 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 here live in Las Vegas, SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program, where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante, our next guest, Mitch Gull, who's the Senior Vice President of HP Storage and GM and Joey Northcutt, IT Director at REI. I'm a frequent customer, love the brand, love the products. Welcome back to theCUBE, Mitch. Joey, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, great to be here. Always a pleasure. So I love having the customer and GMs. You can ask them anything you want here. Pricing discounts, all that good stuff. Really? Oh my God. Yeah. And then also, the data center obviously has been talking about transformation, software defined data center, software defined storage, big topics we've covered in the past, Mitch. This year, the future of the data center, is it taken at the same path? Are there any twists and turns in the road in this digital transformation journey? What's the update? Like with everything, some things are the same and some things are different. We laid out the transformation journey a while ago where we said, from the storage standpoint, there really are two design centers which are becoming important now. The first one is an all flash data center and the external storage. And the second is a software defined data center for internal storage. In fact, we just got the biggest proof point possible recently when we just became, for the first time, number one in total storage. Number one. Number one, man. And underneath it is the fact that we're gaining share in external storage and we're getting share in internal storage. Both are relevant, both are becoming even more important. Well, take a minute to just drill down. Why are you guys becoming number one? Why is it so successful now? What's the big aha? What's the revelation in all the data? I think one of the things that I've mentioned to you before is the world is shifting back from the disaggregated pure play world that we've lived in for the last 30 years back to an integrated and converged full stack world, right? And as HPE, we have innovation leadership in the compute layer and we have innovation leadership in the storage layer so we can bring it to bear on behalf of our customers both independently and together. Independently with three part in the all flash side and together on the compute and storage side and the software defined side. So Joey, can we take a look at your business? REI is more than a retailer, it's a brand. Talk about your business, start there. What are the drivers for your business that are pushing you in IT? Yeah, so REI is especially outdoor retailer. We're based in Seattle, but we have stores all over the country and we have a pretty good digital presence with our REI.com business. Our growth over the last few years is really putting pressure. We're not unlike any other enterprise where we're needing to scale, provide more resiliency, reduce any kind of maintenance windows because pretty much everything's 24 by seven now. So we took a really fresh approach last year and looked at multiple technologies, really looking at what a green field environment would look like. And in that we made some really key decisions in multiple areas in our infrastructure stacks and 3PAR being a big key choice we made along with one view from a manageability and really that software defined data center. So paint a picture if you would, you know, high level. The applications that you're supporting and the infrastructure, what does it look like? So at REI we have quite a bit of an application stack and we've had a couple data centers that one's more of a legacy data center. What was really interesting about this project is diving into all the applications, like you said. So it covers the gamut, we have SAP, we have our online presence, we have our inventory management systems, warehouse management systems. And then a lot of the tools and internal apps including our customer database, which as a co-op REI is our memberships and keep track from members is super important. So that's all contained in our data centers and the data that we maintain. And that's all running on 3PAR infrastructure? It will be shortly, some of it we have moved. We actually moved our customer database about six to eight weeks ago. We saw some incredible improvements going to all flash on that database. We saw like six or 700% increases in performance on batch job processing at night and overnight processing. And just the increase in IO has been phenomenal. So Minish, you talked about the world changing going from the sort of the pure play horizontal focus to this integrated stack. The question I have is, is there a trade-off? And I asked Joey the same thing from his perspective. Can I still have best of breed? There's been an age old argument between best of breed versus integrated suites. You certainly saw that in the software world. Can you still have best of breed and integrated? So absolutely, right? So there is no reason to make a trade-off between innovation and integration. So oftentimes we try and force these conversations down the paths where we say you can have only one. What if you could have both? And we clearly have to make sure that each of the layers of the stack, each of the underlying components are delivering what the best of the technology can offer. But the world has changed. The world absolutely does not have the ability to absorb all the complexity of integration, all the complexity of operation. So as technology vendors, we are obligated to make sure that we are hiding that complexity, we are eliminating that complexity, and we are making the operations as autonomic on behalf of our customers as possible. So Joey, from your standpoint as an IT practitioner, if you had a trade, best of breed, or simplicity of integration, where would you lean? And we did look at that a year ago. That was one of our, there's a balance there. I agree with what Medeshe had. We had to balance how much complexity, which our current data center, you know, grew organically over the years. We had multiple sands, multiple integration points. So really reducing the complexity was a key objective of ours, in order for us to be more agile, be more efficient in the, manage the resources that we have. Because as our data centers grew and the number of applications, and you have projects that come in, it doesn't necessarily standardize, right, on what our currently stacks are. So this was a way for us to really bring in a lot of the manageability, which is super important to us to get us to that next level. And we also got the performance gains because of introduction of all flash or the introduction of higher core accounts on our blade systems. And with the one view tool too. So you buy the premise that Medeshe put forth is you don't have to trade off. That's right. And what gives you confidence that HPE will be able to sustain that best of breed, you know, going forward? I think they, over the last 12 months, I felt like we really made some key decisions. And you know, there's always changes and you keep looking at technology. But I really, I feel more confident now than I did even a year ago because I really feel like the investment HPE's making in some of the technology and the integration and some of the stuff I've seen over the last few days in the conference has really shown that they're really trying to move the needle and move helping enterprises really move closer to that journey of a software defined data center, which I think is a big benefit for us. So let's get into some of the hashtag bingo questions going on. Top three hashtags that are trending at this show, actually right now, but consistently throughout the day, is IoT, Composable, and Cloud. I mean, DevOps is in there too, but we'll call that Cloud. Composable's been a big theme. Joey, what does Composable mean to you? Because that's a term that HPE's been kicking around. I mean, we love it because Compos implies, you know, orchestration implies app development from an IT perspective. How does that translate to you? I think for me, the Composable infrastructure would be one that you can easily procure and manage and orchestrate, right? Quickly to our development teams, you know, we're getting pressure from our dev teams. The DevOps is a big model for that. We have multiple agility teams that consume our resources. And so being able to quickly react and provide the services quickly to those teams and really go towards this hybrid data center of the future, and we can make choices if it's on-prem or if we move some workloads into a cloud, a public cloud provider. I think the synergy pieces and the manageability goes back to that again. Make that happen for you. Do you buy the Composable story, this notion that HPE's putting forth? I do, I do. I feel like that's the direction of the industry. And I feel like the enterprises that move more quickly to that will be more successful. So being agile also implies a little bit of DevOps, programming the infrastructure as code, which I've always loved that term. Dave and I have been kicking that around for years and it's now being adopted by HPE and everybody. It's just a great concept. It should be programmable. I mean, just give me what I want when I want it. That's what everyone wants. But IoT brings up an interesting conversation. Your customers are outdoors. They have outdoor, probably a lot of Fitbit customers, I'm sure. IoT is going to be a big part of it and big data. How is your app developers? How are you guys looking at that? The retail component, managing your business and managing, I won't say fan experience, but maybe your brand has fans. You get a brand, you're managing those customers. What kind of apps are you building? And how is IoT fitting in, if any? You have that on the horizon and what are you doing with big data? All those areas we're interested in. We're doing various levels of adoption and looking in research. As far as big data, we spend quite a bit of time and resources into our business intelligence space and really increasing that over the last few years. That's been our biggest growth area, both from a storage perspective and just resources, is bringing in data analytics and bringing that on in a bigger way. We have some pretty large BI systems we have in our company and we're looking at other options including Hadoop and some of the other analytical tools that are in the market today. How do you bring that culture into the trenches, into the organization, the culture of, okay, data rich environment, now that you've got more storage implies, you probably have more data coming in. And you got IoT around the corner. I'm sure that's going to be a big factor, but just today, managing your business systems of record, systems of engagement implies you're going to have a lot of data. What's the culture like? How do you bring that in? How would you peg the culture within your group? Are they all probe big data and agile app development? And how did you do it? We have, from my group, we have to support all those different models and different ways of managing it. So the big data for sure, my teams are very receptive. We're supporting big bringing in systems and the amount of storage and how to manage that long-term. And then the other one is, like you said, is more of a DevOps or Agility. And what we found is certain groups need that. Agility, some groups don't. So we have to manage that internally and fit the right size of infrastructure to fit. The ops guys are saying, whoa, slow down. They're going to give you permission to that first. Yeah. Certain groups move at different speeds and you have to be able to match that from an infrastructure perspective. So Manisha, we couldn't see your keynote last night because we were doing live interviews, but we hit Twitter and we saw a lot of what you were presenting. Couple big themes you guys have been hitting. The density of all flash and the all flash data center, obviously software defined, some cool stuff on data protection, some integration with other tooling like Docker, et cetera. But I want to ask you, you had a slide that showed this VMAX with all these arrays, big rack and it had HDS, big, big, and yes, it's a little tiny three-par. So density. Now, when you see slides that you go, okay, is that like yesterday's competitor technology against the most modern today, three-par technology? Okay, give us the lay of the land. How much of that is sort of great marketing slides versus you guys are figured out how to pack more density into the systems? See, I'm the engineer, right? Oh, so you're more truthful then. For me to stand on stage and put a slide, there has to be content behind it. So, no, absolutely. I mean, I think there's actually, what that slide is a perfect illustration of is the power of the underlying three-par technology. The way we do space management in our technology and the way we are able to exploit the latest densities is significantly better than any of our competitive products. In fact, there's some articles going on today where we saw that we have a four, anywhere between four to 10x the space advantage of a competitive product, right? So what I was trying to figure out in that keynote there was that density advantage is somehow not all that visible to customers and we're trying to figure out how to convey because it's just visceral, right? And when our customers do POCs, they'll roll out a two-note system from a competitor and a two-note system from us and somehow that density advantage isn't really clear. But imagine if you were able to somehow show them this is what your data center would look like with us and this is what your data center would look like with somebody else and they suddenly see that data center with us looks one-tenth the size of a data center with a competitive technology. That has impact. Pictures worth a thousand words. Okay, so you've been on just about a year now, right? Yeah, a little over. So a little over. So you're putting your fingerprints on the business. What have you learned? What kind of changes are you making and maybe talk a little bit about the objectives for the business? Yeah, so I think we literally have, I would say, a dual mission as a part of HPE Storage. The first one is for external storage we have to continue to lead with bringing the best technology and really drive that transformation to the all flash data center and three par is our core technology horse that we are riding on that. And we think we have a very good technology base and that will extend with us in the future for a really long time. The part that I'm personally spending a lot of my time on is how do we not think just about external storage and in a silo, but really do think about the fact that the stack is becoming a singular stack and in this world of composable, how do I become a service provider at the data services layer so that we can, as to a customer, provide that entire fluid composable experience. And composable isn't something you can paper over, right? Composable isn't something where you can simply take management tools and hide the complexity. Composable has to be engineered all the way from the ground up. At the roots, yeah. At the roots, right? So we are engineering the storage layer of composable so that if a customer, it doesn't matter what form factors right for them, they get the same seamlessness, same data mobility, and the same fluidity that they're expecting. So that's a really important point because, Joey, you know, for years we've had the manager of the managers and the manager of the manager of the managers. It really hasn't changed your operating model at all. So how is your operating model changing? What are your plans for fundamentally changing the way in which you guys operate IT? And how does that affect the skill sets that you have in house? Good question. Well, we've seen and we kind of looked at this when we kind of went down this road last year, but really it's kind of tore down the silos between some of my infrastructure teams. So in the past, you know, we had network team, you have the storage team, you have the compute team, and then when we build projects, our projects would come to us, you know, we had these silos where there'd be touch points at each one of these groups. So I think with the synergy and the converged infrastructure and a tool like OneView, we're able to break down those silos. Those teams now have cross views, cross abilities to provision systems and meet the business thing quicker. And that's a big win for us. And what about the skill set piece? The same people that you've sort of retrained or they've retrained themselves. Training was a big piece of it and they were very receptive to it. They're all very curious and really liked the technology we're bringing in. So it was an easy win for us to bring in training and help the team, the engineers get up to speed on the new technology. And it's the same group we had before that we had over the last couple of years. So it's really good. My final question for both of you guys, if you can both can answer from your perspective, Minish as the leader of the storage group and Joey as customer and also practitioner. What's the vibe of HPE Discover this year? And what would you share with the folks who couldn't be here, who are watching live and or will watch on demand? Yeah, I think there are two things that I'm just absolutely struck by. And I'm like feeling like a little bit of a kid in a candy store, right? But the customer intensity and just the focus on customer and the solutions and the vibe of just so much innovation. I mean, I walked into the floor and I was just amazed by the variety of different solutions. And these are all independently credible solutions. And I was just amazed that how much innovation is happening inside of HPE. It's more solution focused. Far more. It used to be product groups kind of all there. We could have all talked about our own stuff and interestingly enough, I don't think this entire show, I have had a independent conversation. I'm joined at the hip with Rick Lewis. And so we always talking about everything in the context of composable. So that's a big cultural shift for us. Composable is a winning formula, no doubt. Congratulations. Joey, your comments on the vibe of the show, comments. A lot of good information this week. I really liked some of the announcements yesterday about more integration. I think from a customer perspective, seeing the software now that lives on top of the infrastructure, be able to seamlessly view it, manage it. Along with the Docker announcement, I think is a really big positive. So it's something we're going to definitely look at. But I think just the software integration, I think has been a real big thing. The Docker thing's fantastic. It's also kind of a sexy announcement. If the cool kids are using Docker or as they say, the developers, but it also helps with the cultural bringing in the kind of technology. But there's real meat on the bone there. It's real microservices in the containers provide great extensibility for developers. I mean, it's cool. We actually kind of adopted Docker a couple of years ago and we've been increasing it in some of our teams. But I think with the announcement today, the integration, right, is the key again. Being able to manage it in a better way. A lot of it's not ideal currently and we could make a lot of improvements. Any year people going to be at DockerCon in two weeks, we'll be up there, the key will be there. Really? I don't know. We'll have to see. At DockerCon in two weeks, the key will be there. Joey, thanks so much for sharing the insight. Congratulations on being number one and you got it and you're doing good. Keep the ball in the middle of the fairway, as they say in golf. This is theCUBE bringing you the signal from the noise here at HPE Discover. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back. You're watching theCUBE.