 All right, everybody, we're back here. Dave Vellante with Rob Streche. We're in Las Vegas, and I said, John Sferrier's actually in New York City. I said he was in DC before, but anyway, he's at Mongo, got a lot going on at theCUBE.net. This week, next week, next week's data week. We got Databricks, we got Snowflake. Right now we have one of the crown jewels of HPE's portfolio. It was an acquisition company they made in 2015, Aruba. It's been a, more than a home run. It's been a double grand slam. Phil Matrimus here is the executive VP and the GM of the Aruba networking business at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Thanks for coming to theCUBE. Make it some time. Busy week this week. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Well, appreciate you hanging in there with us. So what's shaking this week? I mean, wow. What's happening? Yeah, I mean, as you said, we've been kind of in the news a little bit from an Aruba perspective, making inroads into the market. And obviously we're kind of famous for Wi-Fi. I think that's kind of what most people know us for. And we've been in the Wi-Fi business for over 20 years and we've shipped, I think it's now getting close to 28 million Wi-Fi access points around the world. And if you lined all of those up, by the way, you'd get, I think it's 55 billion square feet of coverage from all of those access points. So that was Wi-Fi. So that's what we're famous for. We then moved into switching. So campus, land switching. And in particular, we launched our own platform which is called the CX platform. And that's done phenomenally well. So we think we're probably going to hit about $2 billion worth of sales in October this year. And then the third area that we recently became famous for was that of SD-WAN, where we acquired a company called Silver Peak three or four years ago. And that's been a great acquisition for us. And now we've got 3,600 customers on that platform. So they're the things we're kind of famous for. And then what we've been talking about this week is our expansion into three new areas. So the first area has been data center networks. So if you take what we do in campus and land switching, it's about 80 or 90% of what you would need in order to build out a data center switch. So in the last 12 months or so, we've been heavily building extra features and functionality to give ourselves a good run into the data center market. And we've got some pretty good early successes there. And then the other two areas that we're expanding into, one is an area of security. So networks and security are coming together. You may have heard of the SASE framework. So we had two of the five elements with kind of network firewall and SD-WAN through Silver Peak. And then we bought an Israeli software company called Axis Security about two months ago. And they give us ZTNA, Swig, and Caspis. We get a full SASE offering. And then the final area of expansion is the area of Private 5G, where we bought a company called Athanet, who are based in Northern Italy and they're specialists in Private 5G. So that's what we've been talking about, those famous for those three areas and expanding in the other three. I'm smiling because we were at MWC this year on theCUBE. And we were talking and Adele just announced a partnership with Athanet. And then right after that, you guys bought the company. It's a bit awkward. Well, so we asked them, we said, okay, well, how do you feel about that? Are you still going to work with them? And they said, well, you know what? If they work with us, we'll work with them. So you'll still work with them, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It's all about the customer, right? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right, yeah, exactly. Well, so it's been interesting to see, first of all, the success of the, I guess you call it the intelligent edge business. Yes. Aka, Aruba powers that. And then to see how the IP in Aruba has stretched across Green Lake, Antonio has taken an executive out of your organization, Tom Black, put him into storage. So to sort of drive that, I was down at April 4th, they had a big storage announcement. There was a lot of Aruba IP inside of that. So it seems like this is this main spring of innovation coming out of Aruba. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I mean, I think Antonio, he was obviously the big supporter and the brains actually behind the Aruba acquisition. And what he did when he bought Aruba, I'm not sure if you know the story, but he folded HP's networking assets under Aruba. Which was that three-com acquisition? Yeah, it was a valiant try, but it really didn't move the market. Yeah, I know, exactly right. But I mean, it shows what trustee had in the management capability and management team within Aruba to hold the HP networking group in there. And I think Aruba has been a very innovative company. They developed the Aruba central platform, which has now got 2.7 million devices connected to it, 230,000 different users. And I think Antonio could recognize that that was a great platform to build on and stretch across the broader company's range of offers. And that's obviously what spawned the HP GreenLake platform, the HP GreenLake strategy. So yeah, I mean, good for Antonio for kind of spotting that innovation. So you talked about security and networking coming together. Yeah. I don't necessarily think of HPE as having a big security business that's driving a lot of revenue. Can that now change or does it just sort of embedded inside of the networking? Look, I think what we see in the market is SD-WAN decisions, so network decisions, I don't know, three years ago, I think probably 90% of the decision was made by the network department. Now it's definitely more of a joint decision between network and security. And so we're not trying to focus on the entirely broad security market because it's a big market, isn't it? But where we are focused is in secure connectivity. So really targeting those five elements of the Sassi framework. But yeah, we feel good about our opportunity in this space. And what Gartner's say, and we kind of believe them, is that right now, organizations are potentially picking five different suppliers for the five elements of the Sassi framework. And they believe that three years from now, 60% of organizations will want to buy all five elements from one player. And so we think there's a great opportunity for HPE-Ruba to be that player in the market. So that was the kind of rationale behind the acquisition. How do you square that with the obvious, presence of so many tools out there that many could be partners of yours or actually in your customer base? How do you rationalize that? Yeah, I mean, so Silver Peak in particular has done a great job of partnering with a range of different companies and lots of security companies. And that will continue. Because for some customers, they're not necessarily going to want to buy all these elements from one platform provider and they're going to want to mix and match. And where that's the case, we're fine to support that. We're all about open technology, working with a broader ecosystem. So we're comfortable with that as well. Yeah, I mean, it seems like even Tom, when he went over to the storage, is doing that with Altaira. And it seems like a similar strategy that you're putting a place for them to partner with you at the edge as part of that SASE framework. Exactly right. And we just make sure it's very easy. So our SD-WAN platform is pre-integrated with some of those large security vendors. But hopefully customers decide that they want to buy all elements from one platform provider, such as ourselves. And we should be in a good position if that's the case. I mean, it's too complicated right now. And if you can be a consolidator, why not? Yeah, exactly right. What about as a service in networking? It's been sort of slower to develop. Yeah, I think so. I mean, we led the market. And everyone says, oh, we led the market. But we did lead the market, I think, in this space. So we did some very large NAS, Network-as-a-Service contracts over the last couple of years, more than 30 big contracts. And those have worked well for us and for the customer as well, by the way. So we're happy, the customers happy as well. And then more recently, what we've been doing is trying to broaden our coverage of the market by coming up with more standardized NAS offers. And we've launched 10 standardized offers into the market in the last 12 months. So they're very repeatable. We know what we're delivering. The customer knows what they're getting, very replicable. And that allows us to scale out through partners and hit a broader base of customers. So we're excited about the NAS opportunity. I think I agree with you that maybe the demand is softer than we originally thought. It does appeal for customers who find it difficult to get CAPEX budgets. So they like a predictable OPEC spend. And it also works for customers who are interested in HPE Aruba managing more of their network. And actually, if you speak to most network managers and ask them what you spend your time doing, in 85% of cases, they're spending their time managing the day-to-day faults on the network. So they don't get a chance to think about the future. So anything you can do as part of a managed service to kind of free up more time, there obviously all is for that. So, you know, we do that in conjunction with NAS, but also investing in the platform, which is Aruba Central, and really adding to the AI capabilities in that platform. And it would seem that that's a, to me, having network as a service, you really do need that data center core. And because people are looking not just to do network as a service over here and over here, and then be missing on the core there. Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. And that's where we think we've got a differentiated position because now we have these broad range of offers. We talked about, you know, the Wi-Fi, the campus switching, we talked about SD-WAN, we talked about data sensors, we talked about private 5G and security, but they're all linked together under one platform, which is the Aruba Central platform. And when I talk to customers and ask them about where they're frustrated with our competitors, it's typically because some of our competitors have different products connected to different platforms. So even if they go on an end-to-end journey with one of our competitors, they still finish up with multiple platforms. Yeah, with HP, Aruba, it's all one platform. It would seem that, like also, and that the private 5G and the fact that there is overlap in the Wi-Fi space, there's the transition, it seems like a natural fit. Are you seeing that a lot of people are saying, hey, you know, the 5G works here, but I moved 13 feet to the right and I'm blocked by a cement or something like that. Is that a big piece of where Aruba Central's going to actually play? Is helping them balance that? Yeah, exactly right. So we see some customers with use cases where they believe private 5G is better than Wi-Fi. Right, and some examples would be outdoor use cases, mines, battlefields actually. So defense forces are really interested in booting up a private 5G network for the battlefield, right? And so these sorts of scenarios, private 5G works better because you get more coverage and also it supports higher speed applications as well. So we wanted to make sure that we could serve the needs of all of our customers and that was behind the Athena acquisition. And Athena's a company that was founded by people who used to work in Ericsson. You know, they've got a great team in Northern Italy. They've got real customers around the world. So it's a perfect fit for us. When you think about that unification trend, that single view, and as you fill out your portfolio, what about the networking cloud? I mean, sometimes we call it the super cloud that spans whether it's on-prem or mini-cloud, out to the edge. Is that a vision that is, first of all, is it technically feasible? And is it sort of something that you think you'll pursue? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so absolutely. And that was all behind the silver peek acquisition. You know, we and Antonio's very clear on this. You know, it's kind of like a multi-cloud world. Isn't it hybrid cloud, private cloud, AWS, GCP, all of these different clouds that exist for customers and they need an intelligent network to link all of that together. And that's exactly what the silver peek platform does every day, we're linking customers with all of these different clouds over one common network. And it's not like somebody goes and buys the super cloud, it's just it's an evolution that occurs over time. Exactly right, exactly right. And they continue to add to it. Yeah, and then so you're connecting the cloud, you're connecting employees, you're connecting suppliers, you're connecting data centers, campus offices, all coming together over one common network. How about, I got to ask you a more tactical question, backlog, right, you guys, and what I see is the problem with your backlog is you're booking so much business. You've got such great bookings and it's like, you can't catch up. I mean, it's a great problem to have, but it's a problem. Yeah, I spent it in the reverse, isn't it? Yeah, no, I mean, obviously it's testament to the fact that we're doing something right to get all of these good bookings. But yeah, you're exactly right. We did, in common with most of our competitors, by the way, we did build up a substantial backlog because of the supply chain constraints that we all had last year, but we're pleased to say that they are clearing and we took some of the steps as well, by the way, to redesign products. So where we had a product that was constrained by a particular component, we would redesign the product to cut that component out. And so that's all helping matters. And then now the supply chain's really starting to hum again, so. It reminds me, when I see tanker with, back in the day, you could tanker with cars, right? And then you'd take them apart and put them back together again, and it would start, but then you'd have these parts and you weren't sure what they did. I presume that's not what you did to your customers, but. It is kind of weird though, in one of the scenarios, there was this part that was really difficult to get a hold of, so we redesigned, and these things take time, by the way. It takes a couple of months and you've got to get re-certified and re-sized. And by the time we get there, I think this kind of takes three or four months. That part that was constrained is then freely available, as it's always the case, isn't it? But you guys have managed it brilliantly, and congratulations on the success of the business unit, and it seems like there's real tailwinds right now for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we grow our revenues by north of 50% last year, it's a year-on-year, which is incredible, isn't it? And yeah, so that's a testament to the hard work of the team. And your operating margins are the envy of the industry, really. And obviously, other groups, we said Tom Black, you take that Aruba Mojo and double those storage margins. Well, he's the father of a lot of this as well, by the way. I mean, obviously the CX platform is basically his baby, so every time I see Tom, I give him a pat on the back and thank him for all this hard work. I think all the benefits of all of his hard work. Tom Black did a great job building the platforms for us, so he's a great engineer, as I'm sure you know. And all the engineers love him, by the way. You mentioned his name, and they're all like, oh, he's like a hero. He can get into it, he loves to go deep, and so it's fun. He completely gets into it. Some good more stories there. Well, Phil, thanks for stopping by theCUBE. Really appreciate it. We know it's been super busy week, and thanks for making the time for us. Thanks for having me on. Ready to speak to you both. All right, keep it right there. Rob Stretchy and I will be back to wrap up. In case you missed it, stay tuned. We're going to do the three minute wrap right back on theCUBE at HPE Discover 23 from Las Vegas.