 TheCube presents HPE Discover 2022, brought to you by HPE. Welcome back to HPE Discover 2022. You're watching TheCube's coverage. We're day two here, Dave Vellante with John Furrier. Heiko Meyers here. He's the executive vice president and chief sales officer, relatively newly minted chief sales officer at HPE and Paul Hunter, who's the senior vice president and managing director of North America for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Gentlemen, welcome to TheCube. Thanks for having us. Heiko, this is the first time back in Vegas in a while. Three years, I think it's been, and you're first as the chief sales officer? Yep. What's the vibe like? How's it feel? I can tell you, it's so cool, is it? You walk down the hallway, everybody's smiling, and you see people from, you have seen three years ago, or in this format on your screen the last three years. I think what is amazing, we had exactly three years ago, we had this event and Antonio mentioned, hey, and by end of 2022, you will see everything being available as a service. And nobody thought about that we will not meet in person until 2022 at that point in time. And guess what happened? I can tell you, it was the best decision to make an in-person event here in Vegas with so many people because it's about, hey, the change in the market, the demand, the transition, and so I think I couldn't be more happy to see the last two days than looking for the rest of the event. Paul, you have a background in the channel, and now you're heading North America. What are you seeing in the ecosystem? Is there a difference? Is like I was saying from 2019, is there a different feeling, different conversations? What are you seeing? Yeah, well, the good thing is like, because we haven't been here for three years, you've got a really marked moment of comparison. So you'll cast your mind back, what were the conversations like? I think three years ago, we were talking about cloud services and partners were nodding their heads and thinking, yeah, but the world is going to continue as normal. And we fast forward three years and the partners are really talking about proactively, how do they build up that cloud services? And they're also talking about customer experiences as well. We've landed on one new customer. So that's really sort of thrilling to hear that they're really excited about the journey they're on with us. You know, I'd like to get your perspective on what happened during the pandemic because we saw, first of all, Zoom and Videocon was saved, the internet had meetings, but the partners delivered a lot of value. Customers had to pivot or if they had a tailwind, they had, they took advantage of it. Some had headwinds with the pandemic. Everyone's working at home. So a lot of disruptions for all the companies, but a lot of the partners had success during the pandemic and because they have that solution. What was the learnings that you guys saw during the pandemic? Because now with cloud, cloud scale, hybrid, mainstream and now a steady state, people lived it and partners delivered a lot of solutions in hybrid mode, in virtual mode. What was the learnings for you guys coming out of that with customers and partners? I think, first of all, we all learned during the pandemic that you can do business in a different way. But as well, you learned how to pivot faster in the digital transformation. This makes a difference and this creates value. And I think together with our partner ecosystem, we were able to develop faster solutions there. While we developed everything as a service and came up with more and more cloud services. The good thing is, it resonates. And our history with the partners is, I don't know, as long as I can think back in my career. And you only can do that together with the channel partners. And I think they appreciate that we learn from each other. We do the same enablement from my guys, like from the partner guys. And this close relation, I think made the difference. You know, in 2019, GreenLake as a service was really a financial vehicle, right? And now that's evolved. And now, two years on, three years on, it's actually a cloud service. And so, what's the resonance been with customers? Because everybody says they want that cloud experience. They may not all want OPEX. So what have you heard from customers? First of all, what I hear is not the if, so the strategy is clear. The customer, they'll love it. They like it. They want to have the cloud-like experience. And guess what? We have 70 cloud services now. And we have announced a lot of new ones the last couple of days. But it's not so much the if they should do this. It's more the question, how can we help me to scale faster? And that's the feedback I got the last couple of days. And for us, it's a motivation. We are on the right track. This is a moment where you have a demand from the market and a strategy that fits. And this is so strong. And you can do this with the partner, through the partners. And you see the customers, they love it. I have never seen an event where I got so many requests the last two days. So I say, I thought that can you help me to get there faster? It's perfect. Yeah, I think it was also a landmark moment when we presented the cloud platform as part of Antonio's keynote. I've had a lot of partners say, this was sort of really marked the moment when we felt there was this real substance to the offering now. And I had one of the sales guys relate to me a story where they have a client in the audience and they're thinking about how they might have a relationship with us. And through seeing the kind of significance of it for us, we were able to close deals. So that's also a really exciting thing. We're actually, you know, we're closing deals and winning new customers. Hey, being agile and closing deals fast is a good thing, right? I mean, that's what you guys like. Yeah, that's what we like. So I love the channel conversation and partners because one of the things that I've observed and knowing the HP channel is so strong, they're, obviously they want to make money. Gross margin is all about the profit. The profit motive, but the enablement that you guys have, how is that translated into this shift? Everyone's aligned behind Green Lake and as a service because this seems to be a good fit for partners because they're going to go to the customer, the ultimate end customer and bolt on services. Yeah. How is that going? Because this to me seems like a dream scenario for services, which we all know is high gross margin. Yeah, and I think it's a journey. What's a journey for our sales organization a station like it is for the partners, but it's a journey worth to do that. And so what is our strategy to have this together with our channel partners in mind to combine their strengths. And they can, we have a kind of modular approach so that they can plug in their strengths, their IP or as well their services, which makes them sticky and relevant to the customer and it drives profitability. And I think that's the secret behind the model working with the channel, not separate to the channel. And I think this resonates, this story, it's a journey. And we learned a lot, a lot three years how to sell it. In the past, we were selling transactional hardware. Now we are selling services, cloud services, like you mentioned, different game. And this is an enablement and we offer the same trainings we are doing with our folks to our channel partners because we are together in this journey. Yeah, you described it really well. And so did HIKO, essentially this is, it requires a lot of persistence because you're not going to get it right the first time. And so we've now seen partners try and fail several times but now try and fail and succeed. So that's exciting. And also I think what we're also seeing is partners are doing quite a good job of building services that integrate into the cloud services. So they're right into the APIs. I was with a meeting with a partner called CBTS and they talked about the whole of their services portfolio now is embedded in GreenLake. So that certainly was not the case three years ago. And the other big tailwind too is you got the open source software movement. You're seeing the ability for partners and ultimately the channel being software enabled. They're adding services, not just professional services but cloud services where they have the domain expertise that are close to the customer. And they could really be customizing solutions. And that's going to always be great for the customer. The question I have for you guys is do you see that domain specialism with machine learning and with software, you see partners start to get vertically focused and start to get more targeted towards, say, verticals? Yeah, you go. No, go first. Well, again, it's funny, your questions are completely resonating with the conversations we've been having all day. I was with a partner called Connection and they're talking about how do they build practices in four areas. And I'm quite closely aligned to our areas of Edge Cloud and data. They have another one which is also workplace transformation. And they're thinking, how do we add expertise? How do we hire, recruit and retain the best talent? And that, again, that wasn't a conversation we were having two, three years ago. So where partners really add value to us is through their services and their expertise and progressive partners are hiring and doing that. Yeah, and this transformation I mentioned earlier, it's selling outcomes, business outcomes for the end customer. And I think selling outcomes means you need to be specialized in something. Be it on a domain area or be it on a vertical. And I think when you focus on that, that's the best way you can add value to a customer. This creates this trust relationship. So Edge Cloud and data, obviously, I think Edge, you guys, you get sending stuff out of space, that's the ultimate Edge. You got some proof points there. Deep Edge. I think Deep Edge, yeah. That's very good. I think Cloud, you showed the console for Delma, it had a very clear and strong platform message. Okay, now go build. The data piece to me is the least mature when I walk around. Although I did see Starburst out there. I think Starburst is a very advanced leading edge thinker. So that was a good sign. What do you see as having to happen to really build out that data ecosystem now? So I think what is important, this is all connected to each other. Edge, Cloud and data. And at the end it's about how you can create insights out of the data. Where they live, where they come up the data, how we structure them, how we get insights out of the data. So I think this is an area we'll see much more. It's not only about AI, but it's about having a data strategy as a customer. This is one of those areas we have customer advisory boards that tell us, hey, help us. We want to create our data strategy. And this is something where I think we can play together with our partners to really create value, get these insights out of the data. Are you hearing conversations where customers or partners are saying, okay, I want to get insights out of the data, but I actually want to build a data business. I want to build data products on GreenLake. Are you hearing that yet? Yeah, we are. Particularly the sort of, we think of them as sort of information modern companies. They're building out new service lines. I mean, we see it in a lot of industries now. You can see like how car manufacturers are increasingly thinking about how do they monetize the data they're getting from it. And so there are new businesses being established like in lots of different verticals. And pharmaceuticals will be another one where traditional players are really being challenged and there are big businesses growing very rapidly based off data. So we're seeing it quite extensively and we have to think about how do we access those new customers? How do we intersect them? And it's not just the people that we've been dealing with for 10, 20 years, they're very new companies. Which announcements got the most buzz in your conversations with customers and partners? It's funny. So I had, when I started my conversation at a couple of meetings now, the last two days, always started and said, what resonates? And first of all, the funny thing is everybody told me the clarity of the message, the strategy. Second, the consistency that we do what we promise to do. A couple of them I noted down, it's a private cloud enterprise. It's a great solution here. And then what I hear as well, with our clarity in the strategy, we are leapfrogging the competition. That's what I get out of these meetings and I think that's the best compliment we can get for the two days. Yeah, I think the platform and the conversations around machine learning AI, we even had an HP executive talk about quantum. So you guys are already starting to think about what's around the corner. And I think if the platform works, the test will be and the results will be enablement. Ecosystem will be flourishing. And we're going to watch that. So I want to get your take on the early shift. Cause I think this year with GreenLake and the platform, it's it's maturing it up to the right. No doubt about it. We see the momentum, but there's still a lot more to do and go. So how do you guys envision the ecosystem developing? Because that'll be the true test, the flourishing because if you enable, people will get value out of it. And it's got to be a step function, not incremental value. I think we always talk about, hey, we landed and then we expand from there. That's the beauty of the model. And the good thing is there's no when they're looking for the customer. So they are free. That's a modular system. And what we see it's really, first of all, to understand the customer digital journey where on the journey. And they're all in a different place. And we have this digital next advisor workshop. When we have this anchor point, you start there, you really can grow. And then you add workloads based on where the customer sits, what are the partnerships we have to bring to that. So it's really a model which starts and is designed for the future. The field must love it. The folks in the field. We love it. You guys love that. Absolutely, yeah. Give it the customer plan, future. And I can tell you, the partners love it as well. Got it. When I talk to CIOs and I ask them, what's changed with Ukraine and supply chain and inflation and rising interest rate, what's changed in terms of your assumption from the beginning of the year? You know, let's say in terms of IT spend and they're saying, well, not a lot actually. We're going to continue to spend and we are reprioritizing. You know, we're taking Robin a little bit from over here to put it into security. Okay, but generally speaking, it's the same as we expected. Let's call it six, 7% growth, which is pretty good on top of last year. And maybe there's some dry powder there depending on how business goes. It also seems like there's a lot of headwinds at the macro in B to C. You know, some of the consumer companies, but B to B is booming. So I think that. What do you guys see? Absolutely. I completely agree that the demand will continue for different reasons. It could be a little bit shift within the demand as you described, but they know exactly they're on a journey in the digital transformation. If they stop now, they have a competitive disadvantage. So they are wisely investing. So I think that the demand will stay here. Yes, everybody talks about macroeconomics recession. We are confident we will see in our B to B part continued demand. And they're well capitalized as are a lot of the ecosystem partners. Yeah, and it's not a nice to have. It's a must have. I mean, I don't know of any customers that are de-investing in technology, de-investing in the lifeblood of their business. Guys, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It's great to see you. Congratulations on being here. And best of luck with all the follow up from the show. I'm sure there will be a lot. We're going to update next year to see how it turned out. Yeah. Don't worry, it'll be good. It turned out first. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you for watching this segment. This is Dave Vellante for John Furrier. theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 22 from Las Vegas. We'll be right back.