 Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of HPE's GreenLake announcement. We've been following the cadence of GreenLake's announcements for several quarters now and even years. And we're going to look at cloud adoption and frameworks to help facilitate cloud adoption. You know, in 2020, the world was on a forced march to digital and there was a lot that they didn't know. A big part of that was how to automate, how to reduce your reliance on physically manually and plugging things in. So customers need an adoption framework to better understand and how to de-risk that journey to the cloud. And with me to talk about that are Alexia Clements, who's the vice president worldwide go-to-market for GreenLake cloud services at HPE and Alexi Garazimov, who's the vice president of hybrid cloud delivery, advisory and professional services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, folks. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks so much for having us. You're very welcome. So Alexi, what is a cloud adoption framework? How does that all work? Yeah, thanks Dave. So the framework is a structured approach to elevate the conversation to help our customers get outcomes. So we've been helping customers adopt the benefits and the most out of their IT for a decade. And we've noticed that they basically focus on the key areas as they transform to cloud-like capabilities. It's a strategy in governance, it's innovation people, DevOps applications, operation security and data. So we've structured our framework around those core components to help our customers get value. Because end of the day, it's all about changing the way they operate, to take advantage of all of it. Yes, so you can't just pave the cow path and kind of plug your existing processes. There's a lot that's unknown as I said up front. So Alexi, maybe you could talk a little bit more about some of the real problems that you're solving with customers that you see in the field. Yeah, absolutely. So most customers are going through some form of digital transformation. And these transformations are difficult and they need a structured approach to help them through that journey. I kinda like to think of it as a recipe to make a meal. So you need to know what ingredients to buy and what are the steps to perform to make that meal. Okay, so when you talk to customers, what do you tell them that's in it for them after you've actually successfully helped them deploy? What are they telling you? Yeah, well they're telling, they now have reached their business outcomes and they're a more agile organization. What's the experience look like when you go through one of these journeys and you apply the adoption framework and you sort of paint a picture? Yeah, absolutely. So every customer is in some sort of transformation like Alexi has said, that transformation implies you gotta know where you start and you gotta know where you're going. So the experience traditionally is customers need to understand what are my current hybrid cloud capabilities? What do I have? What am I missing? What's lacking? And then determine where do you want to go? And in order to get from point A to point B, they have to get a prescriptive approach. So the framework sort of breaks down their path from where they are to their desired maturity and it takes them in a very prescriptive path to get there. So you start with an assessment, do a gap analysis based on their skill sets, I presume you identify what's possible, help them understand best practice which they may not achieve, but this is kind of their north star, right? And then how do you help them fill those gaps? Cause there's skills gaps, everybody talks about that today. You guys presumably can provide additional services to do that, but so can you add a little bit of color to that scope? Yeah, absolutely. And so to your point, the first is a maturity level. So once you figure out the maturity level, you understand what needs to be done. So if you look at our eight domains that I mentioned in the framework, people is a big one, right? Most of the folks are struggling with people skills and organizational capabilities. And it's all because it's an operating model change, right? And people are the key component to this operating model change. So we help our customers figure out how do we achieve that optimal operating level and operating a model maturity? And that could be on-prem, that could be on public cloud, that could be hybrid, that could be at the edge. And yeah, if we can, HPE, the framework by the way, is pretty open and pretty objective. If we can help our customers address and achieve those outcomes, great. If we can not directly then we can have a partner that can help them plug in something that we don't have. Are you finding that in terms of the maturity that most people have some kind of experience with cloud, but they're struggling to bring that cloud experience to their on-premise state, they don't want to just shove everything into the cloud. So what does that typical journey look like for folks? I know it's a wide spectrum. You've got people that may be more mature, maybe some of the folks in financial services got more resources, but can you sort of give us a sense as to what the typical, the average journey looks like? By the way, so to give you a customer example, a perfect example of a large North American integrated energy company, they decided to go cloud first, like a lot of companies do over the cloud first and why the reason was they were on agility. So they started going to the cloud and they realized in order to get agility, you can't just go to, you pick your public CSP, you got to change the way they operate. So they brought us in and they asked, could you help me figure out how we can change the organization? So we actually operate on a proper level maturity. So we brought our team in, we help them figure out what do we need to look at? We need to look at operations, we need to look at people, we need to look at applications, and we need to figure out what gives you the best value. So when all of a sudden done, they realized that their initial desire of public first or cloud first wasn't really public cloud first, it's a way to operate. So now the customers in three different public CSPs, they're on-prem, they're at the edge of everywhere. So that's a focus. Is the scope predominantly the technical organization? How deep does it go into the business? Is it obviously the application development team is involved, but how deep into the business does this go, the framework? Right, and it's absolutely not a technology focus. The whole concept here is it's outcomes-based and it's a results-based. So if you look at the framework, there's really not a single element of the framework that says tech, like storage or compute. No, it's people, it's data, it's business value, it's strategy and governance. Because the goal for us is being objective is we're just trying to help them address their outcomes, not necessarily to give them more tech. So Alexia, I like that answer because it's a wider scope. If we just focused on the tech and that's the swim lane, it'd be a lot easier, but as we all know, it's the people in the process that are really the hard part. So that makes the challenge for customers greater. You're hurting more cats. So what are some of the obstacles that potentially you help customers before they dive in understand? Yeah, so we're giving them a roadmap on where they need to go. So we're, like I mentioned, that recipe. So we're really trying to identify what is their strategy and what are the outcomes that they're trying to drive and help them with a path to meet those outcomes. So some of those, I mean, every customer is a little bit different. I mean, we had one customer, which was one of the largest hospitals in North America and they needed to, they wanted to go to the cloud, but they realized they couldn't put all of their patient data on the cloud. So what we did was we helped them in changing their operating model and really look to see how does that, how do they need to, what's that end game for them and actually help redo their operating model to have some in the cloud and some on-prem and really identify where they needed to go for their roadmap. So that was an obstacle that they had, hey, we can't put all this stuff out there. How does that now need to work in this new world? I would think the data model is a big deal here. I mean, you just gave an example where there's a governance and compliance aspect to it. So thinking about that example, did they have to change the way in which they provided federated governance? You had to presumably identify whose responsibility that was to adjudicate, but also had to get the implementers to follow. That's, how does that all work? Is it just the deep conversations and then you figure out how to codify it? No, so through those eight domains that Alexi mentioned, we go through step by step how they need to think about it and in mind what are their business outcomes and goals that they're trying to achieve? So really identifying how they need to change that operating model to meet those business outcomes. So what's the output? It's a plan, right? That's tailored to the customer, is that correct? And then sort of assistance in implementing downstream or what do they get? Right, yeah, absolutely. And just to piggyback on what Alexi said, the alignment, the early alignment, the strategy and governance as you mentioned is probably the most important thing. Because everybody says, we want to be cloud first. Well, what does that mean? Cloud first means different things to everyone. So you said give them a plan. The first we'll help with figure out is, what does that mean for you? Because at the end of the day, you're not going to the cloud for the sake of cloud or anywhere. You're going to the cloud to get some sort of value. So what's that alignment? So the plan is supposed to help you on your road to that value, right? So we'll help with figure out what I want to do. Why, for what purpose? What's going to actually address my business value? So yes, then we'll get a plan as part of it, but more importantly, they get a set of activities, communication plans, which by the way, another block that you got to address. Huge. Yeah, I mean, a lot of executives tell me, look, if you don't change your operating model and go to the cloud, you're talking, you know, nickels and dimes. If you want to get telephone numbers, you have big companies, you want to get bees with billions, you have to change the operating model. And the problem that they tell me is, a lot of times the corner office says, okay, we're doing this, but everybody in the fat middle says, what are we doing? Right. And now more than ever, I mean, customers need to look at that, like a more modern operating model to realize the benefits of cloud capabilities, whether that be at the edge, their data centers, their colos, cloud. So they really need to look at that. And what we've seen is with our framework, we're really helping customers accelerate their business outcomes, de-risk their transformation, and really optimize that cloud operating model. Is that alignment, reducing friction within the organization, confusing confusion, people don't know which direction they're going, they're just going to go wherever they're pointed. Right. Well, then back to the alignment. So you got alignment, and you mentioned communication. You have to communicate up and down, left and right, across the organization, because that's one of the most probably ignored elements of any transformation. Because you said people don't know. So you got to communicate, and then you have to actually measure and report on how the transformation is happening. So we can help on all three of those. Especially when everybody's remote. Right, and then I said, hey, these digital transformations, there's so much that's unknown. Right, it's difficult. Yeah, it's a lot of new. And so you also have to, I presume part of the plan is, hey, it's not going to be 100% perfect. So you have to have some latitude within. Right, and you're constantly iterating on that plan. What does this have to do with GreenLake? Yeah, so I mean, GreenLake is HPE's, you know, cloud everywhere. And what we're really doing is this framework is helping customers with that path to get that cloud-like experience and as a service model. And so the framework is really helping clients understand where do they need to go and what GreenLake solutions can help them get there. So the fundamental assumption of, not every cloud player necessarily, but I would say most hyperscalers is, hey, ultimately all the data and the workloads are going to go to the cloud. That's their operating premise. So they all have an operating framework to facilitate that. Right. It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's true. So, but everybody has one of these. Right. How is yours different? Yeah, so like you said, there's lots of different frameworks out there, but what we're really focused on is meeting those business goals and outcomes for clients. So we didn't focus on the technology, like we mentioned. What we were really focusing around, I mean, we kind of learned early on that every customer has technical capabilities, applications, data in multiple clouds, on-prem, in colos, and at the edge. So we didn't focus on just the technology. So it's really driving business outcomes and their goals. And all those frameworks that we just mentioned, they're really specifically driving a particular technology tool or vendor, implementing a particular technology or vendor. So we talk about outcomes a lot, but I wonder if we can peel the onion in that. So, highest level outcome is I want to increase revenue, cut costs, drop to the bottom line, increase shareholder value, improve employee experiences and retention, make customers happier, grow my business. I mean, I don't know a lot of businesses that don't want to do that. So okay, that's cool, but then I'm imagining you really start to peel the layers and say, okay, this is how we're going to get there. And you get down to specific objectives as to the how. Is that sort of how this works? And that's to echo what Alexi said. That's exactly why ours is different. We're not focusing on how to adopt Microsoft or AWS or Alibaba. We're focusing on how we can deliver the customer experience or better revenue or increased value for the consumer, for whatever the company will help in. So the framework will look at that and figure out how do we actually address it, whether it's on public cloud, whether it's on prime, whether it's at the edge. You mentioned, Alexi, that if we don't have the skills, we get a partner who does a big company. You get a huge partner network. So for example, if you might not have necessarily a deep industry expertise, that's where you might lean on a partner. Is that a good example or is there a better one? Yes, and we know we're not gonna, just like you mentioned, AWS or Microsoft, Alibaba, think that everything will go to public cloud. I don't believe so. But at the same time, we know not everything will stay on-prem. So the combination of on-prem, the edge, private cloud and public cloud is what the customers are after. So our partners could be either third-party system integrator that can help us implement something, or even the public CSPs, because we know our customers have capabilities everywhere. So the question becomes, how can we holistically address their needs, whether it's on-prem, whether it's in public cloud? Great. Guys, thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. My pleasure, and thank you for watching, everybody. This is theCUBE's continuous coverage of HPE's GreenLake announcement. Keep it right there for more great content.