 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering HP Big Data Conference 2015, brought to you by HP Software. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live here in Boston, Massachusetts for Silicon Angles theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. This is part of HP's Big Data Conference, HP Big Data 2015. Great conference here. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angles. Join my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Jeff Beese, VP of Marketing at Big Data Business Group at HP. Welcome back to theCUBE. Good to see you. Great to be here. Great to see you again. A little bit different than HP Discover. This conference kind of grew out of the vertical days and now really HP Software now has the whole platform coming together across the company, the new HP Enterprise, the new, you know, separate company happening. Great vibe here. I mean, tell us a little about the conference. I mean, great feel, large scale is the theme. Big data, big data being like people actually have big data. They have large volumes. It's the real deal. It's the real deal. Give us the update on the conference and what's happening here and what's your take on it all? Well, what you point out we're actually really proud of and that is, it's talking about the heritage of this and there's lots of conferences clearly out there. You could go to a Big Data Conference every week if you wanted to, I imagine. Of course, HP has a marquee customer event Discover. We all have 10, 20,000 people that we do around the world but this conference is different. This conference origins are about real engineers, real engineering, real problem solving, engaging and talking with each other. So we say with pride and I'm a marketing guy so I can say this, no marketing pitches. We just don't allow it. Every session has a customer and engineer delivering on it. You know, Jeff, Dave and I always use the ESPN analogy because we always like to say the cubes the ESPN of tech and what you're basically saying is let your game do the talking and that's really the marketing is the anti-marketing. It's saying, hey, we have great customers they're talking about the big problems that are real not hyped up as we guys dressed on your keynote. That seemed to be part of the keynote theme here and you have real big names from Facebook to emerging organizations really getting their hands on the engine of innovation. Well, I think some of the speakers that we brought up and what we talked about, of course we announced some amazing products and I think you've been discussing and I'm happy to discuss it. We took our core product Vertica, took it to another level so we can address data in motion but we didn't just talk about products inspect. We talked about what people were doing, the challenges they're facing and how people are really making an impact and how big data and just delivering insights, that's not the finish line. The finish line is that you really made a difference and having guys like the head of analytics Ken Rudin at Facebook be able to talk about how analytics is not just a service at Facebook but at the core of it. That gives you an example, kind of customers we have and what people are doing with our technology. So it has been a gas from beginning. It seems to be much more comprehensive. I mean, you're seeing the customers that are here and in the industry too, they want a comprehensive platform. There's a lot of tooling out there. Yeah, the right tool for the job is ethos that we've heard but at the same time, platform is something that they also want as well. In some cases they want multi-vendor. I don't want to have to reinvent the streaming engine if there's already one out there or hey, I'll use, I'm a startup, I'm going to build on Vertica or hey, I want to use some visualization, I'll use a partner. You guys have kind of this interesting dynamic going on where you get the best of your channel and your partners. You get the HP homegrown stuff and you got a bunch of new stuff. Break this down. Is that part of the strategy? You kind of pulled everything together. What is this new messaging? It's pretty tight. Well, three core tenants to it and in some way it's simple but I think it's really unique. Number one core technology, okay? HP Labs is about innovation. We are back hardcore. We are pushing out new technology. Some of it we push out to open source it. Some comes into our technology and that's job one. Job number two is our embracement of open source and the developer community. And that's not just so we can say we check the box. We truly believe, I truly believe that the market has flipped. The innovation direction in many organizations is coming from the developer off, if you will. Not from the C level town. C level writes the checks. We respect that. Clearly sets the strategy for companies but it is a developer first mindset when you're talking about harnessing big data. And the third aspect and we made some announcements about it is we got to make this easy. You know, there's companies and vendors that are talking to do an amazing thing. Curing cancer with big data, changing the pivot of the planet with big data and that's great. We have companies like Facebook running on big data. Companies like Etsy running on it, doing amazing things. But it's about making real difference in the real world. And what we're seeing is that companies again and again are saying it's not one or two big data projects, now it's 20 or 30. And so there needs to be a new model that makes that simpler and easier. So we close that gap. I like to talk about a canyon between build from scratch and limited custom locked and siloed solutions. The world needs to fill that gap. And our big focus with Haven Application Framework was to hit that and that ties directly into the real system. So that's your easy button, right? The Haven Application Framework, excavator. Well, I think it's our smart button. You know, yes it does make it easier so I'll go with that. But we want our developers, our ecosystem to be smart. And that means be able to leverage what's been done. Do 30 people need to write a Kafka connector when we've come out with an enterprise class capability that we can offer and our customers can leverage so that they can put their IP in and their development in areas that are really going to differentiate. I'll tell you, as people move to big data, as they move and adopt new technologies like Kadoop, for example, which we're a big supporter of. In fact, we just announced that working closely with our partner, Hortonworks, we've optimized the Orc file system to get huge leaps in performance. We wanted to be able to do that so others could leverage that. And that is what that's about. And that's working smart so that you don't have to compromise when you adopt a new technology. You know, I'm seeing a number of customers are saying it's like one step forward, two steps back. I've adopted this new technology, X, Y, Z, but now I got to get it to work. And I'm proud of it and I had to put all those cycles in. Well, we got to get off that treadmill of one step forward, two steps back. It's about acceleration, it's about taking big data into the mainstream and allowing companies to exploit it across the enterprise and to do that, what we saw is we need our core technology and now with the application's framework, ways that are going to make it a lot quicker and easier to do it. So talk a little bit more about the content agenda for the event. There are a couple of interesting things that you did. You had Stonebreaker up there interviewing him. You never know what Stonebreaker's going to say. Yeah, they broke the mold. You know what? They didn't even make the mold with Stonebreaker, okay? Because he is obviously a pretty unique gentleman. Right, and you never know what he's going to say. He threw all of us marketing people under the bus. I think everybody's thrown under the bus. I think he had Mother Teresa under the bus. Right, exactly. Then he threw all the big data practitioners under the bus which creates a lot of conversation. And that's kind of, as the head of marketing, that's really what you want. You want people to be engaged and conversing even if it's controversial, right? Well, you know, marketing is a dangerous profession by the way, and one of the dangers is that you'd like to think you can affect the outcome and influence people, but you want to be real and you want to be authentic and you want to be able to make an impression that people take seriously. And you know, it's not just Stonebreaker in his comments, but it was Robert Young-John's, the head of HV Software Marketing, very bullishly saying, hey, we are about putting out technology that people can use today that are going to make a difference. We're about engaging developers and opening up our technology, and when we have flaws and gaps in it, we want that feedback on day one. So, I don't know if authentic is the right word, but we wanted to talk about what is the real deal, and you know what, the real deal is not always pretty. It's a lot of fast forward erroring, correcting and learning from that, and that's what the vibe of this conference has been. It is not a pretty box with a bow on it, solving every problem, and simply open up the box. It's about rolling up your sleeves, implying this technology, and taking it forward, and that's what this exchange has been about. Well, Young-John's also said, you know, what's your big data? He asked the audience, what's your big data strategy? He says he talks to a lot of customers, and they say, well, we get this a dupe cluster. Yeah, but what's your big data strategy? What's your strategy? And he kept coming back to that, sort of challenging the audience to think about that. The other notable thing here is John and I were talking, we had Shilpa on. Shilpa's a tech guru, which is also a GM. We had one of your customers on. He was saying, well, I'm talking to the GM of the division, who really is trying to drive the business, but at the same time, she could converse with me about my problems and drive change in the architecture. I also want to talk about Nate Silver. So Nate, you know, everybody knows Nate Silver, does a great job, but the best part I thought was the Q&A. It wasn't just like two questions. I mean, he exhausted the audience in Q&A. There was some great interaction there. What were your thoughts on Nate Silver's comments? Well, I think, you know, Nate from a distance, you know, here's this guy that's kind of the oracle, right? He is able to see things that other people can't with his predictions. But what you heard from Nate was so many times, he didn't use the word common sense, but it was that when you're looking at the data, you still have to keep on thinking. And you can't let the data have you over correct. And he used that analogy that on the news every day, Canada Day is up. Canada Day is out of the race, you know? Because you got a different data point. You have to still think. The gray matter still matters. And I think his point to everybody in the audience is this is a tool, some of the tools are really powerful, but you got to mix the tools in the real world. Does data, data science, statistics, does it sort of demystify some of that? You know, what you called Nostradamus, right? The mystical Nostradamus who made some unbelievable predictions. Yeah, he was pretty good. For a guy that, you know, was walking around in the 1500s to be able to predict some things over 400 year period, he had a pretty good track record. So does data and new techniques, does it sort of demystify that? What, well, you know, I think you're touching on a really important thing is that big data is opening up the fact that with the data and the insights we can really think about our businesses differently. But to do that, we have to understand. We really have to understand the insights. We can't be slaves to the reporting. We can't, there is no one answer. I think big data is more about being at ask. And this was mentioned by several speakers. It's the ability to ask the right question. And not just the first question, because if you ask the right question, I don't know about you. You're a lot smarter than me, of course. If I ask the question, I am going to get some information that's going to draw me to ask another question. What was interesting about on that point though, this trill down on this, this has come up as a recurring theme on theCUBE. Well, yeah, everyone wants the answers. They want to ask the right questions. They want to iterate through fail before you can succeed, that kind of thing. I totally buy that. But the question is, everyone we talk to says it's a company-wide issue. It's not a BI tool that can be used for good reports over here. That might be a use case and an outcome of solution. But most of the people that are here are engineering corporate-wide solutions because the people change. The hiring and the corporate culture to be data-driven is completely different. Facebook, for instance, you mentioned Ken Bruden. That is complete data-driven culture. I mean, it's like, I mean, they code for the data. They don't just want the data, they're deep. But as companies want to become data-driven, it is a company-wide thing. That's a platform. That is an architectural issue. So, how are you guys marketing that? I mean, it's a challenge. And you guys have big accounts. Well, you hit on two things. One, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. I almost said HPE, but the formal name is Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which will be the new separated company that focuses entirely on enterprise computing. And that'll be official November 1 when we go into official fact, but we've announced it. We have four transformational areas, and one of them is about empowering the data-driven organization. And we called it that. It's not about driving data-driven technology. It's about that final mile that it's got to make a difference in the organization. And that has soft and hard components, too. And we see that. And we see the fact that data is something that- Explain that soft and hard components. Just clarify what you mean by that. Well- I know what you mean, but let's just expand that. Just define that. Number one, you have to know, first of all, what audiences within that organization you're servicing. The people that are consuming the data, frankly, have different functions at different velocities. And I'll assert that many organizations are actually, they have more data, but they're less data-driven. And the reason why is the velocity of data and the velocity of business is forcing that. And what we're not going to do is solve that with traditional ways of building one grand data warehouse. That ship has sailed, sunk, is under sediments of rock and layer, and is never coming back to the surface. So now it is about how can we go and provide those insights, but at that speed of business, but in ways that the different parts of the organization need to consume it. Sometimes it's driving a business process. Sometimes it's about being able to engage that customer as I'm engaging them online. Sometimes it's making a strategic decision of should I buy that company. Those are very different use cases. And that brings me to a point you brought up, the P word, which is why do we talk about a platform? This is really important to Hewlett-Packard. A platform is not a monolithic. We want to sell you everything, laundry list. We make it all, so buy it from us. This is not trying to be the home depot of technology. What a platform is about is what I call the platform multiplier effect. The idea is you want to be at a harness 100% of your data. You're not going to use it all the time. In fact, as you define your data, a lot of it may physically be sitting out in the cloud, maybe running across the internet, not even under your control. But you never want to be limited of what data, whether it is human data or structured data that you can harness. So you want a platform that doesn't just let you do one project, but lets you use that data multiple ways. And without starting from scratch again and again. And the multiplier effect means that I put 10 units in to get project one done, but the next project I do, maybe instead of servicing manufacturing, I'm servicing marketing, maybe I can do that with six units. And then the next one I can do with four because as I have my platform in place, I'm able to leverage it and build off of it. And that's why companies are moving to having a data platform, a big data platform approach to it, rather than a widget or siloed approach. That's the game changer. I can count on one hand, and if I had less than one hand, the companies that are in the space that have the capabilities, the technology and the vision to do it. That's the game, that's the Bulls-I-HP is going on and we're dead set on it and it's our big focus. Talk about this event and how you keep it intimate. I think that's one of your big challenges. Well, we're going to stop inviting you and all the people that watch this, way too many people know about the event. It's like exclusive means, very few, the joke if I don't want to be part of a country club that would let me in. So you know what I'm saying though, this is an intimate conference, it's practitioners talking to practitioners, very peer-based, very content-driven, big company, HP. How do you keep that flavor alive? It's a good question, it's a challenge. We now have exceeded over 1,000 people here, almost 1,500 people that are attending and it is a challenge because it is about engagement. The really rich conversations are not happening between the vendor, Hula Packard, of course our sponsors are here and that's valuable, but the real richness is all the interactions that are happening. So I think in two ways. One, we stay honest with the content here and we make sure the content from A to C is about what real people are doing about, big data as we talked about. Number two, we are just pushing the envelope on the things we're doing. I don't know if you heard it, but we had speed dating, like speed dating where you can gum and you get two minutes to meet with one of our engineers, ask a question, then move on. I saw it on the agenda, but I didn't hear anything about it. It's out of that cable. It's wicked cool because you can go and ask 10 different engineers from us the same question and you're probably going to get 10 different answers. And some people would go like that is the worst thing possible in the world. We think it is great because we're solving problems and we're peeling onions. I had one customer from a really large telecommunication say I love talking to other customers. And I'm like, well, why are you talking to ones that are doing big, bold things that you are? And he said, no, I'm talking to customers. We have 50,000, 100,000 people work for us. I'm talking to companies with 200, but they're asking me questions about what I'm doing that nobody's ever asked me before because those questions don't get asked in my own customers. And so that exchange is absolutely key. Now, I think what you're going to see is we're going to start taking this and throw this on an airplane and taking around a globe. You know, it's a global event. We had over 22 company countries represented here. We picked, and your listeners have to note this, literally the worst time possible to hold an event, the middle of August. The word insane comes up every time somebody sees a date. Non-conventional is the new normal. I mean, this is what people want. They don't want the same old rinse and repeat feel when they need real things done. Yeah, there's not one teleprompter here. I banned them. And if you're not, if you need a teleprompter to talk to somebody, I could use one with my wife. And I think there's a huge market for husbands to say the right things or wives at the right time. Say sorry. You're right. No, no, you're right, I'm sorry. Yes, dear, those were. But on a serious note here, we don't have teleprompters. And a lot of the keynotes... It's not superscripted. It's not a teleprompter. There's no conversations. Even on the stage, yesterday, tomorrow, we're going to have four customers up on the stage while our executives are on the stage and they're having conversations because that's when people... It's real, conversations are the new content acquisition. People are making decisions based on what their peers are, to your point. We've heard that as well from people last night at dinner and at the events. Hey, I'm talking to my peers. This is almost like refreshing. You're one of us. It's a community feel where conversations are the content. You can harness them up. So really awesome job. So plan is keeping it in August, keeping it in Boston. That's part of the... Yeah, we've announced the date. Now we are, you know, the planets will shift on this. We've moved it two weeks later. So I believe it is August 29th to September 1st, which of course won't impact anybody's vacation schedule at all. So we're keeping it in August. We're keeping it in Boston. Let me mention why Boston, you know? And why Boston is because the core development of the Big Data Business Unit is seven miles away, right over in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And we bring those engineers here. Every one of those engineers staffs the developer lounge. Our customers meet them. I have gone to conferences where they ban the developers and the engineers to even be within the same country. Because developers do this horrible thing. They tell you the truth. I was going to say that. You know what? And... No, that won't work. That won't work. Yeah, we shipped that and that was horrible product. But that is why people come to this event. Trust is a huge thing right now. In the market, people get information in all over the place. Certainly there's a lot of noise. There's some signal blended in there. But when you have this kind of interaction, trust is huge. Because there's a lot of stakes on the table. So congratulations. Final questions for me is HP Software. Vertica now all part of one big HP software organization. Very focused. The new HP Enterprise operating as a separate entity up until November 1st for regulations. So you guys are kind of getting the groove swing going. What's it like? Give us a peek behind the curtain. What's going on? The messaging, what are you tightening up? I mean, I'll see platforms key. You hit on some of those. What's going on in software? Because software is the future. And relative to revenues, HP software, it's a hardware company, but software is big pillar of focus. How are you guys going to change that? What's the plan? Give us some tips. Well, number one, the food in the cafeteria is like, I don't know what they did, but it is incredible now. No. On a serious note, there are changes going on. And as an insider, with the four transformational areas that we announced and discovered, one being empowered, the big data division, and an organization's admittedly announced framework and visions all the time. But what I see happening, perhaps with the focus, perhaps with the new culture, with the reinvention that is occurring, is that the mojo is not only back, it's kicking in a high gear. People are motivated to just show all the jewels, right? I mean, that's my sense. It's a pride of, hey, you know what? We want to come out punchin' hard. That's my sense. And we want to tell our story. I think some people that may not know HP well or know HP software, when they hear JP Morgan, and they hear Citigroup, and they hear Facebook, and they hear Twitter, and Etsy, are running the most demanding applications on our software. Of course on our hardware, we have a predigree there. I think people take notice on why. But the other thing that's happening, I think you'll note, and this is me being Nostradamus, is the connection across HP. And of course, there was always teaming in HP. I think it's been part of the HP culture, but that's coming back stronger than ever. A lot of our customers value, and they're looking for solutions. And they're looking for choice. You start off being funded by tier one VCs using your technology, products. Absolutely. Off-the-shelf products, by the way. Not just the other stuff. And you have a startup program, that's good news. But interesting, right? I mean, 10 years ago, VC be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, you're not going to OEM from HP, but now the world's changed. Well, that was part, you know, just to show you the new HP, if you will. We announced a startup essentials just for startups so they can consume top grade big data software from us and consume it. We have our APIs that we make available for free. We just, we have hackathons around the country where we kick our competition's butts all the time. Just had over 450 engineers in Sunnyvale at a hackathon two weeks ago. That's HP doing that. And we are taking that technology out, contributing it to open source, leveraging it. And it's about choice. And you know what? This may sound weird to the audience and weird to you guys, but we're disruptor. Because when you're a software company that maybe doesn't have a heritage of you've been shipping this data warehouse for 30 years or this canned app for 40 years, you can go and disrupt and mix it up. So our vertical product, you want to run it on enterprise? You want to run it on demand and pay with a credit card? You want to run it on Amazon EC2, somebody else's cloud capability? We support that. And what that's about is disrupting in choice. Yeah, choice is critical. You want Hadoop distributions from any of the top Hadoop distribution vendors? We offer them. We decided very strategically not to do our own Hadoop distribution because it had to be the HP you want. Good decision. I mean, again, looking back, little Notre Dame section, that's a good call. Look at Intel. They had to abandon their whole effort. And there's a few other. I won't mention them. We knew they are. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea because you know what? At the end of the day, customers, you got to give them credit for being smart. Because they are smart. And they want vision. They want a company behind them, but they understand where you can bring them value. And that's where they cut through the hype. Ultimately, the customers vote with their wallet. And the hype is cut by the customer. Are they buying? Are they deploying in production? That ultimately is the test, right? I mean, look at the customer. And that's why I like this practical keynote. Kind of, you guys shoot this practical approach saying, yeah, yeah, we love hype. We love to market to the future proofing, but like the reality is, where's the rubber meeting the road? Where's the meat on the bone? Absolutely, you know, it's a balancing act of being able to provide a comprehensive capability. And that takes you off into big companies, admittedly. And there's a lot of value to be able to bring the pieces together. But often you'll see big companies say, I bring you all those pieces, so it's my way or the highway. And the thing about HP is we bring those pieces, but we inject it with the innovation and the flexibility and the choice. And I think we're the only ones doing that dance. We're having fun with it. And the customers seem to be reacting to it. Jeff, thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule here to speak with us. I'll give you the final word. Share it with the folks out there. You're heading up to marketing, which means you got to tell the story in a new unconventional, looks like way here and other vehicles. What's the plan? What should they expect to see from HP software and the big data piece? What should they expect to see from you? What's going on? Well, number one, I think you're going to see us do some groundbreaking things, both on-premise and in the cloud. And we're going to be not an aggressive follower, but we're going to be breaking new ground. We've started to do that and that's gearing up. Number one, number two, and I've touched on it, is we of course are going to support the practitioners that operate and run the world's greatest data centers. That's HP's heritage. We do that better than anybody else. We're an infrastructure company. But now, when we're talking about big data and where we're going, it's about talking to the builders. The guys that are going to build the services and the capabilities that are going to drive what we call the idea economy. And that is the focus now. We're walking the talk on it. We're going to be second to none on it. And the customers are reacting to it and... Storytelling, let the customers do the talking. Is that going to be the main storytelling vibe or what? What's the marketing plan? I think you see what happened here infuse into Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Because if your customers can tell the story about how you actually help their business, there's no better marketing. So you guys are listening to the customers. You're creating conversations. They could join and you're interacting. Yeah, and so it's an imitation. The last thing I'll leave you with is go to havenondemand.com, go to Haven Big Data. And there are communities that your listeners that can join right now. That they can learn. They can interact. It's open and transparent. So this is not a participatory sport. It's come on the playing field with HP and rock and roll with us on the ground. That's what we want to do. If we're screwing up, let us know. If we're doing some good things, let us know. What we want to do is set the mark in Big Data and make a difference. Are you at havenondemand.com? What was the other one? Havenondemand.com or hp.com slash Big Data. Well, you certainly get the tools to listen to the conversation. We saw some of the command center stuff. And of course, we get the conversations out there all over the web. We're trying to share the story. Jeff, thanks so much. This is theCUBE live in Boston. Go to crowdchat.net slash HP Big Data. Join the conversation. Go to hp.com slash Big Data. Again, join the conversation. HP's engaging. They're open. They're listening. And we'll be right back more live in Boston after this short break.