leverage that new data. And that's clearly in the messaging that you guys are putting out there. Obviously, the data is the key. How do companies going to use that data? How do you guys envision the edge line working with the notion of the business shifting itself? I mean, most people aren't even really capable of handling the full instrumentation of their business. So, okay, I buy that. People are going to instrument their business. Now, what do they do with it? What's your thoughts on that concept? So, I think the IoT is very confusing to customers because they think that they should be connecting everything and somehow doing something magical with it. The right place to start in terms of examining IoT is with the business problem that you're trying to solve. And let me take a specific example. The Super Bowl was held at Levi's Stadium, which is a tour de force of technology. When the 49ers were contemplating building the stadium, their competition wasn't another sports team. It was Dolby 7.1 and the couch at home, right? So, I need to draw people into the stadium to have them watch the 49ers. So, I need an engaging experience. Well, they leveraged IoT and location-based services to do that. So, Meridian, for example, our Meridian location services will guide people to their seats. We'll tell them the waiting lines for bathrooms and for restaurants. It will also allow people through an application called Venue Next, which is a startup that the 49ers started. Yeah, John Paul, so you have a good friend of mine. Yeah, so you can order food from the seat and it'll tell you, it'll tell the vendors where to deliver the information. And Meridian dies as well to the seat in eight minutes. I bought a hat, eight minutes. Eight minutes, typically eight minutes or less. But there's another element to it. That's amazing. Which is that to enhance that user experience in the stadium, they wanted to deliver NFL feeds directly to the attendees. And that gets into a licensing rights issue. If you're outside the stadium, you're not allowed to get those feeds. So, they used the contextual information that came from the IoT location system to update the licensing system and say, these users have smartphones that are inside the stadium based on the Meridian system. They get real-time feeds. Somebody else outside does not. Does that use real location or they kind of let it spill out into the parking lot? I mean, is it wireless? How do they do that? Because that's the licensing rights, a little nuance, they have to, they can't broadcast the multiple-screen video outside the stadium. Exactly. It's a copyright issue, but so that's the thing. How do they do that? Wireless? Is it defined by the IP addresses of the devices? It's wireless, but it's not using Wi-Fi. It's using Bluetooth low energy, also called BLE or Beacons. So, I think about 1200 Beacons spread around the stadium and those Beacons are broadcasting an ID number which indicates their location. When you download the 49ers app, which I recommend you do because it's a really phenomenal app, it picks up those beacon signals which can be adjusted anywhere from one meter to 30 meters. And that information is used to determine what your location is. So it is wireless, but it's a different technology. So the real-time video feeds are delivered over Wi-Fi or Ruba Wi-Fi and the location information through the Ruba Meridian Beacons. So the 49ers are basically completely transforming the audience experience, giving everybody a TV on their phone as opposed to necessarily building the biggest screen possible, which can be outdated in three or four or five years. Michael, do you see IoT as a disruptive force or is it more evolutionary? In other words, you know, people always talk about waves and we've heard a lot about disruption at this conference. It feels like, just listening to you speak, it's a lot of the infrastructure that's there today that is going to take advantage of this. So it feels like it's less disruptive technology as opposed to an opportunity for enhancing assets that are in place. I'd say it's transformational. So it's taking infrastructure and applying it in a different way. So Wi-Fi can be used to access the internet. Wi-Fi can also be used to triangulate your location and tell a nurse, for example, where you are in the hospital. One's an IoT application, one's an IT application. The transformation occurs in how you leverage the data that are generated, the contextual data, and how you apply it. So the 49ers have applied it for the purpose of entertainment, ease of use of the facility, and as a revenue enhancing mechanism for them, as well as all the backend systems like rights, digital rights. So I think what we're going to see is that IT technology and operational technology in factories are going to combine together and the data that they generate will be mined to transform businesses, to make them operate more efficiently, to give you better customer service or better customer support, or to make sure that your facility is operating all the time, with no downtime whatsoever. And this is where we were talking about Edge Line before. This is where Edge Line and products like Vertica come in because they can consume the data from those machines that are already there and derive insights from them to tell you this machine is about to fail, send a service person ahead of time. Don't worry. Talk about the kinds of problems that you've seen out there that you guys solve. You mentioned sometimes it's about how they look at the problem and then kind of figure out how to use the data. What problems do you have you seen bubble up to the top that could be represented as a pattern or a trend with the data? So it really varies by vertical. It's not that there's one generic problem. So oil and gas industry, for example, is going through a major challenge because of the drop in the price of oil. And for them, understanding how their facilities are being used by contractors and how they're getting billed and reconciling those bills are really, really important. So if they can use IoT to track assets, to track contractors, to understand how they're performing, how long were they on site versus how long did I get billed? That's gonna completely transform the way in which they interact with their contractors and it's gonna generate more profits from them. So each industry has these sweet spots. In healthcare, it's a more engaging experience for patients making sites friendlier and easier to navigate but also to drive up revenue by ensuring that people get to their appointments on time. Every industry has its own unique sweet spot. Michael, thanks for taking the time to join theCUBE this morning. We appreciate it. I want to give you the final word. What's the vibe of the show? What's for the folks watching? Take a minute to talk about what's going on at the show. What's the feeling this year? Obviously, HP Enterprise, kind of has got its groove swing going. You guys are new in there, Aruba. What's going on? Right. So as the newbie here, this is my first discover in the United States. I think the vibe is incredibly upbeat. It's very exciting to see the amount of new technology that is being released by all the different groups within Hewlett Packard Enterprise and for me in particular, the amount of IoT solutions that are coming out from the different groups and the engagement of customers and of our resellers is absolutely electrifying. So I find it a very uplifting experience. All right, Michael, thanks so much. Appreciate it. We are live in Las Vegas for HPE Discover 2016. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE.