 theCUBE presents HPE Discover 2022, brought to you by HPE. Hey everyone, welcome back to Las Vegas. theCUBE is live, we love saying that. theCUBE is live at HPE Discover 22. It's about 8,000 HP folks here, customers, partners, leadership. It's been an awesome day one. We're looking forward to a great conversation next. Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, do guests join us. We're going to be talking about the power of the channel. Mike Beltrano joins us, worldwide channel sales leader at AMD. And Phil Soper is here, the North America head of channel sales at HPE. Guys, great to have you. Thanks for having us. Great to be here. So we're talking a lot today about the ecosystem. It's evolved tremendously. Talk to us about the partnership. Mike will start with you, Phil will go to you. What's new with HPE and AMD, better together? You know, it's more than a partnership. It's actually a relationship. We are really tied at the hip, not just in X86 servers, but we're really starting to get more diverse in HPE's portfolio. We're in their hyper-converged solutions. We're in their storage solutions. We're in Green Lake. It's pretty hard to get away from AMD within the HPE portfolio. So the relationship is really good. It's gone beyond just a partnership. So starting to transition now down into the channel and we're really excited about it. Phil, talk about that more. Talk about the evolution of the partnership and that kind of really that pull down. I think there's a, you know, there's an impression sometimes that AMD is kind of the processor that's in our computers. And it's so much more, the relationship is so much more than the inclusion of the technology. We co-develop solutions, interesting news today at the Antonio's presentation of the first Exascale supercomputer. We're solving health problems with the supercomputer that was co-developed between AMD and HPE. The other thing I would add is from a channel perspective, it's way more than just the technology, what's in the technology. It's how we engage and how we go to market together. And we're very active in working together to offer our solutions to customers and to be competitive and to win. Describe that go-to-market model that you guys have specifically in the channel. So there is a, you know, his organization and mine, we develop joint go-to-market channel programs. We work through the same channel ecosystem of partners. We engage on specific opportunities. We work together to make sure we have the right creative solution, pricing to be aggressive in the marketplace and to compete. You know, it's a great question because, you know, we're in a supply chain crisis right now, right? And you look at the different ways that HPE can go to market through the channel. There's probably about four or five ways that channel partners can provide solutions, but it's also route to purchase for the customers. So we're in a supply chain crisis right now, but we have HPE AMD servers in stock and distribution right now. That's a real big competitive advantage, okay? And if those aren't exactly what you need, HPE can do custom solutions with AMD platforms all day across the board. And if you want to go ahead and do it through the cloud, you've got AMD technology in GreenLake. So it's pretty much have it your way for the customers to the channel. And it's really great for the customers too because there's multiple ways for them to procure the equipment through the channel. So we're really loving the way that HPE allows us to kind of integrate into their products, but then integrate into their procurement model down through the channel for the end user to make the right choice. So it's fantastic. You mentioned that AMD's in HCI, in storage, in GreenLake, and in the channel. What are the different requirements within those areas? How does the channel influence those requirements and what you guys actually go to market with? Well, it comes down to awareness. Awareness is our biggest enemy. And the channel's just huge for us because AMD's competitive advantage in our technology is much different. And when you think about price and performance and security and sustainability, that's what we're delivering. And really the channel kind of plugs that in and educates their customers through their marketing and demand gen kind of influences when they hear from their customers or if they're proactively touching them, influences the route to purchase based on their situation. If they want to pay for it as a service, if they want to finance it, if it does happen to be in stock and speed of delivery is important to them, the channel partner influences that through the relationships and distribution or they can go ahead and place it as a custom to order. So it's just really based on where they're at in their purchasing cycle. And also, it's not about the hardware as much as it's about the software and the applications and the high value workloads that they're running. And that kind of just dictates the platform. Does hardware matter? Yes, it sure does. Yeah, it does. It does, man. We're just kind of, you know, it's kind of like the vessel at this point. And our processors and our GPUs are in the HP vessel. But it is about the application. I love that analogy. I would say absolutely it does. Workloads matter more. And then what's the hardware to run those workloads is really critical. And to your point though, it's not just about the CPU anymore. No, right. It's about you guys have made some acquisitions to sort of diversify. It's about all the other supporting sort of actors, if you will, that support those new workloads. Yeah, let me give you an example that's being showcased at this show. Our extreme search solution with being driven by Splunk. And it's a cybersecurity solution that the industry is going to have to be able to handle in regards to a response to any sort of breach. And when you think about, they have to search through the data and how they have to get through it and do it in a timely fashion, what we've done is developed a DL385 solution where we have a Epic processor from AMD. We have a Xilinx, which we own now. They're FGPA and Samsung SSDs, which are four terabytes per drive packed in a DL385. Now you add the Splunk solution on top of that. And if there ever is a breach, it would normally take about days to go ahead and access that breach. Now it can be done in 25 minutes. And we have that solution here right now. So it's not like we acquire Xilinx and we're waiting to integrate it. We hit the ground running. And it's fantastic because the solution is being driven by one of our top partners, WWT. And it's live in their booth here today. So we're kind of showing that integration of what AMD is doing with our acquisitions in HP servers and being able to show that today with a workload on top of it is real deal. Purpose built to scan through all those log files and actually surface the insights. Exactly what it is. You know, and it's in public sector right now, that's a requirement to be able to do that. And to not have it take weeks and be able to do it in 25 minutes is pretty impressive. Those are the outcomes customers are demanding. That's it. You know, people are, you know, if you're purchasing an outcome, HP can deliver it with AMD. And if you're looking to build your own, you know, we can give it to you that way too. So it's flexibility. Absolutely critical. Mike, from your perspective on the partnership, we've seen and obviously a lot of transformation at HPE over the last couple of years. Antonio stood on this stage three years ago and said by 2022, we're going to deliver the entire portfolio as a service. How influential has AMD been? From a relationship perspective on what he said three years ago and where they are today. Oh my gosh. We've been with them all the way through. I mean, HP is just such a great partner. And, you know, right now we're the VDI solution on GreenLake, you know? So it's HP GreenLake VDI solutions powered by AMD. We love that brand recognition as a service, okay? Same with high performance computing, you know? Powered by AMD, you know, offered on HP GreenLake. So it's really changed it a lot because as a service it's just a different way for a customer to procure it. And they don't have to worry about that hardware and the stack and anything like that. It's more about them going into that GreenLake portal and being able to understand that, you know, they're paying it just like they pay their phone bill or anything else. So it's really, Antonio's been spot on with that because that's a reality today. And it's being delivered through the channel. And AMD's proud to be a part of it, you know? And it's much different because we don't need to be as involved as we have to be from a hardware sale perspective when it's going through GreenLake. And it makes it much easier for us. Phil, you talked about workloads, really, kind of what matter. How are they evolving? How is that affecting? What are customers, you know, just grabbing you and saying we need this? What are you, and from a workload standpoint and how are you delivering that? Well, the edge to the cloud platform or GreenLake is very much an as a service offering aimed at workloads. And so if HPE is building and focusing its solutions on addressing specific workload needs, it's not about necessarily the performance you mentioned or you're asking the question about hardware. It's not necessarily about that. It's what is the workload? Should the workload be or could the workload be in public cloud or is it a workload that needs to be on-premise? And customers are making those choices and we're working with those customers to help them drive those strategies. And then we adapt depending on where the customer wants the workload. Well, it's interesting because Antonio on his keynote today said that's the wrong question and I, my reaction was that's the question everybody's asking. It may be the wrong question, but that's what, so your challenge is to, I guess, get them to stop asking that question and just run the right tool for the right job kind of thing. That's exactly what it's about because you know, you take high value workloads, okay, and that can mean a lot of different things. And if you just pick one of them, let's say like VDI or, you know, hyper-converge. You know, HP's the only game in town where they can kind of go into a battle with four different guns. They give you a lot of choices and they offer them on an AMD platform and they're not locking you in. They give you a lot of flexibility and choice. So if you were doing hyper-converge through HPE and you were looking to do it on an AMD platform, they can offer to you with VMware, vSAN ready nodes, they can offer to you with SimpliVity, they can offer to you with Nutanix, they can offer to you with Microsoft all on an AMD stack. And if you want to bring your own VMware and go bare metal, HP will just give you the nodes. If you want to go factory integrated or if you want to purchase it via OEM through HPE and have them support it, they just deliver it any way you want to get it. It's just, it's a fantastic story. I'll just say, others could do that but they don't want to, okay, that's the fact. Sometimes it happens, sometimes the channel cobbles it together in the field but it's, you know, it's like they do it grinding their teeth. So, I mean, I think that is a differentiator of HPE. You don't, you're agnostic to that, in fact, by design. They can bring your own, you can bring your own software. I mean, it's like you just bring your own. I mean, if you have it, you know, why would we make a customer buy it again? And, you know, HP gives them that flexibility and if it's multiple hypervisors and it's brand agnostic, it's more about let's deliver you the nodes purpose built for the application that you're going to run in that workload and then HP go ahead and does that across their portfolio on a custom to order. It's just beautiful for us to fit the need for the customer. Well, you're meeting customers where they are. Yes. Which, in today's world is critical. Mm-hmm. There's no, really no other option for companies. Great. Customers are demanding, the demands are not going to go, we're not going to see a decrease after the pandemic, so we're demand right and the expectations on, on businesses. So meeting the customers where they are, giving them that choice, that flexibility is table stakes. How is this, you mentioned supply chain constraints earlier. It sounds like you guys are managing that pretty well. I think it's a lot of these hard to get, sort of supporting components, maybe not the most expensive component, but they just don't have it, so you can't ship the car, or you can't ship the service, whatever it is. How is that affecting the channel? How are they dealing with that? Maybe you could give us an update. Oh, the channel is just, we love them. They're the front line, that's who the customers call in who's been waiting to get their technology. And we're wading through it. Think goodness that we have GreenLake, because if you wanted to buy it traditionally, because HP is supplying supply to purchase through distribution in stock, but it's very limited. And then if you go customer order, that's where the long lead times come into place, because it's not just the hard drives and memory and the traditional things that are constrained now. Now it's like the clips and the intangibles and things like that. And when you get to that point, you got to just do the best you can and HP supply chain has just been fantastic, super informative, AMD, we're not the problem. We got HP, plenty of processors and plenty of accelerators and GPUs. And we're standing with them, because back to the relationship, we're facing the customer with them and managing their expectations as the best we can and trying to give them options to keep their business floating. So is that going to be, is this a supply chain constraints could be an accelerant for GreenLake, because that capacity's in place for you to service your customers with GreenLake, presumably. You're planning for that, this headroom there in terms of being able to deliver that. If you can't deliver GreenLake, all this promise, you know. I would say I would say I would be careful not to position GreenLake as an answer to supply chain challenges, right? I think there's a greater value proposition to a client. And keep in mind, you still have technology at the heart of it, right? And so into your question though, about our partners, honestly in a lot of ways it's heartbreaking given the challenges that they face, not just with HPE, but other vendors that they sell and support and without our partners in managing those, we'd be in a world of hurt, frankly. And we're working on options. We work with our partners really closely. We work with AMD where we have constraints to move to other potential configurations. Does GreenLake make it harder or easier for you to forecast? Because on the one hand, it's as a service and on the other hand, I can dial it down as a customer or dial it up and spike it up if I need to. Have you have enough experience to know at this point whether it's easier or harder to forecast? I think intuitively it's probably harder because you have that variable component that you can't forecast, right? With GreenLake, you have your baseline so you know what that baseline's going to be, the baseline commitment. And you build in that variable component which is as a service, you pay for what you consume. So that variable component is the one thing that is we can estimate, but we don't know exactly what the customer is going to use. When you do a GreenLake deal, how does it work? Do you, let's say it's a two year deal or a three year deal, whatever. And you negotiate a price with a customer for price per X. Do you know what that contract value is going to be over the life or do you only know that baseline and then everything else is upside for you and extra additional cost? How does that work? It's a good question. So you know both. You know the baseline and you know what the variable capacity is, what the limits are. So at the beginning of the contract that's what you know. Whether or not a customer determines that they have to expand or do a change order to add another workload into the configuration is the one thing that we hope happens, you don't know. But you know with certainty that over the life of that contract, the amount of that contract that's booked, you're going to recognize at some point, you just don't know when. Yes. Okay. And that's to your question, you know that element, the fluctuation in terms of usage is depending on what's happening in the world, right? You know the pandemic as an example with green light customers, probably initially at the beginning of the pandemic, their usage went down for obvious reasons and then it fluctuates up. So I think a lot of people don't understand that. That's an interesting nuance. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Guys, thanks so much for joining us on the program, talking about the relationship that AMD and HPE have together, the benefits for customers on the outcomes that it's achieving. We appreciate your insights on your time. Thanks for having us guys. Thanks for having us. Our pleasure. Thank you. For our guests, I'm Dave Vellante. I'm Lisa Martin live in Las Vegas at HPE Discover 22. Stick around, our keynote analysis is up next.