 Okay, we're here with Joe Peterson, the VP of Cloud and Security at Clarify 360. Hello Joe, welcome to theCUBE, great to see you. Thanks for having me. You're welcome, all right, let's get right into it. How do you think about cloud? Where we are today in 2021, the definitions evolved, but where do you see it today and where do you see it going? Well, that's such an interesting question and it's so relevant because the labels are disappearing. So over the last 10 years, we've sort of found ourselves defining whether an environment was public or whether it was private or whether it was hybrid. Here's the deal, cloud is infrastructure and infrastructure is cloud. So at the end of the day, cloud in whatever form it's taking is a platform and ultimately this enablement tool for the business. Customers are consuming cloud in the best way that works for their businesses. So let's also point out that cloud is not a destination. It's this journey and clients are finding themselves at different places on that road and sometimes they need help getting to the next milestone. Right, and they're really looking for that consistent experience. What are the big waves and trends that you're seeing around cloud out there in the marketplace? So I think that this hybrid reality is happening in most organizations. Their actual IT portfolios include a mix of on-premise and cloud infrastructure and we're seeing this blurred line happening between the public cloud and the traditional data center. Customers want a bridge that easily connects one environment to the other environment and they want end-to-end visibility. Customers are becoming more intentional and strategic about their cloud road maps. So some of them are intentionally and strategically selecting hybrid environments because they feel that it affords them more control cost balance, comfort level around their security. In a way, cloud itself is becoming borderless. The major tech providers are extending their platforms in an infrastructure agnostic manner and that's to work across hybrid environments, whether they be hosted in the data center, whether it include multiple cloud providers. As cloud matures, workload environment fit is becoming more of a priority. So forward-thinking organizations are matching workloads to the best environment and it's sort of application rationalization on this case-by-case basis and it really makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense. Okay, well let's talk about HPE GreenLake. They just announced some new solutions. What do you think it means for customers? I think that HPE has stepped up. They've listened to not only their customers but their partners. Customers want consumable infrastructure. They've made that really clear and HPE has expanded the cloud service portfolio for clients. They're offering more choices to not only enterprise customers but they're expanding that offering to attract this mid-market client base and they provided additional tools for partners to make selling GreenLake easier. This is all helping to drive channel sales. Yeah, so better granularity, just it increases the candidates, better optionality for customers. This thing is evolving pretty quickly. We're seeing a number of customers that we talk to interested in this model, trying to understand it better and ultimately I think they're going to really lean in hard. Joe, I wonder if you could maybe think about or share with us which companies are, I got to say getting it right and I'm really interested in the partner piece because if you think about the partner business it's really, it's changing a lot, right? It's gone from this notion of moving boxes and there was a lot of money to be made over the decades in doing that but they have to now become value add suppliers and really around cloud services and in the early days of cloud, I think the channel was a little bit freaked out saying, oh, they're going to cut out the middleman but what's actually happened is those smart agile partners are adding substantial value. They got deep relationships with customers and they're serving as really trusted advisors and executors of cloud strategies. What do you see happening in the partner community? Well, I think it's been a learning curve and everything that you said was spot on. It's a two way street, right? In order for VARS to sell residual services, monthly recurring services, there has to have been some incentive to do that and HPV really got it right because they, again, listened to that partner community and they said, you know what? We've got to incentivize these guys to start selling this way. This is a partnership and expected to be a partnership and the tech companies that are getting right are doing that same sort of thing. They're figuring out ways to make it palatable to that VAR to help them along that journey. They're giving them tools. They're giving them self-serve tools. They're incentivizing them financially to make that shift. That's what's going to matter. Well, that's a key point you're making. I mean, the financial incentives, that's new and different paying, you know, incentivizing for as-a-service models versus, again, moving some hardware and paying for installing iron. That's a shift in mindset, isn't it? It definitely is. And HPV, I think, is getting it right because I didn't know this, but I've learned this. 70% of their annual sales are actually transacted through their channel and they've seen this 116% increase in HPE GreenLake orders in Q1 from partners. So what they're doing is working. Yeah, I think you're right. And the partner channel becomes super critical. It's funny, Joe. I mean, again, in the early days of cloud, the channel was feeling like they were going to get disrupted. I don't know about you, but I mean, we've both been analysts for a while and the more things get simple, the more they get complicated, right? I mean, the consumerization of IT, the cloud, swipe your credit card, but actually applying that to your business is not easy. And so I see that as great opportunities for the channel. Give you the last word. Absolutely. And what's going to matter is the tech companies that stuff up and realize we've got this, we've got this chance, this opportunity to build that bridge and provide visibility and to end visibility for clients. That's what's going to matter. Yeah, I like how you're talking about that bridge because that's what everybody wants. They want that bridge from on-prem to the public cloud, across clouds, going to be moving out to the edge. And that is, to your point, a journey that's going to evolve over the better part of this coming decade. Joe, great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE today. Thanks for having me.