 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering HPE Discover 2017 brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome back to Las Vegas for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover 2017 or HPE Discover 2017. This is theCUBE, our flagship program from SiliconANGLE meeting. We go out to the events and extract the signal from noise, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE with my co-founder, Dave Vellante, my co-host. Next guests, Jason Newton, Vice President of HPE Marketing, Pan, HPE Market Cross HP, and Jim Jackson, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Group Marketing. The big dogs here at HPE, laying out the show here for 2017, guys, great show, again, our seventh year. Appreciate it. But this year more than ever is a seminal moment. Obviously everyone knows what's going on in the news is a huge shift in the marketplace. What's happening at the show? Get set the scene for us. What's the backdrop? You guys lined up all the messaging, you have the whole setup of the show. Tell us, what is this show about this year? Well first, welcome to Discover, guys. We're really excited to have you guys here. And you know, we got a lot going on at this show. So for example, yesterday we had our Global Partner Summit, so we brought our top 1300 partners, and we had an amazing session with them. This week starts Discover, so it's going to run for the next three days. We've exceeded our attendance targets, so we're feeling really good about it. I think what that shows is there's a lot of interest, a lot of energy, a lot of passion for what Heelet Packard Enterprise can bring. You know, I'm not going to go through all the mechanics of the separation and the spin merger, but I would just say that that was all designed to make us a faster, a more nimbler customer, a company, and one that is really aligned to where we want to take our partners on their digital transformation journey. You know, what we're seeing today is digital transformation is impacting every single customer in every single industry. And digital business is technology, and really that's where we play. That's where we play. And that's why we're so excited to get our story out. And when you look at it over the last year, there's a lot that's happened at this company around really innovation, acquisitions, and ecosystem. Just look at some of the innovation that we brought to the market, Synergy. Amazing innovation, it created a new category. It really enables our customers to now get a public cloud experience, but on-prem. And we're hearing from a lot of customers, I want to leave my applications on-prem, but I need that capability. So we're delivering that with that kind of innovation. Another one is HPC, high-growing market. We're leading in that space. What we're doing in the storage flash phase. We rebooted and rebranded our services organization. It's now called Pointnext. We want to help our customers point next to what's next for their business. When you look at the edge, just amazing innovation happening there, whether it's our Ruba technology, whether it's what we're doing with all of our edge compute solutions. So just a ton of things happening. And then when you layer on top of that, all the acquisitions, SGI. We were already the leader in HPC. We have 140 of the top 500 systems. SGI makes our position that much stronger. That's a hot market. It's growing at six to eight percent. SimpliVity, when we brought our capabilities, our UI from our technology, combined it with the data services from SimpliVity, we now have the leading HP solution in the industry. When you look at Niagara, that gives us additional capabilities at the edge to help secure that. When you look at Cloud Cruiser, we can now help customers understand and balance what's happening across their workloads. And then Nimble gives us just an amazing portfolio across storage. We're really the leader now in the storage space when you look at the ability to address almost any use case from MSA to SimpliVity for customers looking for more of that hyperconverged play to Nimble to 3PAR. Our strategy, super simple. Make hybrid IT simple, power the intelligent edge, and it's not just the compute, it's to bring the analytics so that we can translate insight into action and really to bring the services to help our customers on their journey. And those services are our point next services complemented by our partner services. So, you know what, we're fired up, we're excited, there's a lot happening. You guys got so much going on and we've documented the whole spin merge thing until the cows come home, so we've already done that. You guys got a lot going on. A lot of customers are talking, a lot of people are talking about you guys in the industry. At an industry level, certainly at a partnership level. You guys have always been customer focused, we heard that, you mentioned that. They kind of want to know, what is HP going to do now? Are you going to put the stake in the ground? What is, they want to know what's happening. Where is this Phoenix coming from out of all this decoupling and more agile messaging? It's a lot of corporate governance stuff, it's a lot of corporate development. I get that, what's next? When are you guys going to put the stake in the ground? Are you going to be aggressive? What are we expecting to hear from Meg Whitman? This week, right? You're going to see it this week. And I think that's why we're so excited. This is our opportunity to bring our story together and talk about the innovation and the outcomes that we're delivering for our customers. We are playing offense and you're going to see that this week. You know, I think one of the themes about this whole week is really about outcomes. I just hosted a panel with four amazing customers. We had DreamWorks on there. We had CenterPoint Energy. We had Caledis Cloud. And I had one more. And think of it, Merck. And just CenterPoint and Merck. And just amazing stories in terms of their digital transformation journey and how HPE is helping to enable that. You're going to hear that on main stage. We're going to have additional customers, symmetry, others talking about their digital transformation journey. So we're really fired up about the main stage and the story that we're going to get out today. Backstage, talking with the executives, they're ready to rock and roll. You know, we know we have a great story and we need to package it. We need to send it out there to the marketplace and that's what's going to happen later today. In addition to the outcomes, and I think that's what's different about us, maybe from some of our other competitors who come to these similar events and just have a bunch of products, we're really talking about how our technology is enabling outcomes. But you're going to see a lot of innovation today as well, really themed along our strategy. We're going to highlight and roll out the next generation of our compute experience. We're going to talk about how we're delivering the industry's most secure industry standard servers. That's complimented by a whole set of announcements we did last week on our storage portfolio. And the software defined space updates to our synergy solution, the HV1 view. And then we're going to be previewing our multi-cloud hybrid stack, which will be available later in the year. When you look at the edge, new campus solution, core solution. So what we're really doing is, if you think of a data center course, which we're bringing that to the campus. So we can essentially now manage from the ceiling to the side to the floor. So we're bringing all of those capabilities, asset tracking capabilities coming as well. Point next, we're bringing new innovations to the marketplace around consume. Jason, maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the IoT edge stuff that's coming out as well. Yeah, I mean, we think a core part of our strategy is to power the intelligent edge. We think that's where all the innovation is going. Increasingly, we think about data and getting insights from data. Going forward, we're going to start thinking about how do I take data and put it into action? The edge is a place and there's lots of different places that we can bring technology to bear to put into action and create value. And so, tons of examples we'll be talking about with customers and really interwoven within that are the need for analytics. Big data, high performance computing is having a renaissance because of that. And the need for hybrid computing, because the stuff needs to be secure and it needs to be driven by applications. And so, it really is a great way to kind of exemplify why our strategy is the right strategy and why it's a winning one. Because those are the unique elements that are going to power this world going forward and we've got them. Yep, 43% of data will be analyzed at the edge by 2020. So think about that, right? Yeah, and we actually think that it'll be much higher over time, that moving around this, all this data is going to be challenging. I know you're working on the speed of light problem in the labs, but in that number, I think, will increase. So I wanted to ask you about messaging because messaging's very important. It clarifies your vision and it underscores your relevance to customers. And previously, a lot of the HP and now it's HPE, messaging was very product centric and one tended to get lost in that. How have you sort of transformed your messaging architecture to address things like outcomes and business impacts? Customers today, it's really about outcomes, right? So technology matters, but if you just look at making hybrid IT simple as an example, that's an easy statement to say. Hybrid IT is not simple. So when you think of the messaging though of how we're talking to our customers about that, it's really at multiple different levels. And let me give you a couple of examples. It's first of all, the services from point next. How do we come and engage them and help them characterize their applications, understand their environment, and ultimately give them a roadmap with the right mix of technology, not only for today, but for the future. So that's an example of leading much more with services in terms of our point next services, in terms of how we're engaging our customers. Getting very disciplined in terms of when you think about, okay, how do I want to run my hybrid IT environment? We believe it runs best on a software-defined infrastructure solution. Synergy gives us that, so customers are telling us, hey, I want to have more on-prem or I want to be able to run my applications on-prem, but I need the same experience that I can get from a public cloud. We can now do that with Synergy. Fully programmable, we're seeing amazing traction with it, we have almost 400 customers engaging, and that pipeline is continuing to grow. And then I think the third part of it, when you talk about solutions, again, it's not just about technology, it's how do I want to consume this, right? So we're hearing from our customers, you know, I need to, not all of them want to just buy it from us and install it. So we do amazing things here that we probably haven't gotten out to the market, and you're going to see us get a lot louder this week about that. For example, through our flexible, our financial services organization, we have amazing capabilities to really engage with other parts of the line of business, the CFO, and talk to them about, how do you really want to finance this? What kind of business relationship are you looking for? With flexible capacity services, we bring amazing capabilities to help our customers get a public cloud experience on-prem. So it's sitting on their environment, we're managing it, they only pay for what they use. The other part of it is, it is customers are telling us increasingly, hey, you know what? I want to actually have a network of service providers that I can get services from. We have done that through our Cloud 28 Plus and our service provider partner ready program. We've had a whole set of service providers optimized for infrastructure, for applications. Many of them are located close to our customers. So just a few examples I think of how we're trying to bring this all together and a solution message is really elevating it and saying what is the outcome you're trying to drive starting there and then looking at engaging them holistically across all of that. So you're seeing more and more of that. Our demos highlight that. That's the stuff we're trying to highlight at the show. Dave, can I pile onto the message piece too as well? His messaging guy here, for Jim. You know, there's a lot of noise also out in the marketplace and I think one of the keys is the advantage of being a more focused company now, we can be much more simple and forthright and direct in our messaging, right? In terms of who we are, what we're about, what's our strategy, what are the elements that we're putting in place to execute that strategy? And I think it's really important because you don't get but 60 seconds, right? In front of a customer and or to grab their attention off of a Twitter feed or whatever. And so simplicity is really, really important and I think the advantage of an event like this is it brings our strategy and that message to life. I mean, it's three dimensional out there, right? It's living and breathing. We bring the customers forward first. That's the lead of every message because that's what other customers want to hear about. What are you going to do for me? Yeah, right? Well, let's talk about the messaging and how it translates from, as I always say, if you got the sizzle, you better have the steak. That's right. You know, use that old expression just as a random example, the user experience is changing significantly in IT. I mean, yesterday I was delayed on Southwest coming from Silicon Valley and they sold my seat. They didn't have to drag me off the plane but now I'm getting some help on the analog face-to-face but I got on Twitter, hit a DM, Southwest, instant channel to Southwest. That proves that the interface to technology and the digital business is changing. Now IT's transforming in a similar way. How are you guys taking the messaging of simplicity at the same time as the product evolution is shifting and architectures are changing? The people who actually have to consume and manage the stuff, their work's changing. So how do you guys talk about that? Because that's really where the meat on the bone is sitting. That's where the rubber's hitting the road. Your thoughts? I'll start and maybe Jason, you can pile on. You know, I think Jason poked at it, right? We are a much simpler company today. So our strategy is very clean. It's to make hybrid IT simple. It's to power the intelligent edge and it's to bring the services to help our customers go along that journey. So just starting with that simple message means that we can get our whole organization, our partner organization on message in terms of what we bring and how we can help them do that. I think the other part of this that's really important is we view innovation today as really a team sport. And as we become more focused, we're actually leaning in a lot harder to our partner ecosystem. Whether it's our traditional partners like Microsoft and SAP, whether it's new partners like Docker, Mesosphere, bringing the containerized environments or actually curating a new set of partners for the future with Partnernext. Because it is about getting it down to the simple thing of what's the outcome you're trying to drive, what's the technology and the ecosystem and how can we be the company to help bring that forward? And I think that's a lot of the simplicity that you're going to see. And on stage later today, I think why we're so excited about this is you're going to hear Meg talk a little bit about the journey we've been on, but more importantly, the outcomes that we're delivering for customers and then what we're going to do is we're going to feature three customer scenarios talking about what they have done, what their journey has been, their outcome, their experiences and what they can do today. And then of course how HP technology is enabling. We had in our opening, Dave and I always talk about this because we love the shiny new toy. Certainly I'm from Silicon Valley, it's from the East Coast, but the reality is that all this talk about declining markets here and there is always a shift to another growth market. Even on-prem, people might buy and consume and interface differently with technology, but it doesn't mean that the data is slowing down. It doesn't mean that the value creation is changing. It's shifting. So I think that has really been something that I think you guys have had online, maybe lost in some of the tactical things, but from new style of IT to this, it's been kind of a cadence that you've been on. It's not like you guys are groping. It goes down to the core, and you can't just snap your fingers and be the transform company that you want, right? We're moving at breakneck speed on that, and it does all go back to the advantage of that strategy. In the world you just described, right? You want to be nimble. If there may be something next month we've never heard of that disrupts the entire container market, right? Containers become, oh, that's so yesterday. We want to be the company that's ready to pounce on the next thing, right? And we're geared to do that, and you know, competitors are on to get out there. Provisioning containers in microseconds is kind of a big deal. Exactly. And that's coming out of the lab, so. Well, you know the other thing I want to just add. So you talked about customers. You start with the customer. The technology business has always moved faster. Yeah. Much than any business. But now every customer is a technology company. Yes. And so they're accelerating the pace. You've got to accelerate that pace with them and be that provider. Digital transformation is all about data. It is. It's all about becoming a technology company. It is. So what's the message to your customers in terms of your role in helping them accelerate their trends? I think you pretty much hit it, right? And the statement I use is digital business is technology. You are not going to seed with your digital transformation unless you have the right technology foundation. And that's what we heard from those customers on the panel. It's about speed. It's about flexibility. It's about having the right technology that enables me to deliver services back to my internal clients at the speed I need to do it. And that's where our innovation is really focused today. And that's why we're seeing a lot of customers coming to us and saying, I want to understand how you did it for CenterPoint or for DreamWorks and how we can take advantage of that. The other part of it is technology is a big part of it, but it's also the learnings and the expertise that we can bring to actually make that technology work in that customer environment. We know how to do that. We're proven in doing that. And I think that's something because we're close to the technology. We not only have the right innovation, we have the right expertise to make it work for our customers. And that's important. I don't even think it's early innings either, Dave. I think it's not the game that's even started. And I think one of the things that we believe and we're doing some research on is, we think asset valuation's going to be completely data-driven. Data will be an asset, and that will impact the valuation mechanism. Data's a new currency. Two companies value. So I think the shift is so early. So riding the wave, guys, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate you looking forward to the keynote from Meg Whitman to hear the messaging. Congratulations as you guys continue to transform. We're fired up. There's a lot of energy. You're fired up. Yeah, Meg's fired up. She's going to bring it today. Antonio's fired up. There's a lot of energy at the company, and we're just excited to get our story out and engage customers. Well, we're looking forward to it. Thanks guys for the opportunity. Live here from HPE Discover, this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage. We'll be back with more live action. Three days of wall-to-wall coverage after this short break.