 Okay, we're back here live in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is theCUBE here at HP Discover for three days of wall-to-wall coverage. This is theCUBE, our flagship program, where we go out to the events to extract the soup from the noise, and we're going to get all the action here at HP. Talk to the top executives, talk to entrepreneurs, customers, whoever we can find the soup from the noise, and we'll go where the action is. We'll go for an interview on the floor, but ultimately theCUBE is about bringing in all the top signal and sharing that, and also the execs as well. My co-host is Jeff Frick from SiliconANGLE. Our next guest is Antonio Neary, who's the general manager of technology services. You know, really one of the most important areas right now, the demand is so hot for that bridge to the cloud, that bridge to big data. Antonio, welcome back to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you for having me. So, you know, it's always not talked about in terms of the sexiness of the flashy launches, and you had the flash launch, you know, pun intended, you know, with the three-part, very successful, hundred million dollar acquisition company in revenue now of over a billion on a tally. But right now the big demand is for education. Best practices, use cases, reference architectures, open stack, it's got so much activity around the enterprise because it's just, you know, custom supporting cloud. Big data continues to make the headlines every day. So, I want to get the update from you because you have to hear from customers. You're putting big plans in front of them on the consulting and support side. So, what is the update? What's the hot trends in your world, and what are you announcing and talking about here at HP Discover? Sure, well, first of all, thank you for having me here today. We're actually very excited because this is kind of the premier event for us, and that's where we take the time to go back to the customers and with a set of offers and value propositions that are unique to meet their business needs. And like I said, I mean, Converge Cloud, the journey to the cloud, big data is two big themes that customers are having a big challenge. And so, from the technology's perspective, from the technology's service perspective, we're actually making a big introduction today of new professional and support services around Converge Cloud and big data. First, on the big data, we're actually announcing a new set of services around advisory services, which basically are workshop-based type of solutions where we bring the customers in an environment using our own intellectual property and help them articulate, you know, the problems, the value proposition, and their objectives around big data. The second service we also announced today is all around the strategy. Once we have that output, how we take those outputs and we translate them into strategy to make big data practices in the company. And obviously, from there, we help them with the implementation and the operations management of that. So, obviously- What does that cause? Is that a program? Is this called strategy? What's the plan on that? It's four big services, you know, advisory, strategy, design, and implementation services all around big data. And obviously, Hadoop is a big component of that. And we are very excited because we see a lot of demand for those type of services. Now, we already had services around vertical and autonomy for big, you know, structural data, but now we really compliment the entire portfolio. And then the other aspect is Converge Cloud and we believe it's going to be a hybrid model and every customer is going to follow a different path to the cloud. And again, in the same context, right, how we advise them, how we help them with the strategy of that journey to the cloud, how we help them design the right hybrid model, and ultimately how we make them support. And a big component of the announcement today is data center care for cloud, which means that in a four-wall agreement now we can actually guarantee bursting capabilities outside and maintain the same service level. So, which is a big headache for customers. Once they start translating workloads out of the premise, outside, into public environments, HV Cloud, Sabi's or whatever other provider they are thinking, how they maintain the same experience at the same service level. So, very excited about today and we know customers are wanting those services. Sure. So, Antonio, talk a little bit about what's the scale of that effort on the front end and people, they know they want to get involved in the cloud and they want to get involved in big data. They're not quite sure where to start. What's kind of the baby step or how do you get them through that process that you described into their first project and even delivering on a project? And that's a very good question, Jeff, because many customers are kind of intimidated, you know, but if you think about an advisory workshop, normally it's a one-to-two-day workshop. One-to-two days, okay. One-to-two-day shop, and we're bringing up between three or four consultants from our side with a very structured approach and our software IP, so we work them through a methodology so they can do baby steps, very contained type of engagements, and then make them comfortable about the next step. So they don't feel they have to swell a big giant well, but really small baby steps to get to where they want to be. So it starts very small, you know, and once it's done correctly, the engagement starts growing, and at the end, you know, that's when you have the change management on all of the things. Right, and on the client side, what business units or what groups or what are some of the business problems that they see are a great opportunity to tackle this when it gets started? Yeah, I think, you know, it's all about change management. That's the biggest concern, right? So obviously you need the IT components of that. You need the business owners to be part of the conversation, but at the end, it's going to come down all about change management. How are we going to get to the steps they need to go through in a change management approach so that they feel they are always in control? Right. They really get very uncomfortable when they feel they're losing control. Right. So our job is to make sure they feel they're always in control at their pace and with peace of mind, they're going to get what they need to get. And is the change management driving the shift in the technology, or is the cloud driving it to implement this, you have to, I think it can go either way, but the reality is that the technology shifts are driving the biggest change. Okay. And obviously, you know, we invented converged infrastructure. We are the forefront of the converged cloud with one common architecture. Applications and workload are going to be the other big shift. But at the end, you know, customers need help. And they need a partner that can trust and they can walk them through that journey at the pace that they need. Yeah, great. What is the change that you've seen in the converged cloud? Obviously, it's been so much talked about, about Amazon and we've used other metaphors, but they won't say it here in the queue, but you know, they're really marching hard to the enterprise. They've done such an amazing job of commoditizing, although Dave Donatelli denied commoditization of storage, but I understand his response, but you know, Amazon's commoditizing the infrastructure as a service and establishing a platform in an innovative way. So you have commoditization and innovation. Everyone is waking up to that. OpenStack has got massive traction. But your customers are like, hey, I need ANSI compatibility. I'm running a red hat. I got things going on there. So how is that environment, that dynamic of I need cloud? How has that changed your offering in the past, say 12 months? I don't say that people need cloud. What they need is flexibility where cloud can play a big role. It's a different approach. Maybe they want the cloud economics, me. Yeah, maybe they want the cloud economics, right? But at the end of the day, it's all about, you know, productivity, cost, and flexibility, right? And I think the cloud is going to create an environment where those big things are going to stay in place. Now, Amazon obviously has been in the forefront trying to create an environment, but they don't have the technology expertise we have. And ultimately, it's a hybrid model. And like I said, the hybrid model is going to stay here for a while. And I think it's the long-term solution where basically, you know, customers are going to have workloads on-premise with the field control, and they are going to... Amazon has some decent tech with their mission, and the Elastic Cloud has Elastic SLAs, right? So, you know, the feedback, and this is legit on Amazon, and I'm not really trashing Amazon, it's been publicly talked about, is that inconsistent performance. You see great benchmarks on one hand, and it's very lumpy. You mentioned experiences in Circus-level. I think I call it best effort. I call it lumpy. But developers love that because it's not that sensitive to that. You mentioned earlier the guarantee of the bursting, the data center care. You're guaranteeing experiences in SLAs because that's a little bit different. You got privacy, security issues. So, how do you have those conversations in the enterprise? So, well, first of all, we always tie it to the premise of HP Cloud architecture, which is one architecture, one vendor, and you can move up and down from a private to a managed to a public cloud in a consistent way. So, doing it that way gives you a lot of more room and flexibility. Now, from the data center care perspective, what we do is basically, we have a four-wall agreement where we support everything is that a four-wall agreement, and we also do flexible capacity service, which is one of the announcements we've made today, where if you want to burst on-premise- What's it called, flexible what? Flexible capacity services, which is a utility-based model, right? Infrastructure as a service, if you want to call it that way. But it's on-premise. So, you don't need to burst outside your private environment. You can have it on-premise, same technology, but instead of being a CAPEX model is an OPEX model, and we actually manage that as a service as a part of the data center care agreement. So, you take the OPEX of the cloud on-premise, and you basically go internal with it. Internal. And so, there's no CAPEX. Exactly. So, our customer says, you know, I have these pipes. That's good economics. Yeah, exactly, because at the end, you know, I'm still not comfortable to burst outside my four walls. I want to have it on-premise, but I don't want to invest this massive amount of dollars to have this low utilization. So, what we do as a part of the data center care, we actually provide that capacity on a utility base for the spikes when they need it, and then just engage HV as a utility-based model. And then, obviously, if they have workloads that are still very comfortable to kind of take off-site the walls, we actually have that relationship and we will manage those service levels whether on-premise or off-the-wall. So, we give them a lot of flexibility, whether it's four-wall agreement on-premise, flexible capacity on-premise and outside. So, how has the uptake been on that? So, I mean, is that a new service? Is that a new service? Or is that... Flexible capacity has actually been for a while, and we see massive demand because customers understand economics of using... Yeah, and they understand on-prem. It's on-premise and they feel more comfortable with. Data center, as a standalone, has been a massive success. And we have hundreds of customers have signed up deals with us. I certainly, if the moonshot stuff gets the lowest footprint density option, it's going to continue to be good. I got to ask you about another important area that we've been covering pretty heavily on SiliconANGLE and Wikibon, that is data management. Donna Telly was quoted, I put a Forbes post earlier, and then he talked here. Storage conversations evolving from speeds and feeds, how many platters to flash, media to solutions, and with software-led infrastructure and software-defined storage, the conversations about solutions and business value, right? So, data management is a big deal. The protection, data backup, two, I got to move data around. So, today NetApp launched Clustered ONTAP. They're a new upgrade, mainly to handle the data portability issues. So, people want to move data. It's hard. Take us through the conversations that you're having with customers around data. Well, you know, we... Data management and all the data issues. So, we actually have introduced already a while back a set of services around data migration, backup and recovery architecture, and compliance issues. So, our consultant team actually together with our three-par specialists are having a holistic conversation with our clients. So, if you decide to basically take advantage of all the technology benefits of three-par and implement that architecture, which is the architecture for the future, we are a consultant team actually helps with that journey. So, we can help them architect, design, implement the three-par, intro their environments. And then, we also provide what we call the data migration services so that the customers doesn't need to go through the hustle for moving the data from the old legacy to the new legacy. So, we provide a complete solution with that. We also help them understand the compliance risks associated with data, storing and archiving. And so, our consultants can look at how they're doing it today and what's the best way to do it in the context of risk management and compliance. And then, also obviously leverage our store ones products and store service products, right? So, store all products in terms of store ones for backup and store all for archiving. So, we think we provide a complete stack between technology and services and obviously all the support that goes with it once it's fully implemented. And the customers really like that because they have one partner who can do it all from the technology implementation on the way to the maintenance of that architecture. So, on the big data side, what is the most pressing applications that you're hearing for the discussions? Analytics obviously is a category. Is that an app? Is that something or is it just the number one? I think Hadoop's implementations are big, right? I mean, one of the- Do they use their production? Production, actually. And that's why one of the services we introduced today is what we call the reference architectures. Since we have done now many of them, what we can provide our clients is a set of catalog reference architectures so that we can show them and actually implement quickly if one of those reference architectures meet the needs. So, we are speeding up the implementation and the other one is training education for system administrators. A lot of these system administrators need to understand how to manage those Hadoop implementations. So, we provide training to system administrators on how to go implement and manage those once they are more ready. So, it's all about more, it's not anymore POCs, it's more about implementing and production and running it, where big unstructured data, right, is still more strategizing around it and what it means for them. But Hadoop obviously is a big component. So, how's the international business now? Obviously, we hear a lot about global economy and you've got different challenges on the data. Obviously, different countries like Germany. Is that anything new there to change updates at all? Well, I mean, in Europe is still a challenge, right? You think about it, you know, the unemployment rates, you know, the situation in the southern parts, the slowdown of the mature economies and you know, but everybody's having the same problem, right? It is an interesting time for Europe. I think the United States is probably, you know, in a phase of recovery, we'll see, right? Are you following any of the NSA prism story? I have read it and actually last night, when I went back to my room, I heard the stories about the person that shared the story, right? And you know, that brings another topic, right? Security, how security is managed in IT environments. Contractors. Contractors and how things are done. I mean, we have been talking about security for some time. Bill Vecti, Meg, have talked about security, right? Yeah. What it means and obviously it is a big concern. Yeah, and you guys have a big federal group within HP, so you know, there's a lot of CIOs and a lot of pockets of federal activity, not just within the NSA. Very sensitive information. That is sensitive information. 29-year-old kid, whistleblower, that's what they're calling him. Some are saying traitor, some are saying, so it's a really weird story, you know, it's like. But I think that the call goes back to kind of, you know, how you manage your IT and what's your strategy around it. Obviously, we don't comment on what individuals will do, but I think it goes back to how we drive the strategy in making our data secure and locked at the right level. I mean, humans are always the bottleneck and always some sort of problem, some sort of security failure, but tech can help. Antonio, thank you for coming on the Cube, I really appreciate, I love the new data center care product and all this stuff that you've been perfecting. CapEx is not something that people want, they want OpEx, they want the economics, they want the capabilities on-prem, it's a very interesting service. We're here at HP Discover, Antonio Neri, as the U.S. president general manager of technology services here at HP. HP Discover Las Vegas, the Cube. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick. Stay tuned, we'll be more guests coming right after this short break. Thank you.