 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering HPE Discover 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for HPE Discover 2017. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and talk to all the individuals, thought leaders, executives, and customers of HPE Discover. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Peter Schradie, Senior Vice President, General Manager, for Lions servers and the small, medium-sized, business enterprise segments, and Michael Proper, founder and CEO of ClearCenter. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having us. So you guys have a deal. Let's get into it real quick. Set the table here for us. ClearCenter, your company and CEO of, what do you guys do? You guys have a relationship, but just take a minute to talk about your company, specifically what does it do, and some of the things you do with HPE. ClearCenter builds an operating system called ClearOS, as well as a virtualization management platform called ClearVM. And we specifically build it for service providers. And the deal with the ProLiance is what? Yeah, so our deal is we have an exclusive relationship to preload ClearOS on certain SMB-focused racks and tower servers. We also have the ability to push that out to our entire ProLiance server line via intelligent provisioning as well. We're super excited about this because it provides significant value to our SMB customers that are looking for an operating system, and more than that, gateway networking capability and a suite of applications outside of the typical Microsoft operating system, which at this point is pretty burdensome for these guys. Yeah, I mean, small means-sized business. I mean, we ask them how long we've been doing theCUBE and we've been eight years and, you know, we're growing, but we're still considered a small means-sized. We don't have a data center. We don't have a telephone closet. We don't have Outlook. We use all SaaS products. We don't have an IT department. So this is kind of where DevOps kind of demand for small, medium-sized enterprises. It's interesting because there's no DevOps guy. There's no cloud-native person. So you have to build in all these integrated tools. What is, and that's growing, by the way. We were seeing in the Wikibon report shows that's happening. How is that demand changing for the small, medium-sized business? Because more and more SaaS-ification's happening. More and more apps are coming in. How are you guys making it easier for them to buy product and start building their own on-premise solution? And that's exactly what ClearOS and Clear Center's mission really is. I'll let Michael talk about that. So specifically, there's always going to be something on-premise. But the goal is to help Hewlett Packard Enterprise be that device on-premise with an intelligent operating system that actually connects to these SaaS-based apps and services off-premise. So there's always going to be an element of how do you connect that internet up? How do you connect the users to the network? How do they log on? How do the wireless access points get out? How do you print? All of that has to be on-premise, but there's elements of security threats that are growing continually. And to have a simple user interface that can actually be done without an IT individual is the future. But today, you still have to have complexity. And our real primary goal is to make it very secure, very simple, and very affordable, which in all reality, all those three things haven't been checked in the IT industry. You can check two of them, security and affordable, but it's usually not usable or vice versa. It's just in that clip, yesterday in the keynote, Megwin was talking about the cloud clip, which is very real dynamic. At some point, you're like, wait a minute, I'm paying all this for cloud, so there's certainly a shift for the on-premise for security reasons. But now you've got ransomware challenges. You have all kinds of issues that are springing up. You're hitting them perfect point. From a ransom, ClearOS also has a marketplace with hundreds of apps, kind of like how our cell phone works, right? It's got an open source operating system, then a marketplace with all these different apps. You want to turn it into a flashlight, you can. You want to turn it into a recorder, you can. But the reality is in the network layer, how do you address ransomware? Well, we've got a gateway management app that basically takes the billions of websites that everybody just freely as mankind allows access to and narrows it down to a very small list and then uses machine learning based upon where people want to go to access only the good sites. That is a simple app, 40 bucks a month, an organization such as yourself, I'm sure would pay something like that. So you guys essentially white list based upon smart machine learning, and then you give the same experience for the small, I mean, like consumer experience. So one of the problems we've seen is they lock into an IT architecture and it's like, wow, I got a no flexibility. Flexibility is number one. You've got to let people say, I want this to be just a server or I just want to do that gateway management or all of it or none of it. So when did you start the company? So I've been in the IT sector my whole life, but started a company that was called Direct Point and the managed service provider sector back in 2000. And we identified these same problems that technology wasn't simple, it wasn't secure and it wasn't really affordable when you look at all the elements. So started this business after, that business actually went into the consumer world and it's got about 650 employees and customers all over the US. We grew, anyways, came out of the service provider sector and found that there's this gap with technology. Started Clear Center in 2009 and we've just been working to build all the backend infrastructure. Currently have over 400,000 deployments globally in over 150 countries and over 80 languages. And then when did you start the relationship with HPE? How did that work? We literally just announced it this week. Okay. Two days ago. Yeah. We're old buddies. It's been years and you're making. Yeah. So how did you guys find each other? Well, interestingly enough, I got a note from Meg saying, hey listen, I just met this guy, Michael Proper at a fundraising event and he's got something you need to look at. And so, of course I did my duty and found out that most of these are just kind of chasing your tail a little bit. But Michael definitely had something here with ClearOS and ClearBM and so. Well, it's a huge opportunity. Good ROI on the fundraiser there. Yeah. How much do you actually donate it, but. Right, but I mean, it's a huge opportunity. I mean, when you started the company, were you somewhat fearful that, oh well, maybe Microsoft's going to come in and solve this problem or did you know better? We actually see a really good fit with Microsoft. I mean, we've got an active directory connector. We don't see Microsoft going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I think that you're going to see a brilliance in the company that pops out some innovation and we plan on leveraging that in a different way. Everything about ProLion is all about on-premise. How do you create that stickiness? But ClearOS is a web-based application. We really extract all of the complexities from, it's kind of like what happened with Windows and DOS or with Mosaic and the browser or with the cell phones. We've done the same thing, but with. You're an ecosystem partner for Microsoft and the other global partner of the year for you guys at HPE is no secret there. But I mean, this is the old Microsoft ecosystem back in the early days when they had their business partners. So now. Put it this way. Some of the folks that have spent 20 years building small business server and solving the problems that we focus on love what we're doing in many ways. So you'll see it come out and, again, it doesn't just have to be installed on-premise. It can be installed off-premise. We've extracted it to a web-based interface. And then as John was pointing out, I mean, most small businesses that start today, they go all cloud, but as they grow, they got all these clouds to manage and then they start to get a little bit of infrastructure on-premise. So what are you doing there in terms of, you know, extending outside the walls of the company? So the reality is, let's say you add a new user. Let's say you guys hire a new individual and Samantha over there can actually go in, create that user's name. Say this user's in accounting. This user's going to work from home. You guys use Google Apps, Office 365. So this user's going to get Google Apps and they're going to get this phone number and this cellular provider. Add. Now it does everything on-premise to let that user log onto the network, see the drive, see the printers work from home, but it also goes into Google Apps, creates the account, synchronizes their password. If she wants to change her password here, boom, it just did it on the network as well. That's hybrid ID. The same in the way out. You got it. I mean, this is an HR workflow. You got it as well. I think it fits perfectly into the hybrid strategy that we have, right? So as you got bigger, as you get bigger, hopefully you're going to have demand or need for more data analytics, whatever that might be. That's going to probably be a different delivery method, right, with a high performance computer, Apollo platform, whatever it might be. But this will continue to scale for certain applications and certain use cases. So it's the perfect hybrid. It allows companies to have the processes that they need to grow their business. That IT would have to spend a lot of cash on IT in the past. That's right. It fits so well in our hybrid strategy, just at the SMB space. And we don't talk a lot about that. You don't hear Meg talking about that because our customer base is so predominantly large enterprise. Well, plus there's an IoT play here. In the future, like John says, well, we're a small company, everything's in the cloud. But the reality is, we have Intel-based products that are in our studio and their systems and these cameras are all instrumented. That's exactly right. It's not just IoT, but you're right. Think about, remember that app that you take everything down. You block all of the things online. What about that camera when that thing gets web-based? So we want to see how it's working, how it's functioning, but you don't want the rest of the world to see it. You want to add just a group of devices that can only see two sites. Then users that can see 8,000 sites. Then maybe other systems, TVs that can actually see, I mean, it's intelligence for not just x86-based pro-aliant servers or wireless access points, but also cellular devices all into one management system, but we've got to be able to focus on the x86-based today because that's here. But tomorrow, you got 5G, you got additional capabilities and IoT is just going to continue to grow. So Mike, I want to ask you, normally this is kind of the country we see with large enterprises, you know, run the business, grow the business, transform the business, usually for large enterprises. But with your kind of platform, you're giving kind of small, I mean, sort of enterprises, essentially a full-blown IT kind of capability. Absolutely. We still have the opportunity now with Cloud and Cloud Native and SaaS products to actually do some really cool, nimble, agile things to grow their business and potentially transform industries. What's your advice to your customers and what do you see as a path for a small, medium-sized business and enterprise? To leverage the Cloud, to leverage some of the apps, go beyond the sales force and some of the basic kind of low-hanging fruit. The right thing is to include the partner in this discussion. And it's really, the recommendation to the partner is, use the flexibility of these apps to then listen to your customers' needs and then plug in things that they want. Maybe they want, you know, Susie to be productive and only be on Facebook after 5 p.m. Hold down the content filter, pay a hundred bucks a year and charge the company 4,000 to manage that, right? So there's an ecosystem where the partners can actually make money, make recommendations, listen to their clients. We're really focused on that service provider because that's the DNA that we come from and we also see a massive shift. The managed service provider sector provided hardware, software and services for predictable monthly fee on-premise. The new Cloud service provider, so the organization that set up Google Apps for your organization, they do it off-premise. The reality is we see the combination, talk about what Peter's referring to, the hybrid, we see it coming together, doing the same thing but in different ways, but the systems have to talk together. Does that make sense? So we see this. So you got to make more intelligent servers that can blend in with this new world of, what are the cool things you guys are doing with the ProLiance? It's not just servers, really. It's the software-defined infrastructure that the servers are running on. When we've talked about a few things, first of all, we've got our server management, software-defined server management layer called ILO and we continue to extend ILO and make that more usable and more user-friendly and then it extends into OneView, which it really is our infrastructure management system, which we're now automating a lot of the deployment provisioning and management of server storage and networking. But what's really exciting is what's next and that's called our new stack, which is coming. Next Discover, you're going to hear a lot about it. It's in the secret room over there. We try to break in, but I have to press it. Stay out. But literally that is bringing all of the hybrid controls to one management system, including brokerage of both on and off-prem, so that you're theoretically completely efficient. I think this is the trend. Michael's pointing to essentially the direction, which is roll your own stack. People want to roll their own IT and... And I think the hybrid gives you the ability to do a little bit of both and I think that's ultimately where it's going to land. Guys, great conversation. Again, this proof that with cloud and hybrid cloud, the SMB can actually have some great capabilities with DevOps and all the cool AI and machine learning that's out there. Great story, Clear Center, great job. Congratulations on the great firm and your deal with HPE. Yeah, we're super excited about it. Great job. More live coverage here in Las Vegas for HPE Discover. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break.