 Live from the Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, extracting the signal from the noise, it's the Cube. Covering HP Discover 2015. Brought to you by HP. And now your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. It's our eighth, I believe, HP Discover, if you count the European segments that we do. And we're just fresh off the keynotes. Meg Whitman and Antonio Neary, Robert Young-Johns and all the execs sort of laying out the future vision of HP. And Mike O'Neill and Duncan Campbell are here. And we're going to talk about alliances, a key part of HP's strategy, is to reach out to the partner community. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. It's good to see you. Thanks, Dave. So, Mike, let me start with you. What did you think of the keynotes? Good vibe, a lot of energy? It was a lot of energy. I think we had an opportunity really on Vail. I think I mentioned to you as we were coming in. The storyline is how HP Enterprise wants to move forward around these transformational areas. Really taking the product approach we've had in the past, not just hardware, but hardware, software and services, raising up that enablement into a level that addresses what we see as the key transformations taking place in the market. Whether it's around hybrid IT, security, analytics or mobility, but great jumpstart to the show. Now, were you able to tease that out at the partner conference at all? Were you sort of shaping these messages? Yeah, so if I can jump in, Mike, so I think it's important, not only do we feel that when we talk about these transformation areas that Mike talked about, we know it's not just about HP on HP. In fact, our whole approach is HP plus partners. Why? Because partners are already leading in the innovation in these transformation areas. So we foreshadowed at our global partner conference exactly what was going to be said here on the stage. They felt included, and so they are really going to be part of this innovation engine that is so critical in terms of success for the partners and for operators. So what's the sentiment with the partners now? I mean, the channel's gone through some massive transformations. The cloud is coming in. It's an opportunity, but it's a threat to their business models. If you're just a pure box seller, you've got to transform your business. So what's the vibe in the partner community? What are you hearing? Well, I think we have a tremendous advantage in that we have, especially in our group, we manage a number of the system integrator relationships on top of the key ISVs. So we look at it two ways. As we talk about these transformation areas, it's really around key workloads and solutions delivered for outcomes. HP traditionally has been, as I mentioned, a discreet component, software or services deliver. As we look at these transformation areas, we're making that engagement surface area much cleaner, higher up the stack, and enabling as we, so we look at these system integrator relationships from kind of the evolution from direct partnering, you secure an opportunity we deliver behind you to the building of solutions around a specific workload for a specific outcome to a practice to a business. And as we start to evolve to that, the ability to really package in a transformational way around whether it's the hybrid IT opportunity, whether it's security opportunity and whether mobility opportunity really gives, as I mentioned, a much broader surface area for this partner engagement. Yeah, and in Mike, if I can add color on that, I think what's important is a lot of that traditional business still exists, and a lot of those traditional partners will continue to make good money in that regard, good profit. But I think what's really getting the excitement and the verb in getting the juices going are these solutions, really, for the new style of business. And that is really where a lot of people say, okay, well, let's dig in now. Let's figure out how we can innovate and really generate new business. So in hearing that your, the partner's sense is the sentiment is that there's opportunity out there. They're navigating choppy waters, right? Well, yeah, honestly, Dave, this would have been asking us to do. We've had two primary asks for years. Operate as one HP. Come to us as one with one point, one center point. And two, make it easy to engage with us. Help us deliver against these outcomes. And I think that we're very proud of the fact that we're now raising up out of the product approach into this transformational solution approach. I think from a partner perspective, we had great feedback at the partner conference. It was, frankly, about time in some ways, but thanks, this is going to further enable our ability to take these solutions to market at a pace we haven't been able to do before. And the frustration was just too much sort of product stovepipes? Is that right? Yeah, and I would also say that the language that we were really talking about was very IT centric. So now what we're talking about is about business outcomes. We're leading with use cases that exactly might, you know, that hit the workloads that really, really focus on these four transformation areas. So Meg was talking about the idea economy, and I like the idea economy. I'm sure your partners and your customers are talking about the digital economy. You don't want to be a follower, you want to be a leader. I tweeted that out. You got to do something different. Ideas, to me, are the mainspring of that digital economy. I mean, it's the ingredient that you use to put together these digital services. And so everybody's talking about the digital economy. They're talking about digitizing their business. So they don't want to necessarily talk in product terms. Yeah, products underneath all that. It's the plumbing. They want to talk in terms of these business outcomes, solutions. Precisely. Right? That what you're hearing? Exactly, spot on. And what's cool about this is it even goes further than these innovation engines that everybody always talks about with cloud, big data, security, mobility. But when you talk about the idea economy, it really is even more inspirational. And that is really what we're seeing right now, is the partner community now bonding closer together. We're making it easier to engage in an accelerated business. So when easier to engage, let's talk about that a little bit, because I've seen, it's been a while, but I've seen some partner agreements with HP. They tend to be very long. I mean, a lot of legalese in there. Are you able to simplify the onboarding of new partners? And can you talk about that a little bit? We're in it. Well, I think I want to hit before that. You were talking about the idea kind of. So as we saw, that whole ideation process is about speed. And as we were talking about, and I challenge you, we talked in a, actually the gentleman that came up in the demonstration today was talking about our ability to speed to respond. I think we as a company have been responsive to you as a request, responsive to take action, responsive in delivery of solutions, maybe not so much so. But as you start to see what was presented by Antonio today around this hybrid IT environment, and the ability, as we believe, services and applications that are going to drive the completion and fulfillment of those ideas, you've got to be quick. You've got to think about orchestration. You've got to think about service management. You've got to think about the ability to manage a software-defined data center. Things that we haven't done at pace, at speed in the past. And so as we look at this, evolving from a hardware-centric environment to a services-based environment with the inclusion of software, hardware and services underneath, speed and simplicity is really the goal we're trying to get at. I'll talk to you at the question. If speed and simplicity is what we're trying to do in the delivery of solutions, we damn well better figure out how to deal with the response around partner agreements and time to market. I'll tell you what, Dave, we have, you might think at times that we have system integrators looking at us saying, hey, isn't your enterprise services company in the same business we're in? You want to do advice, plan and manage? We do advise, plan and manage. What we've come to find out, that there's a number of areas where very complementary system integrator and services, whether app development, whether provision of services from enterprise services that work well together, a VPC, a cloud delivery system, if you enter into that space as a cloud vendor of any sort, public, private, you've got to be quick, you've got to be agile, you've got to be able to really operate at the speed of business. So that to us has become a primary goal and objective as we go through this. Simplicity and speed and delivery solutions and certainly simplicity and speed in being able to partner. And Duncan's actually one more point. We're actually in the process now. HP had been known in the past of having just a really world-class, broad ecosystem of partners. That ecosystem was built around HP UX, the Unix based system, APIs and interface. That program diminished a bit, but we see it as the foundation for what we believe to be extremely important asset moving forward is a broad ecosystem. We have our top tier, mid tier, but we have to have a broad ecosystem that helps deliver back to, you know, ideation and the idea economy. You're going to have partners in each vertical, each industry, each sub-industry and almost each task below that. And we believe in building out that it gives an easy entry point into a partner experience with us. Yeah, just two points I would add. So number one, with our Partner One program that really is a cohesive umbrella that embraces both traditional channels, distribution, systems integrators and service providers. And what Mike's speaking about is now how we're going to really start to marry this together with a lot of the alliances and the ISV activities. I think what's important, when you think about how to grow a market, you've got to think ecosystem first. And a lot of competitors and even HP in the past sometimes would think product first and yeah, we'll kind of worry about that ecosystem later. But if you lead with the ecosystem, my God, what a catalyst and how exciting to embrace that community to grow the market. Well, an ecosystem requires leadership. I mean, how many partners are we talking here in your portfolio? Yeah, so... Yeah, so with our Alliance One program, it's over 4,000 ISVs. So you've got 4,000 partners and there's maybe a handful in there that are large companies that can lead, that can drive. But they're not ecosystem platform players and they're looking for leadership there. And we frankly observed a lot of times what large vendors sometimes do is they collect everybody and they say, okay, we're going to segment you. You're in this group. You go sell some stuff and you go sell some stuff. But collectively there's an opportunity here that the industry, we're in the cusp of all this change. So talk about the leadership that you bring and the dynamic at the partner conference. Yeah, so I think what's important is a lot of these partners, they almost did resent in fact being siloed or pigeonholed that way. They said, no, let's think about capabilities that we bring to the table. And so from our standpoint, it is about really having that continuum from providing thought leadership, positioning the partner that way, working with them to help really own, in a lot of cases collaborate, co-develop solutions and then marrying them up end to end with the right delivery partner, in fact, then to be successful. So it's really more of an end-to-end capability and thinking it through in terms of what is required and then really driving ahead aggressively with that. Yeah, I think it's energy. It's really energy. It's a gravitational pull-around enablement. So we've always been enablers of solutions. You don't even what was presented today in that set of transformational areas. That's not end outcomes. That's enablement to work with partners in an ecosystem of partners to enable a solution in a specific vertical, in a specific industry. So as we bring in ecosystem of partners to help fulfill these solutions, to enable these solutions, to deliver these solutions, if we do this right, when we do this right, it's really an energy source. And that should be the leadership. One, a market footprint that's unrivaled. And two, the energy to be able to take that into whether it's a hybrid environment. The other source of energy, a solar piece of solar power here, is M&A. And I asked Meg a few years ago, talking to me about M&A, he says, no M&A. We've got to pay down the debt. And now HP's become more acquisitive. Partners are both the source of, hey, you should buy this company, or you should buy that company, or here's some white space to fill. Another feeder for that information. I mean, the Aruba acquisition is a great example. We saw the energy up on stage with Dom today. You're seeing a whole, a completely different approach to networking now. The whole start with the wireless, ethernet to the air, kind of perspective, versus sort of a secondary view of wireless. I think that's one of the benefits, in fact, of the separation. And one of the things with the separation, it's going to free really both companies to focus more precisely on customers, competitors, and it's going to unlock, capital is going to increase speed and velocity. Yeah, I mean, the synergies really, I mean, there's synergies in supply chain, I guess, but the synergies between ink and converged infrastructure, those are really dramatically different conversations. Right, and so, yeah, you want to focus those, they're different business models, they're different margin models. Well, I think that was part of MAKE's talk track coming out of the last analyst meeting, and the conversations would stretch from SDN to ink cartridges, and just going that spectrum, you start to lose the prioritization of what and where the business is being built out of, and where you want to drive the priorities for the business. So I think all of us inside have seen a last job, I was in an M&A job, a corp dev job at EMC for a while, and just seen what went into divestiture and acquisition, and now, seeing this I think the largest divestiture that's split in the industry, and now we're coming to a point, November 1st you're going to have virtually two IPOs, at the same time, we're running the business and succeeding at the business through that process. So I think the Duncan's point, as we get to November 1st, as we get to the targeted operation in HP Enterprise, we do get to the point that we do the focus there, speeds there, and we have the flexibility around inorganic or organic expansion to the point that it makes sense. So, I wonder if we can just sort of go around the horn on the pillar, so let's start with the hybrid infrastructure. What are the partners telling you about hybrid, hybrid IT, you got the public cloud guy, really guys, I guess there's guys there, we want to put it on one, but so the one in particular Amazon is like everything goes into the public cloud, you guys got a completely different, like talking to two different people, right? It's like, oh, all the world's going to be you know, public cloud, all the world's going to be hybrid, right? But we do a lot of these shows and we talk to a lot of customers and it's very clear that vast majority of customers are going to have diversity. What's the partner angle on that? I know HP's is open, multi-cloud, here's your choice. What's the partner? Well, I think the partner angle, definitely, it's going to be a subscriber to the end state. It's going to be a hybrid world. And there's a reality that they have business they've transacted, business they need to take care of that exists today. So it's really part, you know, figuring out where should the data reside, where does the app reside. And they now are in a position to work with customers, to be that trusted advisor to move them to that hybrid end state. Do they like that? Absolutely, because that is a nest egg that they can actually really continue to earn that trusted advisor and that continuation of that business. So they're pumped up, they feel it is a hybrid world, but it is about having that infrastructure foundation that you can actually have the mobility of both the data and the apps and that's really where the HP strategy wins. I was going to give you an example. So SAP is a big partner of ours. HANA is a workload that's just, you know, taken off in many ways. S4 is I think accelerated even for their whole S4 campaign. But we look at the opportunity with HANA where we went in originally with a converged infrastructure offering. We got creative with that and a private cloud offering being able to offer it as a service. But where we've really found success in market today is really a spectrum of offerings. You can host HANA in a public cloud. We're a heck vendor. You can host it on site, private. You can do TDI with your own components. But it's that whole spectrum. We believe HANA is the solution working with SAP for the problem. But each customer has a spot on that spectrum where it makes the best sense for them today and be able to move it back and forth across that. So that's from a vendor perspective. Only system integrators that are delivering that on our behalf. And of course these four areas, they're not mutually exclusive. They're very much intertwined. So if you believe the wrap tool, you know, economy and people could say, well, I'll secure the digital enterprise. That's just marketing. But it's not. If you think about digitizing your business, it completely changes the security paradigm. It's got to be an outward in type of view now. So what's the partner angle there? I think the partner angle there really just it really depends kind of where they've come from and where they have their skills and expertise. From our standpoint what we want to do is work with them on their strengths and to really kind of grow their security expertise. So when you talk about in terms of how to protect your digital enterprise you know, a lot of these guys are very comfortable in selling things like tipping point, thinking about firewalls. But in thinking about how then to grow different kind of consulting practices or partner with other members of our ecosystem to do that. Yeah, but either thought. It's really been, we've we've got a number of components and what a partner does for us for themselves is actually pull that together into a portfolio offering for security. So endpoint, application delivery just across the board on that. Okay, let's talk about the data-driven enterprise. We've been talking a lot about the notion, you know, we use Jeffrey Moore's rubric of systems of record, systems of engagement and now systems of intelligence. Building upon systems of, you know, analytic systems and transaction systems coming together. Is the channel, are they specializing in that? Are they sort of being dragged into that reality or where does the channel stand on that? Yeah, so, and again it's a similar discussion in security. So in some cases they'll do some partnering if they don't have that expertise because the customer demands that. In other cases what we're seeing are certain, you know, VAR is actually saying, I want to invest in that because that certainly is going to go mainstream. And when Robert Young Johns talks about it, he goes, this is not a lab experiment anymore. This is about seeing things like actionable inside going mainstream. And so I think the partner gets that. They want to be a part of that. So what we want to do is actually help them create those practices, help them build those practices, enable them to do that. In some of the cases it'll be partnering immediately. Some cases will help them, but certainly they are going that way. And in the fourth pillar, sort of productivity, we think that we're on the cusp of productivity boom in the business technology. And I'm really happy that the message you get this conference is, the same old, same old, do more, would last. I mean that's table stakes. It's really an ante. You know, I'm not saying you shouldn't talk about that to customers. Your IT customers, that's their life. They have to live that. Okay, great. But it's not a value add. It is what we do in the technology business. We cut costs every year. So this notion of productivity, driving productivity, there's got to be music to the ears of the channel. What's the reaction been? Yeah, at least my experience, they're loving it. Because they've been doing that full portfolio of both of cell and consultant service end-to-end. So from their standpoint, this is music in their ears. Now the good news is we're bringing some real innovation to the table with Aruba. And we saw today, Dominique or Unplugged, in terms of talking about how anyplace, anywhere, any time the device is making it stable, secure, and smart. And so working with the channel to give them that expertise is a natural. And that's something that I'm very confident that will continue to grow. And even some of the boring infrastructure stuff is driving productivity. Converged infrastructure is flash storage in terms of developer productivity. The whole DevOps piece. So I think that's great messaging. Yes, the end, you have the whole thing. What we've done at Citrix is a strong partner in ours. We've done Synergy a couple of weeks ago. Mark Templeton gets up and talks about enabling the most productive workplace. Workspace, workplace. Yes. And the alignment with what we're delivering around the enablement of Mark's most productive workplace. And if I can jump in what's so cool about these transformation areas, we should not think about them as disconnected. That in a lot of cases, there's some synergy between those. And that's what the partners are getting very excited about. Both ISV, SI, and channel partners. And when you talk about being over a trillion dollars of market opportunity, that'll get the blood pumping. All right, well, I think you're right. I think you can combine those and get that sort of momentum effect going. We're out of time, gentlemen, but Mike and Duncan, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure to meet you. All right, keep it right there. John Furrier and I will be back with our next guest right after this. We're live. This is theCUBE from HP Discover. Check out HP Discover.Social. It's the digital experience that we've created. It's sort of the unofficial HP startup. We'll be right back right after this word.