 Okay, we're back analyzing HPE's GreenLake announcements with the analysts. Tim Crawford is here. He's with the VAWA Strategic Advisor to CIOs. Tim, always great to have you on the Cube. How you doing, man? Hey, Dave, always a pleasure to share the stage with you. So things are evolving here. You know, this GreenLake thing is not just a one-shot deal once a year. We'll come back to you at Discover. They're really showing a cadence. What's your take on the announcements that you heard today? Well, I think that the one thing we are seeing is that, as you said, GreenLake is not just a piece of it. It is the forward strategy for HPE, and I think that's really important to understand. When you start to unpack the different components, you start to see how this becomes really critical to HPE's future, but more importantly to their customers, you know, as they start to think about their on-premises requirements as well as what they're going to be doing in the cloud, and that whole integration as well as just the edge-to-cloud continuum and how you start to bring that together. I think all of these pieces are converging at the same time. And what we're starting to see from HPE is a convergence of different technologies and service offerings that are here to meet that need. Was there anything that stood out to you today? I mean, the data fabric piece, you know, some of the data protection components as a service, other sort of frameworks, well, what stood out from a CIO perspective? Well, I think there are a couple of things. First and foremost, this is a journey. This is not a one-time event of, you know, the next announcement is going to show you everything. It's going to take time to put this together, because to be honest, this is a really complicated space that you're talking about. And so I think it's important to understand that when you're putting together your strategy, when you're thinking about how you're evolving from more traditional stacks and more traditional approaches and architectures to some of the newer forms of architectures and new technologies. And so if you look at the announcements, you can see that these are starting to put very critical pillars in place as they fill out kind of the bingo card, if you will, for Green Lake. What's the CIO sentiment these days as it relates to the cloud, to hybrid, to announcements like what we saw today from HPE, they got through 2020. Some actually thrived through 2020. Others in tough industries, they got through it. You know, some of the harder hit industries, you talk to the CIOs there, they're, hey, you know, that's what we do. We had a plan and we got through it. What's the sentiment today? Yeah, the issue today is how do you start to put together the right pieces and stay close with your customers? I mean, just over the last 18 months to two years, there's been a demonstrable shift in how customers are engaging with each of these companies. And so when you think about the technologies they have to use, when you think about the architectures where cloud comes into play, I haven't seen a greater uptick in cloud interest prior to the last 18 months. At the same time, people that were early interest into cloud are starting to realize that, you know what, I do have a need for something on-prem. I do need to have services that are more localized to my users or localized to my customers. And so that's where this hybrid story really comes to light, right? Is bringing the goodness of what you get from public cloud as well as what you get from on-prem and then bringing private cloud into the mix. As we start to think about, again, going back to that edge to cloud continuum, you're going to have different components that are going to have to work together. I think the combination of the data fabric that was announced, as well as some of the other components coming together, start to fill in that puzzle. But there's a lot more to go. There's a lot more to go. And so I think it's important to understand that and not just center on a given announcement as this is the key piece. This is the linchpin. Does HPE have the right cloud strategy in your view? You know, they're starting to put it together. I think they still have work to do, to be fair. But what I do like is how they're thinking about the bigger picture. And I think that is somewhat unique. You know, when you look at the strategies that the hyperscalers have, when you look at the strategies of some of their contemporaries have, HPEs, contemporaries have, I think HPE has the right mix of components. But I still want to see some other pieces fall into place first, before kind of answering that question in earnest. Like what? Where do you see the gap? So I think one of the pieces is having that control plane across cloud to on-prem. I think when I look at it from a CIO perspective, my world's getting more complicated, not easier. And when I bring cloud into the mix, now it's gotten exponentially more complicated. And so having something that will help me manage from that edge to cloud and everything in between is really, really critical. It helps me streamline, helps me get my arms around data. And we know that data is a critical component, especially as you're starting to think about how you engage with your customers and how your customers are changing just over the last 18 months alone, right? Let alone how they were changing even two years ago. So I think it is important to look at that holistically. But I do think that I'd like to see more of the management pieces and more of that larger context come into play. I think that would resonate better with CIOs and executives. And the other thing to keep in mind is, if you look at the traditional HPE customer, they were someone that was further into the organization. When we're talking about cloud and we're talking about this continuum and talking about it from a strategic standpoint, if you really want to engage the CIO, you have to up-level the conversation. And so I am starting to see inklings of that, had an opportunity to talk with Antonio about this and the executives within HPE. And they get it, they understand that. And so I'm really encouraged by how they're starting to lay out the pieces. But this is a marathon. This isn't a sprint and we go over the hurdles and we're done. It's going to take some time, no. Tim Crawford, always great to have you on, awesome as usual insights. Appreciate you bringing your A game to theCUBE. Thanks, Dave. Thank you. Okay, and thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more great content from HPE's GreenLake announcement, you're watching theCUBE.