 From around the globe, it's theCUBE. Covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience. Brought to you by HPE. Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto, California. We're here for a remote conversation. We're for HPE Discover Virtual Experience 2020. We're here with Kumar Shrikanti, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Software. Cube alumni, we've been following Kumar since he started Blue Data. Now he's heading up the software team and CTO at HPE and Robert. Christensen VP of Strategy of Office of the CTO. Robert, both Cube alumni is Robert, formerly with CTP, now part of the team that's bringing the modernization efforts around enterprises in this fast changing world that's impacting the operating models for businesses. We're seeing that playing out in real time with COVID-19 as customers are modernizing the efforts. Guys, thanks for coming on, taking the time. You're welcome, John, good to be back here. Kumar first, I have to ask you. I have to ask you, your new role at HPE sent it up to CTO, but also head of the software. How do you describe that role? Because you're CTO and also heading up the software as a general manager. Could you take them in to explain this new role and why it's important? Thank you. Thank you, John. And so good to be back. You get two for one with me and Robert. Yeah, it's very exciting to be here as a CTO of HPE and as Antonio described in his announcement, we consider software would be a very key essential part of our pivot as a service. And we see that it's an opportunity for not only layout the vision, but help drive the execution of that vision both organically and inorganically. So we see, we want to have a differentiated software that helps the customers to get us to the workloads optimized for their specific solutions. You guys were both on the cube in November pre-COVID with Stu Miniman, John Troyer, talking about the container platform news leveraging the acquisitions you guys have done at HPE. Kumar, your company, Blue Data Map, RCTP, Robert, the group you're there, really talking about the strategies around running these kinds of workloads. And if you think about COVID-19, this transformation, it's really changing work, workforces, workplaces, workloads, workflows, everything to do with work and people are at home. That's an extension of the on-premise environment. VPN provisions were under provision. We're hearing all these stories exposing all the things that need to be worked on because no one ever saw this kind of disruption. It highlights the modern efforts that a lot of your customers are going through, Robert. Can you explain, and Kumar talk about this digital transformation in this COVID? And then when we come out of it, the growth strategies that need to be put in place and the projects, take a minute to explain. Go ahead, Robert. Robert has been spending a lot of time with our customers and I will add to that. Go ahead, Robert. Yeah, thank you so much. It's an accelerator is what's happened. Many of our clients have been forced into the conversation about how do I engage our customers and how do we engage our broad constituents, including our employees and colleagues in a more rapid and easier way. And many of the systems that were targeted to make their way to a public cloud digital transformation process did not get the attention just because of their size and breadth and depth and effort. So that's really put an accelerator down on what are we gonna do? So we have to be able to bring a platform into our clients organizations that have the same behavioral characteristics or what we call the same cloud experiences that people are expecting in public and bring it close to our clients data and their applications. And without having that, you don't have a platform by which you can have an accelerated digital transformation because it's historically a public cloud has been the only path to get that done. And what we are really considering what we introduced a while ago was a platform near our clients applications and data that gives them that ability to move quicker and respond to these industry situations and specifically what's happened with COVID and really pushes it harder for real solutions now that they can act on. Kumar, your thoughts on this pre-COVID COVID. Yeah, the pace of acceleration for the digital transformation is just is a logarithmically multiplied the COVID. I think as you pointed out, John, the remote working in the VPNs, the security, we were as an edge to the cloud platform company, we were already in that space. So it's actually very, as Robert pointed out, it's actually nice to see that transformation is transitioned or rapidly getting to the digitization. But one thing that is very interesting to note here is you can't lift and shift data as a gravity and you actually saw, we actually see the overall the distributed cloud. We see that we're glad to see what we've been we've been talking about prior to the COVID and the recently, even the industry analysts are talking about. We believe there is a compute can happen where the data is. And this is actually an interesting point for me to say this is why we have actually announced our new software platform, HP Esmeral, which is our key differentiated pillar for our as a service, pure that company is focusing on. Could you talk about what this platform is? You guys are announcing the capabilities and what customers can expect from this. Is it a repackaging? Is there something new here? What's, is it something different, making something better? What can you just give us a quick taste of what this is and what it means? Good Robert, I'll add after you. Yeah, so yeah, that's a great question. Is it repackaged or is it actually something new? Well, I'm happy to say it's a combination of a lot of existing assets that come together in the ecosystem. I think a platform that is super unique. You know, you look at what the blue data container and the adoption of Kubernetes holistically as a control plane, as well as our data fabric motions in the market with MapR. And you combine that with our networking experiences and our other platform, very specific platform solutions near our client's data that all comes together in intellectual property that we have that we packed together and make work together. So there's a lot of new stuff in there. But more importantly, we have a number of other close partners that we've brought together to form out our Esmeral platform. We have a new, really interesting combination of security and authentication pieces to our Cytel organization that came underneath with us a little few months back and our aggressive motion towards bringing in strong networking services to Plexi as well. So these all come together. And I'm sure I'm leaving a few out there, oh, specifically with our InfoSight software to continue to build out a solution on premises that provides that world-class set of services that we believe in. Martin, John, you asked a question. Sorry, John. John, you asked the question at the beginning is, you know, what is it? Why the software role? Is this is exactly that I was waiting for that moment where Robert pointed out, our goal is we have a lots of good assets in addition to a lot of good partnerships. We believe the market is, the customers want outcome-based solutions-based motion. Not, I want a piecemeal, right? So we have an opportunity to provide the customers the solution from the top to the bottom. We have announced at the Discover, MLOps as a service, which is actually total top to the bottom end to end, customers can build ML solutions on the top of the GreenLake. This is built on the HPE as a model platform. So it's not, I wouldn't use the word repackaging, but it is actually a lot of the inorganic, organic technologies that have come together that build the solution up to the bottom. You know, I don't think it's a negative to package something up into a solution. No, I didn't take it as a negative, but I was just saying that it's a lot of new stuff, but also, as Robert said, in BlueData, you built a very powerful container platform. As you just mentioned at the CubeCon, we announced the platform. Well, one of the things I liked about your talk on November was that the customers kind of get in the weeds, but stateless versus stateful data is a big part of it. But if you look at the cloud and public cloud and horizontal scalability, no one wants piecemeal, and that was the word you guys just mentioned, or these siloed tools. And if you think about the workforce, workplace transformation with COVID, it's exposing the edge to everybody. It's not just an IT conversation. You need to have software that traverses the environment. So you're now looking at not so much point solutions, best of breed, which you guys have had in the past, but saying, okay, I got to look at this thing holistically and say, how do I make sure I make sure security, which is the new perimeter is the home, right? Or wherever. There's no perimeter anywhere, it's just everywhere. So this is now just an architectural concept, not so much a point solution, right? I mean, is that kind of how you're thinking about it? That's correct. In fact, as you said, the data is generated at the edge and you take the compute and it's with edge to the cloud platform, what we have actually, what we are actually demonstrating is we want to give a complete solution, no matter where the processing needs are. And with HP, you have now that cloud like experience, both as on-prem as well as what we call a hybrid. I think let's be honest, the world is going to be hybrid. And you can actually see the changes that is happening even from the public vendors, they're trying to come on-prem. So HPE is being established player in this and with this technology, I think provides that solution, you can process where the data is generated. Yeah, I would agree it's hybrid. I would say multicloud is also, you know, a code word for multi-environment. And Robert, I want to ask you, as you mentioned it in your talk with Stu, Miniman, November, consistency across environments. So when you talk to customers, Robert, what are they saying? Because I can imagine them in Zoom meetings right now or teleconferencing saying, look it, we have to have an operating model that spans public, on-premise, multiple environments, whether it's edge or clouds. I don't want to have different environments and being managed separately and different data modeling. I want to have a control plane and this is architectural. I mean, it's kind of complex, but customers are dealing with this right now. What are you hearing from customers? How are they handling? Are they doubling down on certain projects? Are they reshaping some of their investments? I mean, what's the mindset of the customer right now? The mindset is that the customers are under extreme pressure to control cost and to improve automation and governance across all their platforms. The businesses that we deal with have established themselves in a public cloud, at least to some extent with what they call their systems of engagement. Those are all the, a lot of the elastic systems, the ones that the high risk dealers do very well. And then they have all of their existing on-premises stuff which are typically heavily focused on a VM-based mindset which is being more and more viewed as a legacy actually. And so they're looking for that next decade of operating model that spans both the public and the private cloud on-premises world. And what's risen up in that operating model is the open-source Kubernetes orchestration-based operating model where they give them the potential of walking into another operating model that's holistic across both public and private, but more importantly has a way for their existing platforms to move into this new operating model. And that's what you were talking about using state full applications that are more legacy-minded, model-ethic, but still can run in the container-based platform and move to a new holistic operating model. Nobody's under the impression, by the way, that the existing operating model we have today on-premises is compatible with a cloud operating model. Those two are not compatible in any shape or form. We have to get to an operating model that's holistic in nature and we see that path as being the one that's not right today. And that's a great Tia for the software question, Robin, I want to go to Kamar. I want to get your thoughts because I know you personally enough in following your career certainly will deepen computer science and software. So I think it's a good role for you. But if you look at what the future is, and this is the conversation we're having with CIOs and customers on theCUBE, is when I get back to work post-COVID, I got to have a growth strategy. I need to reset, reinvent, and have growth strategy. And all the conversations come back to the apps that they have to redevelop or modernize, right? So workloads or whatever. So what that means is they really want true agility, not just as a punchline or a cliche. They got to move security into the DevOps Pipelining. They got to make the application environments DevOps. And DevOps was kind of a fringe industry thing for about a decade. And now that's influencing IT ops, security ops and network ops. These are operational systems, not just, hey, let's slain some Kubernetes and service meshes around. This is like real nuts and bolts business operation. So IT ops is impacted, SecOps is impacted, networking ops, not for the faint of heart. DevOps, I get that. Now it's coming everywhere. What's your thoughts on that? We see those things coming together, John. So as again, going back to the HP as well, what we believe this innovative software is it can run on any infrastructure to start with, whether it's HP hardware or non-HP hardware. It's a called hybrid. And as we said, we talked about it is, whether it is an edge or it is where the processing is. We also committed to providing integrated, optimized, secure, elastic and automated solutions. This is, I think, your question about, it's not just appealing to the one segment of the organization. I think there's going to be a, I cannot just say I'm only giving you the DevOps solution, but it has to have a security built into it. This is why we are actually committed to making our solutions more elastic, more scalable. We are investing in building a complete runtime stack and making sure it has all the fleet controls. It's not only optimized for the work solution, which we call the work runtime stack. It's also has, this is our green lake solution that brings these two pieces together. Robert, you mentioned- We see- Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, John. Well, Robert, you mentioned automation earlier. This is where the automation dream comes in. You mentioned MLOps as a service. What you're really getting at is programability for the developer across the board, right? Is that kind of what you're thinking or- Well, there's two parts to that. And this is really important. The developer community is looking for a set of tools that they can be very creative and movement with, right? They don't want to have to be worried about provisioning, managing, maintaining any kind of infrastructure to get that done. And so there's this bridge between that automation and the actual getting things done. So that's number one. More importantly, and I think this is hugely important as you look about pushing into the on-premises world. For HPE or anybody else to succeed in that space, you have to have a high degree of automation that takes care of potential problems that humans would otherwise have to get involved with and that's what they had cost. So you have to drive in a, what Kumar is talking about, a fleet controls or fleet management services that automate their behavior and give them an SLA that they are accustomed to in public cloud. So you've got two sets of automations that you really have to be dealing with. Not only are you talking about the DevOps, the SecOps, the Static, you just talked about, but you've got to have a corresponding automation back into, to drive a higher user experience at both levels. And Esmeral is platform is cool. I get that, I hear that. So the question, next question on that Kumar is, platforms have to enable value. What are you guys enabling for the value when you talk to customers? Because everyone sees the platform play as the architecture, but it has to create disruptive enabling value. What do you think? Yeah, I'll go and as a starter, I think we pointed out to you this, when we announced the container platform, it's of the very unique, it's not only it's an open source Kubernetes, it has a persistent, one of the best underlying persistent storage integrated the original map or file system. As I pointed out, it runs one of the world's largest databases and we can actually allow the customers to run both stateful and stateless workloads. And as I said a few minutes ago, we are committed to having the runtime software run and both HP hardware, non-hardware. So the customers have the choice. And in addition to all of that, I think we are one of the very unique solutions we are offering is ML Ops as we talked about. And this is only beginning and we have a lots of other, for example, Robert is working on a solution. Hopefully we'll announce sometime soon, which is similar to that some of the key elements that we are seeing in the marketplace, the various solutions that goes from the top to the bottom. Robert, to you on the same question, what's in it for me and the customer? Bottom line, what's in it for me? Well, so I think just the ease of simplicity. What we are ultimately want to provide for our client is one opportunity to solve a bunch of problems that I otherwise have to stitch together myself. It's really about value and speed to value. If I have to solve, let's say a computer vision problem in my manufacturing facility and I need a solution and I don't have the IT resources wherewithal and a stack, so like that, but I gotta bring a bigger solution in. I want a company that knows how to deliver a computer vision solution there or within an airport or wherever where I don't need to build out sophisticated infrastructure or people or technologies necessary to support it on my own or have some third-party product that doesn't have a vested interest in the whole stack. HPE is purposely and focused on delivering that experience with one organization from both hardware and software up through the stack, including the applications that we believe are the highest value to the client. We want to be that organization and will be that organization on premises. I think that's great consistent with what we're hearing. If you can help take the heavy lifting away and have them focus on their business and the creativity, I think the application renaissance and transformation is going to be a big focus both on the infrastructure side but also just straight-up application developers. I mean, that's going to be a really critical path for a lot of these companies to come out of this, so congratulations on that strategy. Love the formula. Final conclusion question for both of you guys. This is something that a lot of people might be asking at HPE Discover Virtual Experience or in general as they have to plan and get back to work and reset, reinvent and grow their organizations. Where is HPE heading? How do you see HPE heading? How would you answer that question if customers like Kumar, Robert, where's HPE heading? How would you answer that? Go ahead, Robert, and then I'll come through. Yeah, yeah. I see us heading into the true distributed hybrid platform play where that they would look to HPE of handling and providing all of their resources and solutions needs as they relate to technology further and further into what their specific edge locations would look like. So edge is different for everybody and what HPE is providing is a holistic view of compute and our storage and our solutions all the way up through whether they be very close to edge locations are all the way through the data center and including the integration with our public cloud partners out there. So HPE is actually solving real value business problems in a way that's turnkey and definable for our client in real value. John, I think I'll start with what Antonio shared. We are a edge to the cloud, everything as a service company. And I think where HPE is heading is HPE is Valley Legend and it's actually honored to be part of such a great company. I think what we have to change with the market transformation and the customer needs and what we are doing is we are providing the customers the innovative solution that you don't have to you don't have to take your data where the compute is as opposed to you can take the compute where the data is. And we provide you the simplified automated, secure solutions no matter where your execution needs are. And that is through the significant innovation of the software both for Esmeral and the GreenLake platforms. That's awesome. And for all of us have been through multiple ways of innovation. We've seen this movie before. It's essentially distributed computing, re-imagined and re-architected with new capabilities and new scale. I mean, it's almost back to the old days of network operating systems and networking and OSs and it's a computer. That's a very good point, John. I'll conclude the following way, right? I mean, it's two plus two is four no matter which universe you go to. But you have to change with the market forces. I think the market is what is happening in the market force. As you pointed out, there was a shadow IT, there's a dev ops and there is IT ops and there are network ops and security. So now I think we see that all coming together. I call this Kubernetes is the best equalizer of the past platform. The reason why it became popular is because it's provided that abstraction layer. And I think what we are trying to do is, okay, if that is what the customers wants and we provide you the solution that helps you to build that very quickly without having to lock into any specific platform. I think you got a good strategy there. I would agree with you. I call that, I call it the old TCP IP what that did and networking back in the day. Kubernetes is a unifying disruptive enabler. And I think it enables things like a runtime stack of things that you're mentioning. These are the new realities. And I think COVID-19 has exposed this new architecture to the world. And I would say the consequences of not having something in place. Yeah, yeah, sorry. So the last thing I would say is we are not bolting Kubernetes to anything old technologies. It's a fresh, it's built-in, it's an open source and it is as a service, it can run on any platform that you choose to run on. Well, next time we get together, we'll riff on observability and security and all that good stuff because that's what's coming next, all baked in. Guys, thank you so much, Kumar and Robert. Thanks for spending the time. Really appreciate it here for the HP Discover Virtual Experience Cube conversation. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you very much. No, thank you very much. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle theCUBE. We're here in our remote studios getting all the top conversations for HP Discover Virtual Experience. Thanks for watching.