 Live from Madrid, Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And we're back at HPE Discover Madrid 2018. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Peter Burris. This is day two of the event. Johannes Koch is here. He's the vice president and managing director of Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And he's joined by Ali Saleh, who is the senior vice president and chief commercial officer at GE Digital for Middle East and Africa. Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Johannes, let's start off with you. GE, HPE, what are you guys all about? What are you doing together? Talk about the partnership and the alliance. So it started actually nine months ago, I suppose. And it was meetings that we had with General Electric to understand the customer requirements in cybersecurity. And what we figured is that in this world of IOT and internet of things, there is an increased requirement for security. And it was from our perspective, lots of solutions out there, but it's quite difficult for customers to understand the landscape and who to turn to. And we also figured that in this world, nobody can serve every requirement of a customer. So this is how we figured out with GED that we have a joint interest here to serve in the Central Eastern European and then mainly in the Middle East and Africa part, our customer base. And this is how it started. And I think what I can say is, it has accelerated incredibly during the last two months since we signed the joint agreement. We've been building a channel. We have been having lots of meetings with customers and have built a really nice pipeline in the meantime. Also, I think here at the show, reflects an incredible interest by our customers. So I think we are in a very good state at the moment, having a lot of interest, having basically probably all the key customers in our region having this on their agenda. Ali, maybe you could describe the situation of the industrial expansion, if you will, in Middle East and Africa, what you guys are seeing in terms of the big trends and what the opportunity looks like. Well, thank you. GE has been in the Middle East Africa for over 80 years in some countries. And we have deep relationships on industrial side, whether it's power, oil and gas aviation, healthcare and others. And our customers are thinking a lot about cost, quality and access, and productivity is top of mind. And they've discovered that their industrial assets are smart and capable, but the data are not being collected. So when we collaborate with ecosystem of partners and we fetch the data and get connected and get insights from the machine to make them able to make the right decision at the right time, and then it drives optimization. This is top of mind. They want to see how they can do better for less. Okay, and so the customers at GE Digital, the customers are going digital. They have all these devices, instruments, machines, and they're moving in a new direction. You guys are trying to lead that. What are the challenges that they're facing? What are they asking your help on? What are the big problems that they're trying to solve? So everyone wants to talk about productivity and cost out. The challenge is that not everyone is ready for digital transformation. Some do not feel there is a burning platform, and those that are ready when they feel there is a burning platform, they don't have a plan, they don't have a playbook. So it's important that we collaborate and help our partners and customers understand their current state and heat map and desired state and pinpoint to quick wins so that they get it and they see incremental improvement. And asset performance management has been an easy way for us to say your asset is underutilized. Compared to your industrial entitlement, you can do 10X better, and this gets their attention, and this is where we say the power of one in the industrial age is relevant, 1%. In our market, in the developing market, when we talk to them about 1% or 2% productivity, they laugh at us. They say, talk to us about 10 or 20, because there has been a lot of gap in productivity and efficiency. Are you able to sort of, I mean it's only been nine months, but are you able to start to see any kind of customer results at this point? Do you have some examples? Even early wins with customers. So to be exact, the start of the relationship in a formal way is two months. I thought I heard nine months ago. No, no, we started our first conversation. So until it became to be a great man, it is really brand new. And I think what we can say is, I think we have, I think we have 180 partners already engaged. We have probably more than 500 customer contacts in the region already, so with large accounts. And we have a pipeline that is multi-million dollar in size. So we're expecting the first close within our first quarter, which ends at January 2018. So I think there's no question that there is a big market opportunity out there. And I think the show here, I think for me even accelerated things because when I think of the past, digital transformation was sort of limited to a few industries, which we always give travel industry, or they take banking sometimes. But here I think what became transparent to many of the customers that we had here, that there is no industry that is sort of immune against what's happening out there. And specifically also that the sensors and the devices that are out there require special attention. And I think with specifically on the OT side, we have a solution now with GED that we can basically roll out across our territory. So I want to talk about three things very quickly. I'm going to lay this out and ask you if in fact, this is going to catalyze that much more attention. Number one is a lot of the industry in Middle East and Africa are natural resource industries, where the historical ways of doing things have been relatively inefficient. So there's a lot of opportunity to use IoT and related things to bring more efficiency, better practices, overall resource management. Number two is that the technology is now capable of doing that in places where you don't necessarily have the best infrastructure. Aruba technology for wireless and some of the other things are now possible. That adds to it. And number three, we've seen some recent steps in liberalizing some of the countries that have the most opportunity to do some things differently. Robin McGobby no longer in Zimbabwe, the new Prince in Saudi Arabia talking about liberalizing things. Are you seeing these come together in a way that would encourage people to think new ways, do new things, use information perhaps differently than it did before? What do you think? Is this a conference? Is this a moment? No, I agree with you and absolutely. Today, our customers and partners in region are more ready than before and they're pulling hard. And when we put our act together as an ecosystem of partners, we make it easier on them to make the right decision. When we talk productivity, productivity comes from people, from process operation, from industrial entitlement. And when we talk about the digital thread that brings it all together, whether we look at the culture and vision and mission and people utilization, look at the process defined or not and how we can optimize it, look at the industrial entitlement and tell them, compared to your peers, this is where you can be, we get their attention. And with the push from the government for productivity and utilization and do more for less, this is becoming top of mind. Everyone is talking about it. So when we partner together and we say, this is the playbook and this is how you can start and this is the edge to cloud solution in a secure way and we link it to the industrial entitlement and let's underline industrial because when we speak the healthcare language and the power language and the oil and gas language, we get their attention. Excellent, so there's a increasing interest but and you anticipate that there's going to be new action with their pocketbooks. And I would add, I think we, I mean, this is not an easy marketplace but you can have some outstanding projects and we have in the region, we have, I mean, you may have heard about there was in the private investment fund when the conference did announce the Neon project or we have in Dubai Smart City as a project with the city of Dubai, I mean, which are all projects that probably would not happen in Western Europe, right? I mean, so there is potential, there are bigger things happening and I think there is also an understanding that this is a way how to leapfrog and to your point, to leapfrog technology and I think that is what can happen. What we need to be careful is where to invest because I mean, there are lots of ideas out there and to understand what are the real things and what are the things that we need to make happen. I think this is, I think, the challenge. And they wouldn't happen in Western Europe because what, the majority of the infrastructure, the space limitations, the appetite to fund these things. I think to give the example of Smart City. So I think we have a lot of in sort of in my remit, we have lots of discussion on Smart City but it's usually, you know, you have to find a city that is willing to pay a PUC. 12 layers of bureaucracy. And then you need to talk to each and every city individually whereas here, if you have a decision maker to say, yes, we do this, then you do it. You cut the line. And the answer is about readiness. When you go to a large enterprise, it's very successful, you meet the CEO and you quickly conclude whether they're ready for digital transformation or not. Are they going to make this top of mind for them? Are they going to give you time? Are they going to talk about productivity or is this going to be an IT discussion and they're going to treat you as a supplier? Those that are ready, we roll up our sleeves and we put in our dedicated resources to help them look at the transformation. When the government official is pushing and mandating for costs out, then obviously everyone want to copy and talk about it. And this makes it easier for us to execute. And you're talking, again, big numbers, not 1%, 10%. So that's the sort of nirvana. How confident are you that you can actually have that type of impact? So we've got data points, right? If you look at healthcare, in the Saudi Ministry of Health, we've been collaborating on looking at operating room optimization or emergency room optimization without touching digitization, looking at the process and utilization of appointments no show and the way the clinical governance is taking place, we're showing 40% improvement. If you look at the factor of the future with Obaikan in Saudi Arabia, we've got asset performance improvement project and they already yielded a 12% improvement and the entitlement is up to 20 that we're working on. When you transform something, it's iterative, right? When you transform something that you have not pushed for efficiency before, it's easy for the first iteration to show an incremental change. That challenge will be for the change to last and this is where digitization makes it last and make it impactful. And when we look at the HP relationship with the MOH on the electronic medical record, we've got right now two active projects with two hospitals and it's all powered by predicts and HP peripherals are being deployed to the site. And if we go to the Saudi Electricity Company, we've got a project now on asset performance management across all their assets and again, HP peripherals are also deployed and it's all about GE ecosystem of predicts-enabled solutions. So I have had the pleasure and honor of speaking in front of a relatively large group of CIOs a couple times in Africa in the past few years. And I always was surprised by the degree to which they suggested that the necessity of change in this region and the fact that a little bit of technology can have an enormous impact. The degree to which we might actually see some leadership technology come out of this region. What do you think are the types of issues that types of problems that could be solved with this technology in Africa or the types of problems that solving them there could actually start driving the industry in different directions, solving new classes of whole new classes of problems. Do you think that this type of technology can have a transformative effect not only in Africa but more broadly? Absolutely, this is a way for systems to leave frog. If you look at Kenya right now, they've got a transformation project for 98 hospitals and they've got massive shortage of radiologists. So right now we're replacing equipment in 98 hospitals but tele radiology is the answer for the shortage of radiologists. If you look to South Africa and Discovery, what Discovery is doing is best in class and I haven't seen any other insurance company looking at the ecosystem the way they do it. So absolutely, we're seeing pockets of accidents in Africa and this can be a way to leave frog. You said you started the conversations around security. Cyber security. What was that conversation like? Why was that the starting point? And I mean, obviously it's important, but... No, to be honest, I would have to leave this to you but I think it was because mainly there was, we saw the customer interest. And it's not, I would say probably a year or two years ago, you would have not seen this but this is a very typical HPE alliance, right? I mean, this is, we were technology people, we were, I mean, software or hardware people, yeah? What you see and I mentioned at the beginning, in the world of IoT, things are pluring a bit and what is happening on the edge is very much in the business of General Electric. So I think this builds automatically the new ecosystem and when you look at here at the discovery, the alliances become more and more, which are industrial companies. It's linked to industrial for the zero and car industries and all that, everywhere where data is being created, we need to have the partnership because, and that is because the data that is being created at the edge also needs to be computed at the edge, right? And so we need to, if we want to be successful, we're going to say we cannot limit ourselves to the data center and say this is, the rest is the others. And this I think where we find the very good connection point because now we have software that actually can operate at the edge, yeah? And I think you have good examples on that, yeah? Yeah, absolutely, if you look at the pain point in Middle East Africa, majority of our partners and customers are government entities and for them, top of mind, securing their large industrial assets is important. And in the operation space, there hasn't been much done on security, where you can go into a hospital and simulate light flickering with a voltmeter and you can take over the temperature and play with it. Today, there's a lot of smart sensors out there, but we're securing the IT firewall, but within the hospital, within the plant, we can do a lot of crazy stuff. And we owe it to our partners to show our capability. That's what we do within our factories and our platform is designed on round security for operations. So the easier interlock with HPE is our ability to get closer to the edge and peripherals and ensure the operation is secure and that's the first experiment, but then obviously we're expanding beyond that to other opportunities. Excellent. All right, gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE, sharing your story, good luck with the partnership. Thank you. Hope you can come back, you know, maybe in Las Vegas or maybe next year at this event that gives the update. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest, Dave Vellante for Peter Burst. This is theCUBE, live from Madrid, HPE Discover 2017.