 From London, England, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE, Cover, Discover 2015, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in London for HP Enterprise, HPE Discover. This is theCUBE's Silicon Angles Flection Program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier. Dave Vellante, our next guest is Tom Norton, VP of Cloud Services, Technology Service Consulting Group at HP. Good to see you, Q-Time Cube alumni. Welcome back to theCUBE. Good to see you. All right, thank you. Good to see you too. I'll see HPE now focused on cloud, 100%, you can see that everywhere. Cloud is messaging. You got the Azure relationship, the announcement of getting out of the public cloud business, but being a big player focused on private cloud, hybrid cloud. No change there. It's going to march along. But the participation in open source has been a huge benefit for HP over the years. Great success. Helium Group has been doing great. We see an OpenStack summit around the world, Vancouver. We miss Tokyo. You do not make it to Tokyo. But OpenStack has been a real enabler for customers to open their eyes to rolling your own and getting an ecosystem of solutions to build enterprise-grade infrastructure. And now with Synergy and these things coming together, we're starting to see the fruit on the tree. So give us the update on OpenStack, what happened at Tokyo? What's the traction update? A lot of rumors going around. It's just prototyping and POCs. Not a lot of production. True, false, what's your take? Well, so for me, my take is that real foundational, I think now, OpenStack from a hybrid IT perspective. So if I think of cloud, we've been talking about cloud for three or four years. You and I just talked about that. And as a term in the industry, I think people are just kind of coming around to having an understanding about how that hybrid blend works. You still have public, public is very important. But how you can integrate between on-premise private, how you can incorporate maybe a managed private cloud so that if something is not core to your business, you could have someone taking OpenStack and managing it, but also in the public space. And I think what we're finding is that OpenStack is a common denominator across any of those from a hybrid IT, hybrid infrastructure, but really a hybrid cloud approach. And it's becoming really much less of what a year ago people might have thought of it as a kind of a science experiment. But really it's a credible, productive, scalable, enterprise grade cloud platform today that's being used in multiple different environments. So traction update, solid traction. Give us some color around the traction. Oh, traction is unbelievable in terms of where people are taking it. So I think we're seeing it. Can you give some examples? Well, some examples we're seeing in Telco. So I would say that I can't even imagine a Telco provider around the world that isn't in some way looking at OpenStack. But it's not just Telco. Service providers who are not Telcos are advancing how they're using OpenStack to not only service infrastructure as a service for themselves, but also how they can connect from a helium network but how they connect to other SPs. The last piece is it's not just in the service provider space. We're seeing traction in finance, which in financial services, which may not be a natural idea, but the banking systems themselves, both private retail banking, but internet banking and national banking systems are all looking at it from a data center provisioning hybrid IT perspective and public sector. Doesn't matter whether it's highly sensitive public sector or community services, OpenStack is big and growing in all of those areas today. Yeah, it's interesting. The financial service is an interesting use case, right? Because those guys actually hopped on early as a way when they've been really seriously trying to go after the big sort of hyperscale vision. And so OpenStack to them, potentially as a path to get there, although it's still early days, you mentioned early on sort of the vision of OpenStack, the promise of OpenStack is this sort of cross-cloud compatibility. But a lot of us questioned early on, is that actually going to come to fruition because you got, you know, company A does it one way, company B does it other way, underlying this is OpenStack, but there's little slight implementation differences. Give us the update on that piece. Is that vision actually coming to fruition or is it really within sort of the HP OpenStack community that you can achieve that? Well, I think that OpenStack as a base and commonality of OpenStack between cloud platforms can exist today. We're seeing it in production today where we're connecting clouds. So there's this concept here about Cloud 28 Plus, which we have within Amia itself today where we are using OpenStack as a common platform between 28 and more service providers in Europe to be able to share services and be able to deliver services from one cloud provider through another. And that's HP infrastructure, correct? Across that, not necessarily. The benefit of OpenStack is it doesn't have to be a common denominator from a physical platform perspective. I think when you're at a control plane between OpenStack, I think that's important. I think where we're working today to advance it is between hypervisors. You know, you can serve up virtual machines within OpenStack very easily. I think if you want to manage, maybe a Microsoft cloud environment, a VMware cloud environment, OpenStack cloud environment, that's maturing and getting there, but it's still a challenge. But you've dealt with that lowest common denominator. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that maturity in terms of still between multiple cloud platforms. Say we're talking about finance. At first it was about scalability from infrastructure. But what we're seeing today is that HTTP, the helium development platform, that's becoming more and more important from a services perspective on how we can then take OpenStack at its base and advance how companies protect and serve up their development environments. That from banking, that's very, very important because mobile banking and the ability to continuously integrate and continuously develop applications and be able to roll that out to a common platform that can be expensive in any industry. But if you can create a common development platform around Cloud Foundry and be able to connect those different development groups through a common platform like OpenStack, you can have a value perspective in terms of accelerating adoption, accelerating deployment, but at the same time efficiencies in the data center. How about the services component here? It's a lot of stuff we're talking about is complex for a lot of customers. In particular, we talk about hybrid cloud. You don't buy it, you got to build it. A lot of connection points that you have to architect. So talk about what you guys are doing with customers around services. What are they asking you for in particular? Well, there's really two maturity levels to that. At first it is about adoption. How can I accelerate the adoption? There's some value that some customers are trying to drive. It may be an app that they want to host on OpenStack. And they want to be able to move that into production as quickly as possible. So the accelerating the adoption of OpenStack in their environment and integrating it into their environment is the first step. And that can be easy in some aspects of it. It's a very generic environment, but most enterprise environments are not. They have complexities on the storage side. There are complexities on the network side especially. And accelerating that through kind of a test bed by getting it into production can be challenging. I think we have, from a services perspective, we have very senior resources both in OpenStack and how OpenStack applies to the networks. That's the first step. I think the next step where services getting involved now is then integrating those clouds with other clouds. Being able to look at how I can connect an OpenStack cloud and have multi-tenants. That's another challenge, where I might have 20 different business units that are all going to be served out of centralized IT. And how do I ensure that I've got connectivity between the lines of business and back to IT from a control plan perspective? So services, we do that planning and design and the implementation. Okay, Tom, so we kind of want to step out of our bubble because we love OpenStack so much, we can talk about it all day. Folks watching out there, they know we love OpenStack so much because it's a great opportunity. But let's come back into this world of HP Enterprise Discover. Sure. A lot of customers here, on the one data point on their overall plans of changing IT. How do they look at OpenStack in context to the pan, HP Discover portfolio solutions? Where does it fit in? Well, so I think it's all part of transforming their IT. So transforming infrastructure. So at the base, if I think of transforming infrastructure as part of one of our transformation areas, there is the physical foundation area. So if you think of composable infrastructure which is part of our transform area element, that can be a base of how you can address and accelerate the way infrastructure can respond to something like OpenStack, a command for infrastructure. So it all fits together when we're transforming into a more hybrid infrastructure, a more hybrid IT perspective. OpenStack can sit at a control plane, it can be a component piece, but in the end, how we use it today is trying to find that common control across multiple different physical platforms, but also taking advantage now for the future which is composable IT, composable infrastructure. And on the services side, what is the opportunity for customers? What do they have to do with OpenStack now? Is it a heavy lift for them? Is it getting easier? Can you share some insight into how OpenStack's evolving from a services and operational perspective? Well, I think in the most part, we are seeing our customers approach it from a maturity perspective. They're not doing a lift and shift. They're not going to disable what they do with VMware today and whatever cloud components they had. They're not going to move what they may have had with CSA or OO from an HP perspective and abandon that component. I think what they're trying to do today is they're looking at OpenStack from a workload perspective. If they're shifting to a cloud native development environment, they want to have an infrastructure where they want to have a platform for cloud that can dramatically improve the way that they handle cloud native applications, the way they're deployed, the way they're tested, the way they're managed in the environment. Because that's all continuous, so it's a shift, but it's not going to be 100% lift and move. It's going to be something where I adopt, I test against a workload, and then I start adding workloads as I mature in my systems administration and as I mature with my applications. So what's new with the services offerings that you guys offer customers? Can you share some insight into what you guys are doing? What are some of the hot programs, hot programs you guys have? Well, I think where the focus is coming with anything that's going to be hybrid infrastructure or anything in our transformation area, we're shifting to that design approach. But design isn't the way we used to do it with Waterfall where we design, design, design, test, test, test, deploy, deploy, deploy, right? We're shifting to a design that says, I want the functional understanding of the workload, so I'm going to do a design and I'm going to get it immediately or as quickly as possible in a test. So we see this bringing together of the ab world and IT, because IT has to be able to respond immediately. So if we're thinking of how I can accelerate adoption of a flexible infrastructure based on the demands of the workload, and I can do that test and I can refine the workload and refine the infrastructure and keep progressing that open infrastructure approach or that hybrid infrastructure approach, the same time we're evolving to a native IT organization. So ours is changing in terms of how we design. So what's the top seller? What sells the best? What's the top selling service? Well right now today, it's still infrastructure as a service, it's still top. I mean, that's still what everybody starts with. But what's really coming on right now are two component pieces. One is understanding how to have virtualized networks. That's really increasing. That's a hypervisor point. I mean, outside, but it will, yeah, virtualizing the network from a virtual switch to virtual routers, that's really increasing in demand today. So we have to be able to shift what has been traditionally infrastructure as a service to understanding that. And the second is on the application side. So development platform and helium development platform is the key to us there. And how we can support the development community from a flexible hybrid infrastructure. So we're seeing that shift in maturity where originally our focus was on infrastructure that's fine. But we shift that to where we're really looking at both the network side and the app side and how that's directing what infrastructure does. What role does HP play in assisting customers in transitioning their skill sets? Because when you talk about sort of that example, you know, what may play in heavy lifting of infrastructure might not play in sort of this new DevOps world. So how are customers transitioning those skill sets and how are you helping them? Well, so we're helping them really education services, which is a big part of consulting. And it's a challenge for everybody because if I think of the way platforms are changing is every six months. And every platform has new characteristics and new type environments. So I think education services is helping us stay ahead or helping our customers stay ahead of what's coming. Because if I see the way open stock changes or the way that even Microsoft or VMware may changing today, it's every six months the skill sets may need a requirement change. So HP education services through TS consulting is addressing that kind of hybrid world, both in DevOps but also in, from an infrastructure. And the skill sets that the sort of traditional infrastructure folks have, are they sort of a stepping stone to this new world or is it like putting a handy Ramirez from shortstop into left field? If I can use it. I understand, no, it's a shift. Because I think that understanding how to be proactive about what's the expectation of the workload and changing the whole design from a design to support an SLA to the design to support the demand on a bi-weekly basis or a monthly basis of the application is a shift. So it's a big commitment from the individual to really make that shift. Well I think it's a natural progression in the IT industry today. And my advice to anybody that is in systems administration, my son is a systems administrator today. And he's making that shift himself. Don't walk. Because he's getting that pressure. Run? Yeah. More DevOps guy, either way you're doing good. Right, and I think the idea of that blend between data requirements and data analytics and even predictive requirements of the application against IT is blending today and the requirements for a systems application. So Tom, I got to ask you the question that's on everyone's mind. Why is OpenStack getting all the negative press? I mean a lot of people, is it just people throwing haymakers out there? It's been a lot of like negative vibes around OpenStack. Where's all the hate coming from? Is it because people are not winning? Is it FUD? I mean, we're seeing similar things to you that people are using it. It might not be mainstream. Is it because people aren't getting it? What's the disconnect? Well, I think it was an expectation. You know, VMware has been around since 1995 and been doing virtualization. So if you think of those 20 plus years, 21 years, Microsoft has been doing the same thing. You know, we're at year five, I think, from an OpenStack platform. And it's a remarkable improvement, remarkable maturity model to go from ground zero over five years to serve in the enterprise. I mean, I've been around a long time and been designing applications in the enterprise but also supporting it. I've never seen such a shift and such an accelerated curve in terms of functionality. Now, the complexity- The market's been pretty dynamic, too. So it's not just, I mean, they've been doing really well. Given the market conditions on the speed of change, it's been significantly positive. I think speed of change, but speed of expectation. So I mentioned from a connectivity perspective. That's heavily based on the network. And network technology, again, is very complex. And trying to understand how I can virtualize that but virtualize it also in a new kind of control plane from a cloud perspective is a whole new challenge. But I think the market is pushing change and the market is pushing accelerated change. So if there's any disappointment, it's that it just wasn't where people wanted to be expecting where the rest of the market may have been, but we're catching up very quickly in terms of- Tom will give you the final word. Share with the audience, what's the vibe here this year at HPE Discover? Oh, it's exciting in terms of, if you look around in the audience, that kind of emphasis on transformation and the areas that HPE has looked at and sectioned out in terms of infrastructure and workplace productivity and enabling kind of that data perspective and a data sensitive workforce. That whole approach has an ability to just walk down one aisle and be able to connect from an infrastructure perspective or connect from a network perspective. I think has the audience and also HPE really excited about what we're doing here. All right, I appreciate you spending some time coming on theCUBE. Good to see you again. Again, OpenStack is real, it's happened and a lot of success, a lot of traction. HPE's certainly taken advantage of that in their building blocks of this new way to do things here at HPE, new style of IT, new style of business. theCUBE bringing you all the action here in London, day two of coverage of theCUBE at HPE Discover. We'll be right back with more after this short break.