 From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience, brought to you by HPE. Hi everybody, welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of Discover 2020, the virtual experience theCUBE has been, been virtualized. Really excited to have Marissa Freeman here. She's the chief brand officer at Pula Packard Enterprise. And of course she's joined by Jim Jackson, who's the CMO of HPE. Guys, great to see you. I wish we were face-to-face, but thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Great to be here. Hope that you and your family and your friends are safe and well. Yeah, well, back at you both. Jim, let me start with you. So this kind of got dumped on you with this pandemic, different mindset. You had to do a bit flip to go to virtual. Talk about some of the things that you focused in on, some of the things you wanted to keep and some of the things you knew you couldn't and you had to do things differently. Yeah, we pretty much had to rethink everything about this event, platforms, how we thought about messaging, how we thought about content, audience acquisition, demos, really everything. And for us, it really all boiled down to having a vision. And our vision was to bring the Discover experience, all that energy, the excitement that you get at the in-person event. We wanted to bring that to all of our customers and our partners and our team members around the world. So for us, it wasn't about virtualizing Discover, it was about bringing the Discover experience to a 12-inch screen in many cases for our customers and our partners and our team members. I think another thing that was really eye-opening for us was opening up the aperture and thinking, hey, we can now take this and drive this as a true global event and we can reach people all over the world, reach customers and partners that can't come to Discover because they can't physically come to the event. So that was a couple of things that really, we had to put a lot of thought into and it was really exciting for us. I think one other thing is now customers and how we think about their experience at the event became very, very important for us because at an in-person event, it's three days. And there's a lot of things people can do but you have three days of content and then people move on. For us, now our customers might go through three weeks or three months and we really needed to think about that experience in a very simple, seamless, easy way for them so that they could consume the content digitally in a way that made the most sense for them. So a lot of new thinking for us but we're really excited about the opportunities that virtual brings and that digital brings. Now, Marissa, I got to ask you. So no meter boards, there's no physical meter boards. How did you think about continuing that branding in a virtual event? Well, it's really a beautiful experience when you look at the intrad of the platform that we're on. It's beautifully branded all the way throughout. The branding is really coming through though in the content and in the people. So we always say, Jim and I always say every year, gosh, if we could just have every customer and every prospect come to discover they would see our brand come to life. They would feel our purpose. They would understand just what a new and different and energized and fully charged up company we are. They would get to meet Antonio and Kirti and Liz and Jennifer and Kumar and Irv and Jim and feel for themselves the power of the company. And now everyone can. So the brand really is coming to life through the people. I appreciate that you love the beautiful graphics and we work really hard on all of that stuff for sure. But the real branding is in the content itself. Now, Jim, as well, you were kind of lucky in the sense that the show wasn't in March or April. So you had some time to sort of see what others were doing and you saw early on when this thing first hit there were some missteps, there still are even. But so what do you, what will you tell people that is really unique about the discover virtual experience? Yeah, I think a couple of things and you're right. We did have a little more runway and that was to our advantage but we feel like we've taken full advantage of it. I think the first is coming back to that global experience that I talked about. So we're delivering this on 10 different, with 10 translating into 10 different languages and that makes it easy for people to consume our key content around the world. We're truly delivering our content on time zones that are very appropriate for our customers and our partners again all around the world in different geos. We're bringing in our geo MDs where they are now having geo lounges, specific addresses and other things locally. So that really enables us to have that local experience but drive it is make it as part of a global event. I think another thing, Dave and you've been to discover, right? You've seen that amazing discover expo hall that we have out there with literally thousands of people and lots of demos. We had to figure out how do we bring that to a digital or a virtual experience. And I think the teams have done just an amazing job here. So what we did is we have 61 demos and this is part of really 150 sessions. But if you just think of demos, we're gonna deliver these live over 1700 times the first week. That's really, really powerful. This is live, meaning somebody from HPE a subject matter expert talking to our customers, answering questions in real time. So that's unique. I think another thing that we're doing is we're not stopping after the first week. The first week is gonna be extremely powerful and we can't wait for it. But we're gonna extend, if you will, the value. We're gonna double click and follow on waves focused on SMB, focused on software and containers for more of a developer audience, cloud services and other things like that as well as data and storage. And then finally, I'll say, we're really excited about the great speakers that we have. Marissa talked about Antonio, Kurti, Irv, et cetera. But we've got some great outside speakers as well. Lewis Hamilton from Mercedes Formula One, six-time Formula One champion. Simone Biles, who is the Olympian and World Champion, 25 medals. We've got Steve Kerr and they're gonna be part of a panel talking about performing under pressure and we're all doing that, but it's gonna be, again, a great story. We've got John Chambers, who's gonna be joining Antonio and talking about what great companies do during a crisis and how they prepare to come out of this kind of a situation to deliver better solutions to their customers. Soledad O'Brien, who is moderating our Women Leaders NIT session. And this is one of our most powerful sessions. In fact, Marissa is part of that as well. So we're really excited about the amount of things that we were able to bring together. And of course, we also have our CIO Summit and our Global Partner Summit happening at the same time. So we've got a lot of things and we've been able to coordinate all of this and really think about the experience from a digital and a virtual perspective to make it great for our customers and our partners and our attendees. A lot of rich content layers there. Yeah. Marissa, I wonder if you could talk about the here, here to help sort of the cultural aspects of that, what it means to your customers, your clients, your employees and your just broader community. Well, Dave, when COVID first hit the United States, we had a lot of social media out there, a lot of digital media out there. And even before it came to the United States when Italy and China were really suffering, we gathered as a team and audited every piece of content that we had pulled it all back in. Met Daily, Jim and I and Jennifer, Temple's teams met Daily to talk about what is our tone of voice? What are we saying? How are we helping our customers get through this time? We knew how difficult it was for us with business continuity, remote workforce. We needed to help our customers and let them know that we were at the ready right now to help. So we chose to speak through the voices of our leaders Antonio did several blogs and videos and we rallied and redid the website completely to be all about COVID response and how we had many solutions for our customers to implement immediately from $2 billion in financing to setting up remote workforces, to doing wifi in parking lots and turning ships into hospitals. It ran the gamut. And so it was really important to us that we conveyed a message of here to help. Ultimately, we ended up doing a television commercial Antonio's voice. It was a personal letter from Antonio to his fellow business leaders and engineers and said, look, we know what you're going through. We're going through it ourselves. We're here to help. Here's how. And it's been really motivating and successful in driving people to find out more about what HPE could do to help. So that's what we're going through. I would just add to what Marissa said. She outlined it really well, but we have some great customer examples and great customer stories as well. They're very emotional talking about how customers really needed our help and our combination of technology people really came together to enable them to get their business up and running or to address a pain point or a problem for their audiences. So to Marissa's point, there's the concept of here to help with the recovery and then here to help with the transformation as well as they look to the future. So how are you guys thinking about just sort of growth, marketing strategies, branding strategies, not only for HPE, but in the spirit of helping customers in this post isolation economy. Marissa, maybe you could start us off. Well, we've been talking about how this crisis has brought the future forward for our doorsteps. So where our customers may have been on a digital transformation path and they were accelerating it, now there's an impetus to do it right now. So whether you're in recovery or whether you're one of the customers for whom this crisis created a surge of demand and you needed to scale way up, these are the moments of transformation that our company is there to help you with. Jim, do you wanna build on that? Oh, I think you hit the highlights there, Marissa. You know, again, for us, I think we want it to just be authentic and true to who we are as a company. And you know, our purpose is to advance the way people live and work. And I think we live that during this time and we'll continue to live that as we go forward. It's really core to who we are. And what we saw is that many of our customers really value the fact that when they needed us the most, we were there for them. And we were there for them all around the world. And you know, and our goal is to continue to do that and continue to delight them and to be the best transformation partner for the future. I mean, culturally, I mean, obviously we observe all this stuff, but culturally, HPE kinda had a heads down approach to all this. I mean, there was not a hint of ambulance chasing in how you guys approach this. So, I mean, I think culturally that here to help message, it seemed like a very strong roots in citizenship, and of course with the social uprising, respect for individuals, it just, that seemed to shine through. I don't know, I don't know if this is deliberate or this is just, again, cultural, maybe you could comment on that. It's all of the above. You can't change who you are. And we at Hewlett Packard Enterprise are people who care about other people. Our purpose, as Jim said, our purpose is to advance the way people live and work. Every one of us every day gets up and goes to work or goes to work at home at HPE to do just that. That is who we are. And so it would be inauthentic for us to have treated this crisis in any other way. I think I want to make an observation and see if I get you guys to respond. So we always talk about technology disruptions. Marissa, you were mentioned about, the future was pulled forward. I'm sure you've seen the wrecking ball, the folks in the building, the executives very complacent, digital transformation not in my day and then the COVID-19 wrecking ball, the COVID-19 survey, you probably saw that, who's leading your digital transformation? The CEO, CTO or COVID-19, but it's real now. I mean, if you're not digital, you're not doing business. So, but my observation is that it seems like despite all this technology, that global disruptions are going to probably have a bigger impact in this coming decade, whether it's pandemics, social upheaval, natural disasters, et cetera. But technology can play a huge role in supporting us through those things. Jim, I wonder if you have any thoughts on that, you can comment. I mean, I think it's a great question. You know, if you think about it, what's happened with the macro economy, COVID, it's been a catalyst for, I think everybody to understand that they needed to really accelerate their digital transformation. And more importantly, they need a partner who can help them on that journey as well. I mean, if you just look at what we're talking about here with this event, right? Most of HPE and, you know, our competitors and peers have canceled their virtual events, or canceled their physical events rather, and they're moving now to a digital event. And in many ways, this is going to be the new normal for us, right? So I think as we go forward, we're going to see this only continue to accelerate. And for us, you know, our edge-to-cloud platform as a service strategy plays really well to helping customers accelerate that digital transformation. And, you know, it just kind of comes back to what Marissa said. You know, here to help is very HPE in terms of, it's authentic and it's here. We want to be here to help our customers in their biggest hour of need. And we're doing everything we can and we'll continue to do that for the future as well. Marissa, you know, having done many, many discoveries, we've noticed over the last several years, you guys made a much bigger emphasis on the sort of post discoverer, which a lot of organizations don't, they have a big physical event and it's sort of onto the next thing. And how do you see the post from a branding standpoint, messaging, et cetera? How do you see taking advantage of that from a virtual standpoint? And what have you learned? Well, we've been on our own digital transformation journey and, you know, through Jim's leadership, we have built a pretty serious digital engine which allows us to have a personal relationship with the customer, meet them where they are on their terms. For example, with this platform, it's even easier now because we actually will know what content, what sessions, what demos someone is interested in, maybe they put it on their schedule and then didn't get to do it. So we'll go back to them later and say, hey, we saw that you wanted to do this. It's still here, why don't you come and have a look and then watch to that. We do sort of the Netflix engine, the binge-worthy playlist of if you like that, you'll like this and if you like this, you'll like that and we bring them through the breadcrumbs all the way through and it's a self-directed journey but we're there to help. And that is really the true power of digital is to have that interaction, that conversation with the customer and where they want to be and with what they want to learn and read about and see. Yeah, and everything of course is instrumented. Jim, I'll give you the last word and you were involved as was Marissa and sort of the new HPE, the new branding and the whole purpose of that was really to get Field Packard Enterprise focused and really back to sort of the roots of innovation. And I wonder if you could comment on, from a strategy standpoint, innovation and from a competitive standpoint, where you're at over the last several years you've obviously transformed as a company and where you see your competitive posture going forward. Yeah, for us, we're so excited about this event because this is a great opportunity for us to showcase progress against our edge-to-cloud platform as a service strategy. And we rolled this out last year, it's differentiated, it's unique in the marketplace, it demonstrates the transformation happening across as a service and software at HeLa Packard Enterprise. So we are a company in transition aligned to what we feel our customers biggest pain points. And when you look at some of the acquisitions that we've made, some of the organic investments that we've done, we are just very well positioned to deliver against some very unique pain points that our customers have. Plus, I think another thing is at the end of the day, really what our customers are saying is help me take all this data and translate that data into insight and that insight into action. So you're gonna hear us talk about the age of insight and how we're really again unifying across edge-to-cloud to deliver that for our customers. So we're excited for this event because you're gonna hear significant industry reveals focused around cloud services, around software, and really a lot of the things that we've been talking about. And we're gonna show a lot of progress as we continue on that journey. And then Marissa mentioned digital. I'm really excited about digital because that enables us to understand and learn and help our customers and deliver a better experience to them. And then finally, huge opportunity for us to take this message out globally, right? A great opportunity for people all around the world who maybe haven't heard from HPE for a while to see our message, to feel the new energy, to see who we are, to see that we're doing some very interesting things and we can help them. So we're excited. There's a lot of energy right now inside the company and we're ready to kick it off and get rolling here. Well, it's quite amazing. I mean, we started off 2020 with a gut punch. But the reality is, is that the 2020s are going to be a lot different than the 2010s. If it weren't for technology and companies like HPE here to help, et cetera, we would not be in such good shape and good in quotes. But think about it, the technology is really helping us power through this. So Jim and Marissa, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and thank you HPE, everything you're doing for customers in the community. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. It's good to see you. All right, great to see you guys too. And keep it right there, everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, our continuous coverage of HPE's Discover Virtual Experience in 2020. We're right back right after this short break.