 Five from the FIA Barcelona Grand Villa Compensator in Barcelona, Spain, it's The Cube at HP Discover Barcelona 2014 brought to you by headline sponsor HP. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone this is The Cube our flagship program we go out to the events to extract the cinnamon noise is a silicon angle and wiki bonds production HP Discover live in Barcelona I'm John Furrier my co is Dave Vellante our next guest is Seamus Dunn who is now the VP of data center services at HP Cube alumni been on multiple times in fact a few years ago you announced some innovative stuff we were bullish on that we like hey Dave that sounds interesting yeah it's doing pretty well welcome back thank you good to be back so tell us just to replay the tape I wish I had the video handy Jeff Rick would love it but we do have the video we'll pull that up and I'll put up on the crowd chat when you guys launched data center care it was big we were Dave and I remember that time we're talking about DevOps and being there was the beginning of the DevOps movement yeah we saw a lot of migration towards cloud so obviously the customers saw that and said hey I got to prepare and it's doing pretty well so zero in revenue to billions billions I can't quote the number but I do know the number billions thousands of customers across every vertical in 150 countries it resonated and that took off so data center care was the product we covered it on so why did it resonate so what was the big deal was it because of the DevOps movement was it because customers became sensitive to this this new marching orders of migration to the cloud or something else you know the reason I resonated was the value proposition that we knew was associated with this was to help you operate what you had in IT and then help you evolve your IT that was our proposition help you better operate what you have and help you evolve to a new style of IT and we specifically said to give you agility of your IT and to give you reliability of your IT and part of the reason we knew that that was required value proposition was it was too complex it was multi-vendor out across your hardware up your stack a lot of seams to manage so we actually it's a partnership based service where we can put a one number to call across your data center and simplify hide the seams give you reliability allow you to evolve and partner with you to evolve so you can achieve some agility of your infrastructure in your data center and it just just really really resonated and people needed it. So new style of IT part of the turnaround you see the shift of HP that's a good positive sign want to highlight that's I think it does resonate does point to what the customer behavior is so I got to ask you whenever you take territory someone loses territory was there some other services involved that were collapsing into this was it green field opportunity did you split kind of patterns that you see in the marketplace. Well you know the first thing is we took on data center care and we partnered with a customer what we did is we freed up their resources so in some ways we freed up the operations and IT teams to do more do more innovative work. We did take territory from people so for example we took territory in the data center with the footprint in the data center so a recent example is IBM they sold their server business to Lenovo we put it to our customers that maybe you need somebody that's going to stay with you and you know so we took territory there. By taking the IBM contracts from the Lenovo. Absolutely yeah and we helped them with your refresh cycles and how you want to manage that that's one example. We also then have continually added new capabilities into that service so we talked about flexible capacity I recall last year that was an obvious need to give you cloud economics on your data center. We've added what we've called operational support services here in EMEA which is you know taking some what we call maybe outtasking with some tools and advisory services that are packaged to do a little more of the infrastructure to help you and free up your resources. We've added all sorts of analytics monitoring almost every month we add some new capability because of customer feedback it's that when you have a partnership engagement like that you're you're intimately involved with customer needs so it's very easy to innovate you know and add new capabilities. Yeah we had Scott Wellaron who's your boss he's always soft spoken but we've pretty much been on point on this I think going back to one of the announcements we did almost four years ago he saw the trend towards the cloud this whole DevOps thing and he really was articulate on what he wanted to do and it seems like you guys made a lot of progress so I got to ask you has it been in technology driven has it been process driven both and what things have you done great and what are you working on now that's the next set of innovations. That's that's a great idea what I wanted to say so it's been everything I mean people process service knowledge and capability and technology so we're not building a service and a partnership in your data center alone as a service organization we're building it on top of the innovation and EG and with our cloud and helium business unit so it's it's very much technology but it's it's very what we focused on is we're going to help you better operate what you have today and we're going to help you take you on the journey to whatever stage of the new style of IT you want to be on so and that's with in partnership with our cloud business unit our product divisions server storage networking it's with our consulting organization so it's all of the above now what we've seen over two years with data center care and flexible capacity is when it comes down to it just above all of the the new capabilities we've added in is IT because it's not as agile as it needs to be is holding back business did businesses are digital they need flexibility and agility for their business often the lines of business are running ahead of where IT is at so that's that's that's what we've seen more than more than anything they need agile IT to make agile business and what we've what we're doing right now the main thing actually that we're working on over the last number of months is what we're calling data center care infrastructure automation with data center care infrastructure automation we're putting together a set of advisory services processes and tools and we're putting it together and building it into data center care as a service which will help you get to what we call programmable data center or maybe some people use the term software defined data center but basically it means that you can program your data center you can revision it you can deploy it you can monitor it you can roll it back so you can move in a far more agile way with with your IT and that's that's like we're think this is a game changer I mean infrastructure is code you've been talking about that John since I met you but I want to shame us unpack a little bit the old new style of IT every time I hear that term I picture Meg she likes that term and then she would you know she's talking to a big audience she talks about cloud mobile social big data security okay that's cool but when you get down to the front lines and IT they all and to me it's all driven by cloud right they want to be cloud like you know you're talking about programmable what I call programmable infrastructure automation yeah it's like give me a way to code through an API give me access to a data center that I can then provision manage orchestrate you know through software yeah got it okay great so that's a new style of IT and you're talking about data center care helping people get more out of what they have today because that's critical everybody always wants to just go to the new stuff yeah and forget about the old but then get from A to B and and do so in a way that delivers ROI for the company so describe that new style of IT in practical terms is what's actually happening on the ground in your customer base sure I think you hit the nail in the head day first so the key is to get more out of the IT that you have today to get more out of the IT that you have today obviously data center care as we've constructed as a service is core but adding infrastructure automation is going to allow you to automate and really software control your data center you can think of your data center as a piece of software now Scott Weller as you know his vision we'd be behind this in our business and he uses a Russian doll analogy so data center care flexible capacity infrastructure automation means that whatever your data center is your IT will be supported you have a partner to support it we can give you flexible capacity so you can have the economics of a cloud environment on your own premise and we're going to automate the infrastructure for you that's sort of the outer shell regardless of the data center that you have now it only gets better as you add some of the technologies that you see all around us here in this cover when you add in technologies at the just at the infrastructure level so the converge systems one view as a management software it just makes it better it's making it software defined at the infrastructure level when you move into software defined network you see over in our networking booth it gets even better when you build up in that and you think I can have a hybrid environment and I can use with helium I can have a platform that allows me to move on and off premise with helium open stack it gets even better so we're starting at the data center level with data center care with flexible capacity with infrastructure automation as I've described packaging advisory services packaging tools and processes and that's kind of an outer layer of the Russian doll is as we're using as an analogy but it gets even better as you add and transition to the new technologies and that's that's when you ultimately get to what's what's that the best value proposition of that the new style of IT and and you mentioned automation before the sort of a statement of direction I guess but how about connecting to some of those automation tools and things of that nature talk about that a little bit is that in the plans yeah well so we have connected products and we get a lot of data and we do a lot of analytics with that connected products and the data we get back but with infrastructure automation built into data center care what we're doing is allowing a level of programming to thank you data center software which means you can make rapid changes of all the time it takes risk because you're doing it so often it takes risk out of the equation because to make changes on the infrastructure and the data center as it exists today feels risky I have to plan I have to do some tests they have tests on the side I kind of implemented in production but if you can program your data center be able to provision it be able to configure it and operate it more programmably the risk is taken out so the needs to connect that those layers is abstracted away and it gets even better down as you move into the newer technologies so we have questions from the crowd famous from Tim Crawford what's the value purposes for HP DC services today and moving forward so the value proposition for for data center care today said there's a difference in theory and reality I don't know what he means by that but well the reality is that the two and a half thousand customers that we have and we're continuing to grow with and adding a rapid adding to it a rapid rate the benefit that they're getting is we're helping them get more out of the IT that they own today there's one number to call for their data center we look after not just the HP infrastructure but the software to back-to-back arrangements up through the stack to other vendors hardware and not only that we we simplify and hide the seams across that complexity in their data center and not only that we helped him operate not just operate but evolve to whatever style of IT they want so he has how is how much is that a success of driven from other sources like EDS very very little very very little at all actually I mean there's some and we certainly engage with that but they are in my service organization it is not really part of this data center care so it's separate yeah it's a separate thing so Tim separate question they're not basically moving EDS money over well but so but Tim brings up an interesting point he's saying that data center software is great in theory the reality is very few organizations are capable of getting there that's the music to the ear of the services guys yeah but so having said that I mean am I said it at once I've said many times Amazon's turning the data center into an API now granted it's public cloud it's only certain workloads but it's a very clear that that model of being able to program infrastructure is one that yeah that is is changing the world now where people are very and very relevant it's not a word it is relevant right and it scales and it's changing the economics of the data center now Tim's right the reality is is on the maturity curve yeah you know we're not there yet outside of certain apps you know the obvious stuff test dev maybe web apps but more and more is moving so I wonder if you can comment on yeah I'd love to come I thought at the first reaction is two years ago we first started talking about data center care there was a lot of questions like that and you know now it's like there's not so many questions doubting the step you're going to smile I mean like we're pretty happy with the business there businesses there the next step into the question like just taking the public cloud question so and I think the comment was there's the reality and you know there's the value proposition and they both match listen the the the approach of going out to public cloud is an economic one and it's because I can as you say extracts to an API what I've just tried to describe and what we're building on with data center care with data center care infrastructure automation is allowing you to do that in a hybrid environment but public cloud and but allow you to do it for all the benefits on premise we're building in flexible capacity we're changing the economics to be more similar to what you would expect from it as a service public cloud we're giving you an as a service on premise with those economics with the infrastructure automation approach we're allowing you to think your data center as a piece of software and access to two APIs in fact you can think of that same logic going down through each of the layers down to helium or open stack or whatever platform you're operating on you can think of it the same way in fact with software defined devices like software defined networking you're allowing that API access so think of that model on to the whole stack we're going to start data center level data center care we've already got a presence we build flexible capacity and we're building infrastructure automation on that we're going to have this available to our customers that have data center care already over the next few months and we're building out a capability so we're betting on it so flexible capacity let's talk about flexible capacity because that's an interesting one it gets into because the thing that I always ask is or talk to when I talk to IT organizations the next thing I say you got to compete with Amazon or you got to go to the public cloud but you have to at least demonstrate the type of flexibility agility and cost structure that the public cloud can that's the mandate because you get in pressure to do that and that's what your business is all about is enabling that now let's take flex capacity because I want to I want to probe that a little bit if I understand a flex capacity is essentially you guys will over provision capacity and the data center turn it on with the key as I need it yeah now maybe I'm simplifying it but well will that eventually move to to to helium based flexible capacity approach for example because it already has that already has okay so because otherwise you can't compete on a margin basis right I mean is that so there's a number of customers here at the event today you're speaking that have benefited from flexible capacity in a huge way our growth rate with flexible capacity and customer adoption is faster than even what it was for data center care it's it's it's rockin it's it's hard to keep up really the value proposition is not just over provisioning capacity it's allowing you to have public cloud economics k per use infrastructure on your premises by the drink yes yeah the over provisioning is it's metered it's used it's used per it's built as it's me we need a public cloud in the data center it is but over provisioning is the means but that's not the value proposition I didn't mean to apply that's the value proposition the value propositions as you're saying is the agility paid by the drink please carry on it's it's cash so you know that laying right it's its speed you get it fast it's elasticity or flexibility to scale up and down yeah why wouldn't people take advantage of that it's it's a no-brainer and in fact what's what's interesting is of course that you know the decision-makers you know for something like that change and evolve a little bit we're sometimes going to Amazon was like a shadow activity that people did with their credit card on the side don't tell anybody and you know that's unfortunate reality but for flexible capacity once once this CIO the CFO and a line of business managers grasp it the purchasing manager grasp it it's a no-brainer it's it's exactly what they need to do the scale and it's a part of the value proposition for the agility they need the economics they need it's it becomes a no-brainer and you know if you look at what some of our developers and if you move to think about DevOps what they have to do they they have really gone for developing on a platform and they've assumed a past model in fact with flexible capacity with infrastructure automation with all of the other technologies as you layer it down when you choose the right platform you can do all of that on your premises all the economics the benefits you get speed the agility so we put a number of these things together and join the value proposition of they're not only in isolation so flexible capacity has a great value proposition in and of itself but when you couple that with automation of your interest or of your data center and you couple it with data center care wrapped around it that's when the value proposition comes together and that's how you achieve agile I do what percent of the customers you talk to you mentioned you could do all that on premises what percent of your customers say I don't want to do anything on premises I just want to go to the cloud can you help me is that a single-digit percentage is it zero is it double digits well I I think everybody wants to have a cloud wants to go some time I want to eat and get on some clouds so hybrid hybrid IT hybrid IT is virtually a hundred percent almost 100% of the customers that we have a data center care want on-premise IT also and they want so that's why we build a hybrid sport model that we announced last last year so I bridge hybrids the dominant model going forward in yes you can see and as outliers that are maybe say I don't want anything in the cloud it's a bad word maybe it's you know government organizations or maybe certain financial service and then is it's correct that there's outliers that want to put everything in Amazon I mean reinvent Amazon had a big push on going all in the cloud but you seeing any of that some of that we probably see that with startups maybe yeah okay so it's outliers or startups yeah our enterprise customers you know that the IT is your business it's integral to their business they want the cloud proposition there are some things they want to put out in the public cloud but ultimately the security the compliance the latency the performance they they want they need an on-premise value proposition but their expectations for their data center in terms of agility the flexibility the economics are being set by the public cloud experience so I like to use a because I live in an old house right really old house like 1600s right and anytime we have to get this conversation anytime you do anything like you put an extension on you got to build old to new anytime you connect old with new that's the most complicated part and I presume that's true with IT and in hybrid cloud so how if that's exactly the point I think that's that's what I was trying to say we will with data center care with infrastructure automation we will help you get more out of what you have today that's that's critical in infrastructure automation the tools we've put together the competency needs to build out for advisory services the processes to be wrapped around that both in extending into data center care that's all about getting more out of what you have today and creating a context for you to be able to move and transition technologies underneath that be that systems for your infrastructure different management software defined hybrid it allows you it gives you a context to get more out of what you have today and and make the technology transitions underneath it to ultimately get it to be more agile that that is a value proposition that's why I think about exactly as you described how do I how do I look after my whole but still making it better in the future and that's that's that's a good way to look at what we've what we've done here with data center care so infrastructure automations the big announcement shame is done here inside the cube it's been great watching you guys grow scott's been on early on with the cube scott's there are 50 year here at hb discover we're embedded now it's like but I got to say you know you guys are moving up the stack and really taking a pragmatic approach obviously you're winning that's the numbers speak to themselves you got happy customers so we got infrastructure automation are you going to launch next year infrastructure orchestration service you know we've we've got to connect that dot we've no 2016 announcements yet we will I'm projecting the winner of the state of the data center will be infrastructure automation next orchestration next year we believe it's we believe infrastructure automation is a game changer and we're going to build that out next year and we'll keep taking feedback from the customers when you've got intimate relationships with customers you know it's great it's the best place to get feedback so they'll they'll determine large automation is a great thing it's a attractive way the complexities and provide value that's the future of the cloud shame is done here inside the cube great to have them on vp of services brew beer with an hb cube alumni out in the front lines helping customers great to always hear your perspective congratulations on your success and your new launch this is the cube we'll be right back after this short break I'm John Perry with Dave Vellante we'll be right back