 Okay, we're back. This is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. Heading up SiliconANGLE's continuous coverage of the Gen 8 announcement. We're here in Las Vegas. Back in Las Vegas. A lot going on this week. We've got the VMware Partner Conference, the TDWI conference is going on, your colleagues from Vertica I'm sure are there. So we've got the European perspective now, Florian Reithmeier who's the VP of ISS in AMIA and Sylvia Hockmuth who's the director of marketing for ESN AMIA. Welcome. Welcome. Good to have you guys. Thank you for coming to theCUBE. First time theCUBE. Thank you. Now, so we want to talk about the announcement but I really want to get into the AMIA perspective. So first of all, where are you guys from? Well I'm from Germany, Munich. Actually that's one base. Yeah. Okay. You guys both based in Germany, right? Yes. You're both. And you're covering your Pan Europe, right? Pan-Amia I guess. You're probably the least in Africa. Yeah. So why don't we start with what's going on in the European climate? You know, in the United States we hear a lot about potential softness in Europe and everybody gets a little concerned. What's different in Europe these days? Well you know, I think the megatrends in IT are probably the same, right? This is about big data and obviously the change of unstructured data versus structured data. You have this massive explosion. You have cloud or the way how IT is delivered and you have this whole thing about mobility and just the profileration of devices and all the aspects that come with it. The difference obviously is the economic climate and obviously Europe is a sum of many countries so it's not the same everywhere but yeah, I think obviously there's pressure on the whole economic situation. There's pressures on IT budgets as a consequence for it and you know, I think there's also obviously pressure on going green and on power consumption and carbon footprint. Do cell phone calls drop as much in Europe as they do in the United States or is it better? I don't have a... You don't have a problem. I don't have a statistics here. No, it works well. It works well for us. So what about G&A? What's going on in Europe with this announcement? Is it timed for the same delivery? Talk about that a little bit. Absolutely. It's obviously a live conference and this is a global investment or announcement and Sylvia will talk a little bit more about how we're actually getting the message out of Europe but obviously we're excited because it comes at a perfect time and the capabilities we have with the G&A alone announcement is just fantastic for the requirements we have in Europe. So yes, very excited about it. It's synchronized. It goes around the globe and we're getting a lot of positive feedback from the customers there. What's your perspective, Sylvia? I think this is one of... We have to get nice and close a little bit, I'm sorry. This is one of the most important announcements HP has done in the last two years in this area. I think also the customers were waiting for that. So in marketing now it's really very important that we start to get the message out. So this is a live event here today but we have the time zone different so we acted almost in parallel here. So first what we did is... So in Europe, Middle East and Africa so about 70% of our business goes indirect so we have roughly about 3,000 gold partners and 5,500 preferred partners and so what we did is we already briefed them under non-disclosure, prepared them, also did new product introduction trainings with them so that they can talk to their customers. And what's also very important is that in the next two months we go into 44 different countries in Europe so you can imagine a big effort, different languages, traditions, etc., etc. So we go 44 countries and with that we outreach to more than 7,000 customers to bring the message out. So we invest a lot in demo equipment and exhibitions in these events as well as our whole pre-sales teams will be there to do a deep dive with the customers who want to do that. In the same way what we are doing here, digital so we also do a lot digital now in Europe believe it or not so many online campaigns are going on for demand generation in particular for the Gen 8 announcement in its product portfolio because then of course the main goal is to fill the sales pipeline with this new product introduction. So the channel in the United States is quite interesting as I've said there's a big what we call a land grab going on for the channel right though everybody's going hard after the channel and giving MDF funds and trying to obviously sign up channel partners and make them more productive. I'm sure there's a similar desire to get channel partners going in Europe but what's different in Europe, Middle East and Africa in the channel versus what you see in the United States or maybe you don't have great visibility in the United States but and if you don't how would you characterize the climate in the channel right now in Amir? Well I think everybody in an economic climate that is not necessarily up for growth is trying to optimize margins and is trying to find opportunities for growth and you know we have that luxury that in Europe almost every second X86 server is a HP server which is a fantastic position to be. I'm sorry what was that statistic again? Almost every second X86 server that is shipped in Europe is actually a HP server. One out of two. One out of two almost. So the question is really where is that additional growth? How can they leverage the strengths of that brand and that position into additional revenue and margin opportunities and more importantly how can they drive more value for the end customers and this is where Gen 8 with its features comes in. There's a fantastic opportunity for product and technology differentiation you know like you had Jim Gantier talking earlier about there is capabilities although we like competition we do believe we have set the bar very high in some of the capabilities that we've invested over the last two years. So there is product and technology differentiation but there's also great opportunity for the channel to actually drive closer intimacy with their end customers because they can move up the food chain into more consultative, more proactive service engagement. Make sure actually they can deliver integrated solutions. They can actually focus more of their time rather than trying to fix issues on the platform on the data center to actually proactive services. So those are again great opportunities for the channel to first of all drive customer intimacy up, customer satisfaction up but also have new revenue and margin streams. How about Africa? I mean this is kind of an interesting topic that you don't hear a lot of people in our industry talking about but physically it's a huge place. It's a huge market which is very diverse but it looks like it's got a lot of potential. What are your thoughts on Africa and if and when it will emerge as a powerhouse consumer of information technology? You know those things come in waves and when you see how the mobile phone penetration is and really a mobile phone is a good indication of what used to be a couple of years the PC penetration. If you look at the penetration of mobile phone usage and the service that comes with it it gives you indication of the opportunity and the massive growth in that. We've recognized this for quite a while and obviously we have been investing in this and during last year we have been investing in coverage. So our route to market, our preferred way to cover that market is through the channel partners. So we've invested a lot in distributors and resellers to actually build capabilities and we have a couple of large offices there to cover the clients. And that's a key differentiation to some of our competitors and as part of this focus on Africa we've actually opened a number of new offices in last year to just show the HP presence and the proximity to our clients in that country. And again to bring it back to this announcement you know what do customers need? They need reliable data center operations, they need to make sure they can service it remotely very easily and this is where some of the features of GenA just perfectly fit in. You know with the remote monitoring capabilities, with that proactive break fix, with that proactive monitoring and almost automated capabilities to run more stable you know it's a perfect combination. On the one side we want to be in the country, we want to drive better coverage and be a good partner in those countries, on the other side we bring technology that just brings more consistency around the globe in the way to run a data center. Yeah I mean in Africa you may not have in all countries, maybe South Africa it's built up somewhat but in many other countries you may not have the skill sets necessary to manage servers that aren't automated so it seems like there would be a good fit here. Correct. Okay good, Sylvia I had a question for you, specifically around converged infrastructure I mean it's a big theme of HP's obviously in the last couple of years, how is that playing in EMEA and what are you seeing as the big trends there across ESSN? So it is definitely one of the biggest trends which have been also created in HP the last two years so if I may also quote Dave Donatelli from this morning so when we started doing announced that in 2009 the converged infrastructure strategy hardly anybody was talking about and so now even our competitors are following us so if you Google converged infrastructure now we get millions of possibilities to click on also with our competitors. So what's now really important is that we show the acceleration of the converged infrastructure strategy so that what we have announced today follows that path so we started with this 70% IT, 70% of IT spent is spent on the IT scroll just to keep the old legacy alive and you only can invest with your 30% of your IT spent into new innovation and so with today's announcement we really can help to flip this around and also to enable the data center manager to think more about creating new services for their internal clients or for their customers so it's definitely a key strategy where we enable our customers to invest in the future definitely we see the converged infrastructure strategy as the enabler to the cloud but it's also a step in between which is the virtualization to cloud so yeah it's the main theme for all marketing activities in Europe Middle East and Africa. I think Dave also mentioned Dave Donatelli and has talked this morning about the preponderance of networking sales that go through the channel so obviously the converged infrastructure piece is very channel driven I would imagine is that the case or is it more weighted toward larger organizations? Well with the Connors infrastructure strategy of course the first and main approach was in the large enterprise segment because in the way it set up many customers feel that they need to have a large enterprise in a large data center but more and more we also create let's say solutions for the SMB market which then can go through the channel but you're absolutely right it's rather in the enterprise customer segment and commercial customer segment and not so much in the SMB segment yet. Did you see that changing? Well it depends on the services and the businesses this SMB customer is going to offer and yes I see it changing in the context of any kind of cloud services and offers in these areas. Okay my last question is we have to ask cloud question so yeah you got to have a cloud question there so I'm just curious I mean is the EMEA market are they as enthusiastic as cloud are they or are they as skeptical as we are in the United States what do you see? No I think the market is absolutely excited I think what is important is that we actually separate what cloud means for whom and I guess there is a lot of different definitions out there. Our approach has been always very consistent we want to make sure it's not a rip and replace approach we want to make sure we enable people to get on this journey and there's a lot of capabilities we deliver on a technology side but also from a services side so we do cloud exploration workshops we do assessments how to get from A to B on that cloud journey that is aligned and synchronized with the business strategy so the end that we obviously have the broadest portfolio across the compute the service storage power and cooling and the management to make it happen so yes a lot of excitement a lot of POCs going on a lot of discussions and workshops happening we see a trend that for the companies that actually drive a revenue model out of this they're moving faster so we've deployed a lot of cloud POCs and real deployment in Europe by now wherever there's a revenue stream connected there's a faster appetite to move and we see larger enterprises with more complex environments they tend to take a little longer but yeah the excitement is there and I think we are far beyond the excitement we have a very clear funnel with our customers and we have a very clear offering to actually move from A to B so for us cloud is not up in the cloud cloud is reality and you know I think there's great confirmation from external consultants from feedback we get from the customers and even from the channel partner that are vital part of that value proposition actually to really make cloud a reality and you know just just to make sure you understand what we're playing with the channel we built we see a lot of channel partners and resellers rethinking their their strategy they say do I stay as a reseller or do I actually become a cloud provider and with a fantastic program called cloud agile that allows actually channel partners to move in the direction and we've deployed you know what is called CCOEs it's called cloud centers of expertise for actually channel partners to adopt a cloud they get a lot of knowledge and insights from us to actually build this up and use that to actually show their capabilities and that expertise to their clients and to their customers so I think a lot of excitement a lot of uptake and obviously we see the ones that have a revenue model behind that moving faster than some of the other enterprises so I would say the similarities are greater than the differences in our regions no doubt Florian and Sylvia thanks very much and for coming inside the Cube and sharing the EMEA perspective it was great to have you good luck with the the rollout in EMEA and and good to see you good to meet you great thank you very much