 to give back in that way. Hello everyone, we are wrapping up two days wall-to-wall coverage from theCUBE live at HPE Discover, Barcelona 2023. I'm Rebecca Knight, Rob Streche here. We've been together again, two days of coverage. What a conference. Yeah, it's been fantastic. I think, again, the energy level has been spectacular and I think the message has been on point. I think there's been a couple of really good key themes throughout from the edge to cloud with all of the HCI improvements and I think we'll talk about that a little bit but I think that when you start to look at sustainability, security, networking, I think a lot of that is key to the underpinnings of AI and where customers really want to go with that and being able to protect that data and store that data so that it can actually build AI. So I think it's been crazy a couple of days. It has and we're going to unpack this all with our special guest, Deanna O'Bear. Welcome back to theCUBE. Thank you so much. Global Hybrid Cloud Sales Director at Microsoft. So you've been here and you're actually here back here tomorrow but I'd love to get your take on this conference, sort of what you're seeing, what you're hearing, your trends, what struck you most, how about that? Start there. It is an interesting few days, right? There's just so much going on in the industry itself and then when you see this all coming together at the same event with HPE and like GreenLake, it's just mind blowing, right? The great announcements on like AI acceleration with HPE and NVIDIA, you talk about the growth of GreenLake with like $1.3 billion in one single quarter, 30% year over year. It truly shows momentum in hybrid cloud and I think if you take that all together with the customers that we talked to and the partners that we have here, I think it's a great event to be all together. So yeah, it's some good momentum I would say. Yeah, I would say so and I think Antonio had done his earnings call just before we got here and I think like you said, the $1.3 billion in ARR. So again, it's a cloud operating model and I think that's what really I think, Antonio leaned in early and I think we talked about this yesterday on the segment you were on that he really leaned into hybrid very early on and kind of took a course for HPE to go down that route. And I think it's been paying off for them. I think- Absolutely and I think one of the things that Antonio said as well is like HPE is becoming the fourth cloud, right? Like you have the big cloud providers there and now you have HPE there as well. And I think the beauty of this is it all works together, right? We all are depending on each other and when you're arriving in a hybrid world where data sits everywhere, anywhere, how do you then partner together? And I think that partnership between Microsoft and HPE to really unlock that potential for our joint customers is just really beautiful to see. Yeah, that's really been a striking, I mean talking about the themes that we keep hearing the strength of the partnership between Microsoft and HPE because of the common values and the common priorities and the common mindset around how we do business and that sustainability is really a core underpinning of everything we do. What are some of the things that you're hearing from customers on the floor? I mean, that's always sort of the most fun, the sessions, yeah, but you know. It's fun that you're saying this because sustainability is such an important topic for many, many customers, right? Like we have all those massive companies and as well smaller companies making those announcements around like how they want to save costs and like make sustainability a really important strategy as part of their organization. And so when you really think about sustainability is like it's not just saying it and like putting it on your website, but how do you carrying it out? How do you get net zero in your emissions? How do you reduce the water raised of cooling down your machines? How do you spend less electricity? And so all those things together is a really important topic. And so this week we have spent a lot of time with all kinds of customers. Like we have talked with customers from retailers, like manufacturers, banking customers, like public sector customers, government people, and they all have kind of a similar thing. It's like, hey, I have been using the native cloud Azure for a long, long time and I'm a long, long time customer as well of HPE but I want to bring it together. And how do I bring that together is really with hybrid cloud. And so hybrid is here to stay, the future is hybrid. And so we need to talk back on like the conversation we had yesterday around like it's not only selling it, it's like co-engineering, co-developing, like building products to really address that need. It's really great to hear that from our customers that we are really addressing their needs and their wishes with like the joint solutions we have. So feedback is all over the place with like, hey, how can I pull through my security that I have in the native cloud all the way to the edge? How can I use Defender on GreenLake? Or hey, I have a VDI environment in the native cloud and now I want to run it on-prem for my government people because I want them to have remote desktops at like skill. Can we do that on GreenLake? Yes, we can. And so pulling through the cloud all the way to the edge and the other way around is creating a solution that helps everyone in this economy. Yeah, I think that is the key is that all of these organizations don't want to have multiple different organizations in their IT to deal with, hey, one for cloud, one for on-prem, one for edge, and they're trying to bring that together in what they're calling platform engineering. And I think having a common set of tools, a common set of services, standardizing, because I think at one point in time, I talked to a customer and they had, they were in Azure, they were in AWS, they were in GCP, they had three different teams that knew all the APIs for those three different, they were building tooling for those specific things. I think now companies have, I think, wised up to a certain extent and said, hey, we want to standardize a little bit more. If not, maybe not on one, but put the majority on one, also get better spending and better discounts and all of that. Are you seeing that the customers this week have been really leaning in on that because it sounds like it from what you were saying. Yeah, no, absolutely. You see a lot of a single approach and single strategy. If you talk about security or your workloads, how do you have an edge to cloud or cloud to edge strategy in place as an organization? So we definitely see that. And that's what we address together with our joint development. Azure Arc is that too that gives you that single plane of glass where you can manage your multi-cloud, multi-hardware, multi-workloads in one single user experience. And that works natively with the GreenLake portal as well. And there's where you have GreenLake with the portal allowing customers to really manage that and putting through all the workloads both ways. So yeah, we definitely see that that skill now happening in the market. So when you go back home and you're telling your colleagues about what happened at HPE Discover, what are some of the things that you're going to take with you in terms of what you've learned here and apply it to say, hey, maybe there's a business opportunity for us over here or let's go over it this way? That's a really good question. There's just so much learnings and I think it's great to come in here with an open mindset. There's so much opportunity out there and all kinds of solutions. But I would say the takeaway for me is AI. It's such an important topic and you've probably heard many people talk about it including Antonio, but AI is a big umbrella name. And under that there's different kinds of services and different kinds of way to apply AI as well like how do you apply AI in the best possible way and in a sustainable way and responsible way. And so one of the things that I really heard this week from our customers is like, how can they apply AI at skill and in a responsible way in their own environments? Like we have all seen chat GTP with consumers and companies laugh but how we as Microsoft, we as a big state or stakeholder in that organization is converting that into a solution. How do you convert that solution inside your organization and making sure that your data is protected, your information is protected and that it doesn't leak outside of your organization. So one of my big takeaways is like the future's hybrid but the future's hybrid with AI and then how do you unlock that next wave of like data and apps at the edge to really connect everything from cloud to edge? Yeah, I think that's exactly it is that AI is going to be everywhere and with Sensei who was on stage with Antonio and they were doing computer vision to understand who's putting stuff in a cart or not taking it and taking it out and all of that to your point, not an LLM, but it's AI and ML underneath the hood that's really powering the computer vision. And I think that what I came away from here and talking to other customers around the coffee and the little cafe down there is that, really they're still on that learning curve. They're starting to dabble in this. Are you starting to see that where it's, they're starting to move from, hey, we're thinking about it to, hey, we're trying it out and we're bringing it in. Yeah, I just think you nailed it down with the learning curve. Customers are looking for trusted advisors and there's no better trusted advisors than Microsoft and HPE. And so helping them in that journey to apply it inside the organizations is in great way. And so you really see scenarios around, hey, how can we apply that in my organization? How do I apply this in my factory? Hey, how do I apply this inside my backend for my retail stores with smart cameras? And I think a beautiful case that Microsoft and HPE have been working on is with a big retailer in Asia, what we talked about yesterday as well, right? They had cameras in the store, in each of the retail stores and there were basically dumb cameras. It was just recording huge amounts of storage needed, but then they didn't do anything with that video feed. And now they have video analytics with AI on top of that, like live streaming and doing tech protection. So they got reports on what could potentially happen. What is real behavior? Are there people coming in that this may be not the right people that you want to have in your store because of a security risk? And so getting that all applied in a strategy inside your organization is where customers are really looking for those trusted advisors. So yes, we see definitely customers making that jump right now to apply it, but it's so important to have the right partners around you to help you in that journey. Well, that's what Antonio Nehria was describing this morning, that so many organizations are data rich and insight poor. So they have a lot of information, but they're not parsing it to understand what is actually meaningful, what could move the needle, and how can we put some of these insights into action. So as you said, they're looking to you, Microsoft and HPE, as trusted advisors to help them master this learning curve. How do you, how are you, I mean, did you have any conversations this week here where you heard about a particular pain point or something like that? Oh, there's so many pain points, right? That's the mess of opportunity, wherever you talk about yesterday as well, the future's bright. I think one of the big pain points for customers is they don't know how to apply it. Like they hear about it, they read about it, they see it on like YouTube and all those other great platforms that we are on right now as well. But like, how do you take that and really apply that in your organization is one really big challenge. And of course you get now much more specialization across the road with partners, with ISVs who applied in their software, with Microsoft of course being really smart on this, like as well like HPE building that up. But one of the big pain points is really around like, I have this vision, I have this strategy, but how do I make it actually actual and how do I apply that in my organization? And that's where I think you get a whole new wave of ecosystem partners who are really specialized in that kind of like deployments. And that's where I see the big pain point right now is like getting over the hurdle to find the right partners around you that has that knowledge, that trust that really can help you in that journey. Yeah I think that was another theme that we heard loud and clear this week again and not surprising being in Europe in that partners mean a lot here. And not just Microsoft and Vidya and others who are technology partners, but also a lot of like Tiger and a number of the other partners who are buying from HPE and Microsoft and building other clouds and building other pieces so that they can actually play in that ecosystem. I think that was to me one of the key factors was seeing how well people were bringing it together. A lot of the value added resellers and SIs in particular that we're on. I think they seem like they are stepping up on the services side and really embracing the AI and trying to help people get ready for that while becoming more sustainable because obviously if you have old kit bringing a new kit is going to be more efficient and maybe you can get a consolidation ratio as well. I agree with you and like an important part of that is like that partner exists to your point, right? Like yes, HPE and Microsoft build great joint solutions on the hybrid cloud and that could include AI but you have a whole partner network of like the big companies when you think about global system integrators like an Atlas, Capgemini, Orange and all those big ones who need to get on this journey as well. And so training their architects, training their product teams so they can add their value on top of that is a really critical piece of that as well. So the world is in a big change right now from an ecosystem perspective. I think the future's bright and we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us. Well, that is the perfect note to end on that Dion. So thank you so much. You just tied that up with a bow and voila, thank you very much. Thank you for this week. Yeah. I'm really excited to be here. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us. It's been a lot of fun. I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob Stretch A and Dion Uber. We are wrapping up our two days of wall to wall coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona 2023. Stay to come back to us next time for our next show. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech enterprise coverage.