 Welcome back to HP Discover, this is SiliconAngle.com's theCUBE, our flagship program, we go out to the events, extract the signal from the noise, I'm John Furrier, I'm joined by host Dave Vellante, wikibond.org, and we have a breaking scoop here from HP. They just recently announced some new hardware, and we love to geek out on the gadgets and the equipment. So we want to bring that right to you with Carol Hess, who's the Vice President of Worldwide Commercial PC Marketing for HP. You have some toys, and you're making an announcement. We are in Europe, so we'll probably have the scoop on the US time zone when they all wake up, and they'll see the news, and all the bloggers will go crazy, and they'll be commenting, probably good, bad, and all the stuff on Twitter will go crazy, so welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, so happy to be here. Let's jump right in, so show what you announced, and let's get into some of the tear down of the announcement. Okay, we've got two products I want to share with you today. The first one is our new Elite Book Revolve product. Now this product, what's unique about it, is not only is it a notebook, and you can open it up like a normal clamshell, but you can also twist it over, and it becomes a tablet device. This is our ninth generation of convertible tablets that we've had in the business, so we're very excited about having this new update. This one is an 11.6 inch screen, put it up here so everybody can take a look at it. It's an 11.6 inch screen. It is 22 millimeters thin, so it is ultra book like, and it's thinness. The previous product that we had a generation before, this is 30% thinner than that. It's also three pounds, so it's very lightweight to carry around, especially for an 11 inch screen. Some of the other things about it, aside from being a convertible, clearly it's Windows 8 capable, so it has a pen with it as well, so you can use touch, or you can use the pen. So if you're in a business environment, and you want to take notes, you want to sign a contract, you want to do something else like that, there's the pen capability as well. The other good thing is it's full performance, so it's going to have Core i7 processors, or i5 or i3, so you get the tablet functionality in Windows 8, but also that great performance that you would want. And what's the storage inside of it? It comes with solid state drives, 256 megabytes is the biggest one we have. So the other thing that's nice about it, because it's built for business, is you can dock it as well. Gig, what did I say? Sorry, gig, 256 gig, thank you for correcting that one. We went back 10 years. Yeah, like okay. Hello MacBook Air, watch out, this is a MacBook Air killer. Yes, absolutely, I mean look how thin it is. It's got ethernet, because it's for business, it also has a side docking connector, and this is true docking for business, goes right in here. So it's not like a USB 2 or 3 dock. How many USB ports does it have? I believe it's got two USB ports in it. Yep, nice. As well, so the other thing, because it's for business, you can change out the battery, so it's very serviceable as well. Also has a lot of software related to manageability, we support land desk management software, and lots of security, because it's got the HP BIOS, it has a TPM in it for drive encryption. So Intel's involved in this, but did they talk about the Thunderbolt capability? We are not supporting Thunderbolt in this product, no. Not yet. No, at this point we felt like there wasn't really enough devices and storage capabilities and whatever out there to use Thunderbolt on this commercial product. Okay, but you got the solid state, which is... We got the solid state drive. Carol, this swivel feels extremely tight and good solid design. Solid, yes. When I watched you, I was concerned about the reliability of the swivel, but can you talk about the engineering of that? Sure, well, and as I said, this is our ninth generation of convertible tablets, so over the years we've perfected it, and one thing you might have noticed is it only swivels one way. You could swivel both ways, but we felt like the rigidity of it and the quality of it would be better if it only went one way. So we compromise if you're going both ways. Right, so we made that design choice for sure. So on the mobility side, obviously, what's the OS, all Windows-based, can you just review some of the software involved? Right, all of this is supported on Windows 8, and this device also is supported on Windows 7. So even though it's touch and the touch capabilities are not as strong on Windows 7 as they are on Windows 8, we felt like we should support both of those because many of our corporate customers are still on XP, let alone moving to Windows 7 yet, and then going to Windows 8. So that's the news on the EliteBook Revolve. Should I spend a few minutes on the other products? Sure, yeah, please. Okay, so we announced this product on October 1st, and we'll be shipping this next month in January. So this is our new ElitePad. This is a 10.1 inch device. It's 9.2 millimeters thin, and it weighs one and a half pounds. So if you want to have a weight of that and take a look at that, one of the things that was key for us was the design around this product. So if you look at the back of it, this is a CNC'd aluminum back. It's all one piece, and we wanted to have that quality and craftsmanship on the device itself. You're surprised at how light it is. It's one and a half pounds. We also used Corning Gorilla Glass on it, so very sturdy with the glass and very durable from that perspective. Hold it up, John. Yeah, you want to put it up here? It's a tablet running Windows 8. We only support Windows 8 on this device. One of the things that we've done about it though is said, you know, tablet's very limited. It doesn't have a lot of expandability to it. What else could we do? So we came up with something called the smart jacket concept. So what we have here is a smart jacket. And if you look at this, this product itself, the ElitePad, will have anywhere from eight to 10 hours of battery life. Let's assume it has 10 hours of battery life. There is an extra battery in this case, which will add 80% more battery life, which means you can get a total of 18 hours of battery life. Yeah, people are doing that for their iPhones right now. They get the extra battery. Absolutely. Now you just slide this case in and slide the top on it, and not only do you get that added battery life, but you get two USB ports. You get an HDMI connection and an SD card slot. It's a docking station and a protective case at the same time. Yeah, you get a lot more expandability with that. Now you spoke about the docking station. We also have a docking station that can go with this, either in the case itself, the expansion case, or if we took it out of the case, it would dock as well. See if I can do it backwards. So it sits in the dock, again, with the case or without. What's nice about that, I'll show you a little bit more about the dock. It has four USB ports on it. It has a VGA port, an ethernet port, as well as another HDMI port. So lots of capability with this dock. So you can use this in your office. Take your elite pad to a meeting. Come back and dock it. Maybe you've got another monitor set up next to it so you have a dual display going on, a keyboard and a mouse with it, et cetera. So very nice expansion. So very legitimately, I could eliminate my laptop if I wanted to, certain executives don't want to carry around a laptop anymore, but the problem with most tablets is you just can't get done what you need to get done. This is designed really to address that problem. Right, we really think of this as a full computing device. Now, what you want to think about is it depends who you are and what you're doing throughout the day. If I'm going on a business trip overnight, this might be enough for me. If I'm going overseas for a week, I might still want to take a laptop with me. A lot of it goes to content creation and content consumption and what are you doing? But many executives are just consuming the contents. If I'm editing videos, I'm not going to be doing it like that. Right, right. Now, one other little toy I have to show you or smart jacket. This one I told you really does the expansion. But you mentioned about wanting to have a keyboard and sitting at your desk in productivity. Well, what if you want a keyboard but you're not sitting at your desk? We have another jacket, which is called the Productivity Jacket, which actually has the keyboard integrated into it. So what I can do, see if I can do this up here for you, is we can actually slide the ElitePad right into it and now you have what you think is a full laptop PC. So the EliteBook Revolve that we talked about is a great product if you always want to have your keyboard. If you're not sure if you always need it and you sometimes want just the tablet by itself, you take the ElitePad and use that and then add the keyboard in as needed. So another nice way to be able to have the flexibility of the different products. And also with that keyboard jacket, you also have some additional expansion in the back here as well. And the processors on these other ones are? This is a System on a Chip processor. This one Core i5, i7, i3. Yeah, that's good performance. You can get your Final Cut Pro on that. You can do all kinds of high-end graphics. Exactly, I mean that's a little bit of the trade-off between these two is more performance. And the RAM, how much RAM is in that? You've got the two gig storage SSD. Yes, two gig of RAM. On both units. And how much storage is in this? This one is 64 gig, almost said it again, solid state drive. Okay. Yes. Both with two gig RAM. Yes. Awesome. Okay, so Windows-based, any mobility around Android? Is there any plans for Android? We're always looking at all the different operating systems, all different hardware, different components, whatever, nothing that we're announcing at this time. Okay, but standard PC, Intel-based, Windows, Microsoft, very key here. Yep. And when we talk to our business customers, most of them are still on Microsoft. So this fits great in their environment. Totally, we commented yesterday on our wrap up about what we think HP should be doing on the PC business. We're all mobile, but the Android, but that's consumer, right? This is enterprise, where there is a need for security, cloud access. Talk about the enterprise support with that. Absolutely. With the trend of bring your own device to work, that consumer experience, everyone wants the consumer experience at work. Right. How do these fit in? Yeah, how much time do we have for that topic? Go. Yes. So what we tried to do actually was to say what consumers or end users are looking for is the coolness of the device, also the whole experience. I want it to be easy. It's an extension of me. I want to look good and proud to carry it. So in the old days, the commercial products were very square and boxy and not that attractive. But when you look at this elite pad, we think we've done a great job at making it cool and sexy and attractive. So we think that end users are going to want to carry this. At the same time, the IT administrator cares about security. So we made sure these all have the HP BIOS, which helps for fighting viruses. We have TPM, so we can have drive encryption. We have all our HP protect tools available. So added security that way. And from a management standpoint, we have partnered with Land Desk and we support that on these products as well. So it helps with remotely managing the products, with easy deployment. You can even activate all your SIM cards remotely and blast that out. So lots of management capabilities. This is the classic cost of ownership thing that you guys have been doing for decades. Yes. Around the PCs and with IT. Yes. In particular. Now one other thing I didn't mention on both of these, but particularly on the elite pad that's very exciting and for businesses, is this is serviceable. So if you think about an iPad or other products, you can't change anything. You can't change the battery, the memory, whatever. This product is serviceable. There's a service tool that either a service provider can have, or if a customer is a self-maintainer, they put it in. There's a suction cup that pulls off the top. You can change out almost all the components. The battery can be changed. The motherboard can be changed. I don't just have to go buy a new one? You don't have to just go buy a new one. You can go buy a new one. You can go buy a new one. You can go buy a new one. Oh my gosh, Carol. We want happy customers. So whose service is it? Self-installable or is it? There is a self-maintainer program that some of our major accounts are up for, or there are authorized service providers. Yeah, but not the consumer. Not the consumer. No, we wouldn't recommend the end user. So channel partners, your partners that do all the serviceability. Yes, exactly. So they're not going to be threatened by the new replaced mail-back hot swappable product. I don't think so. Okay, good. I don't think that's what our business customers are interested in, right? So the other thing is they come, I can't do this backwards, with a three-year warranty. So again, what business customers want. These are offered as what we call our global series, which means they're available in 172 countries in exactly the same configuration so that they can make sure that an IT administrator buys the same product for everybody around the world. That's a standard warranty three years? Yes. That's nice. So when you do, so let me ask you a question. You brought the coolness. So obviously these look very cool and very relevant. So when you do your surveys and you figure out what's cool, because I know HB does their homework, what do you guys find when you say, what is the coolness? What are the top things that rank up on the coolness factor? Well, you know what's interesting. And I don't know if it's coolness as much as just the idea or industrial design is, while thin is really important, and everyone's talking about ultrabooks and being very thin, weight is actually one of the most important things that comes up in that scale. Because we're all carrying it around with us, we're traveling, we're going to different meetings, and that's what's really important. And then it becomes thin and then actually the next thing is battery life after that. So weight, thinness, battery life. Yeah, actually one of the things that I've found in our non-scientific research is that one of the note pad capability, the ability with the pen, actually has really been popular for people in business. On the consumer side, the touch and then not having the pen is hard to take notes. So in a meeting, people who are always doing meetings, that's the nirvana. Get out of the paper and have it online. So that's an area that we're watching. What's the improvements there? Is the pen software getting better? Is it? Because pen-based computing has been around, tried many times by Microsoft. It's a graveyard of pen-based systems. So one of the things we did is we have this executive pen, we call it. And first of all, the same pen is used on both of these products as well as the NVX2. So we were smart enough to share the same pen. Another thing we did with the pen is it's a little bit thicker than a normal pen, but it's because we put triple-A batteries in it. We used to have proprietary or special bay of batteries. You could get it a radio shack or down the street at a store. And customers said, I just want to use regular batteries in my pen. So we tried to listen to those types of requests as we designed those different accessories. If you lose your pen, you can get another one. NetX overnight, buy it online. Absolutely, very easy to get another pen. Okay, final question for me is, what is the biggest surprises you've heard since you announced the products? Feedback? What are some of the things you're hearing, good and bad, if you can share those? You probably want to say the bad, but yeah. I'm thinking only the good stuff. Actually, the Elite Pad, we already have a great win with Emirates Airlines. They have put an application together called KISS, and that is their application where they understand where's all their crew going, when are their flights leaving, who are the customers on each flight, and they're using that to be more efficient and to have a higher level of service for their customers. So it's fabulous to me, the application they've created to run on this product. They should give one out to everybody in first class. Yeah. I think they have their own type of entertainment online. This is more for their crew to use, but I'm sure that would be a nice touch. Of course, we will need a review unit for our own purposes. You're going to leave these, right? Yes, we'll get back to you on that one. I'm a big fan of the swivel. I like the swivel, but the smart jacket is impressive, because that's one of the things I find that, to replace the PC and the Mac, is to have the jacket with the keyboard. That's right. You never know when you're going to write something or have to do an email, and the whole glass thing, I was never big on the iPad. I mean, although I love the iPad, just the whole glass typing thing. Well, you end up not using it, because you'd rather use either the laptop or your phone. That's right. So the in-between doesn't work. It stays in your briefcase. Yeah, so we had enough customer research that said, we better have some alternatives, especially during this transition time, as people are figuring out, do I want a tablet? Do I want to revolve? Do I want a regular laptop, my smartphone? Okay, so you have, in the swivel, you got the LAN connection. You got the two USB ports. Obviously, people can buy a USB hub. What other accessories do you guys have with this that would be add-ons to this, that you see as possible needs? So from the Elite Pad, I showed you these two, but we're also going to have a whole ecosystem. We'll have a retail point-of-sale jacket. We're going to have a rugged jacket so we can withstand some further drops and be out in dusty environments. And on this one, because it's a regular notebook, all the accessories that the rest of our Elite Books are supported. So docking is the key one, but then, of course, we've got Elite monitors that go with it. We have external storage capabilities, so lots of accessories for those. So that's a docking station like the classic, at your cubicle or your desk or home? Absolutely. Or at a hot desk, if you've got hot desk set up in your environment. So then everybody, this uses the same docking as our Elite Book folio does, and the same dock into our 2013 products. So customers could invest in that dock now in their hot desks, and then everybody will be able to use the same one. So they don't have to buy new gear, and all the power supplies are all standard too, right? Absolutely. They all have that smart connector. They both have cameras. This has front-facing and rear-facing camera. So you can do the video conferencing as well as take pictures. Yeah, so it's got all the iPad-like features, Apple-esque features, plus more of the business person that actually wants to be productive on it. And for me, the business person, it's the X86 applications. It's the serviceability that you can do with it. It's the manageability and security that we talked about, and the accessories that go with it. So obviously we've been covering the consumerization of IT at the infrastructure level all the way going up to the apps, and obviously that's been kicked around for a while. People have been talking about that for a while. Now it's hitting. Meg's mission is to consumerize things. That's right. And that's what she's talking about. And we all know that's the end game. We've got to get to that point. So on the IT side, I'm deploying apps. We talked to some of the HP security guys. We talked to some of the autonomy guys around DevOps. What IT services are built in here? All the standard stuff that HP has. Is there anything new around the management of the backend from the IT perspective? Well, one of the things we do is we support our custom integration services. And those are things like we will help customers with a custom BIOS or put a custom image on the unit for them, help them deploy their unit. We are working on special custom integration services just for the ElitePad because it is so unique. So we don't have all those rolled out yet. We're actually asking customers, what do you need from us? And we'll create those services to deliver them. Carol has final question for you. This is great stuff. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. What's the roadmap? Can you share a little bit of the roadmap in terms of what you guys are thinking in terms of next gen? What's the next product look like on the high end mid-range? Any kind of line extensions? I think what I would say in general is we continue to follow the Intel roadmap and as they make their refreshes, we continue to make our refreshes. We also support AMD on a lot of our platforms and we roll out those products as well. But I'll leave it at that for now. Microsoft and Intel-based machines. Okay, this is a breaking analysis here inside theCUBE on HP's new hardware, consumer hardware for the enterprise, consumerization of IT. Thank you very much. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. Thanks.