 and welcome back everyone to theCUBE's continuing live coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host along with my co-host and analyst Rob Streche. We have two guests for this segment. We have Valerie de Fonseca, the senior director worldwide hybrid cloud sales at HPE. Welcome back. Thank you, Valerie. And Brian Thompson, he is the VP of Product Management, HPE GreenLake Cloud Services. Welcome back to you, Brian, but we just had Valerie. So, yeah. You're welcome to you as well. Valerie's almost one of the hosts at this place. Exactly, yes, yes. So, I want to talk about this idea about how many customers have moved as many workloads as possible to the public cloud and have become almost hybrid by accident, but that comes with a lot of challenges. Can you describe a little bit about, just describe the customer problem right now in terms of this hybrid by accident? That's right. The topic that we are discussing this week. So, you write, you know, all customers that started their journey to cloud, they moved as many workloads as they could to the cloud, the private, to the cloud. And half of them could just not be moved because you've got your edge, you've got compliance, security reasons, for performance reasons. There are many applications that just couldn't be moved to the cloud. And that's really where our customers are coming because that's the frustration. You want the same experience. You want that same experience that you are getting, you know, the cloud economics, the agility, the flexibility that you have in the cloud and you want to bring that across all your different states. And that's exactly where everyone has become hybrid by accident. And where we're trying to bring our customers when they come to us is that, okay, now you need to become hybrid by design. So, how do you really understand all your different environments? What is the unified cloud operating model that you want to build so you can really bring that same experience, you know, in your data centers, in your colos, on-prem, at the edge, and really get that same benefit and experience across? So that's really what we're thinking is that you need to become hybrid by design if you want to get to those benefits and solve those challenges. Yeah, and let's break it down to one of the favorite use cases of everybody in the past year since ChatGPT went crazy, is the fact that AI doesn't necessarily, and we talked about this, you know, Antonio's leaned in early on data and data locality as well as on hybrid. And AI is one of those where it kind of breaks a lot of those things. What's, you know, Brian, what's the state of AI and data privacy and how does hybrid play into that? Yeah, it's been interesting to see in that hybrid, as Valerie mentioned, right? There's, in some cases, the over rotation. I have workloads all over the place. How do I get that same experience? AI is almost exacerbating that, right? You think about that data gravity piece, and we think about private cloud models or where customers are like, a lot of the new AI workloads that I'm trying to build, I'm inferencing based on that data. So whether I'm doing things like even in my own edge, I'm doing some kind of inferencing of video analytics at the edge for patterns, I'm running against that model or I'm running against the data that's kind of core to that platform. So I'm leveraging that same locality of data and that data gravity, it's where my corporate data is, that I'm now trying to run these AI workloads against. Again, whether it's in my data center on-prem, in edge locations, but the hybrid model becomes key to that. How do I enable those experiences still leveraging where my data is and where I need to run against that? So how do you then, and it's not an issue of persuading the customer of this hybrid by design approach as you said, Valerie, but how do you bring them along to understand the hybrid by design is actually what you want, not the accident, the design? Yeah, I think it's, Valerie's comments exactly right is people stumbled into like, I'm hybrid now, I didn't realize that I came to that organically. If you can do that in a deliberate way, how do I actually help their end constituents make informed workload placement decisions by solving that cloud experience? How do I level that playing field? The same tooling, automation, experience that my constituents are looking for, that self-service, but now I can deliver in these form factors based on geolocality of data or price performance or security or any other mechanism. I think that's been important in enabling that cloud experience for customers to do it in a more informed and deliberate nature rather than by accident. And I would add maybe on to that that at the company level, it's so there's you need to have that technology analysis and understand about your IT operating model, but it's also about processes. It's also about people, how you bring them to that change management and really operate in a different way so everyone will exactly get the same experience. And I think that's also one thing that we do with our customers differently is that and we've been successful with the E2Caf, so our Edge helped me there. Our E2Caf analysis, it's an assessment that we have where we analyze their workload placements but also all their processes, people so they can build that new operating model so we help them also moving to that new model and make sure that all the users will exactly get the same expectations that they were in any of those IT environments. I think that's huge because I think a lot of times people are trying to figure out what are the requirements? What are the security requirements? What are the data locality or sovereignty requirements? What are the performance requirements for these AI workloads and workloads in general? How are you really solving for that? Why don't we start with Brian there? Yeah, it goes back to some of that kind of cloud adoption framework and how are you helping? I knew where you were going with that. Thank you DH to cloud adoption framework. I was looking at it. How do you help organizations do that type of, it's almost a risk assessment in certain ways, right? Think about the workload itself, dependencies, cost profile, locality requirements, things that would drive or inform those types of workload placement. And it goes back to then having that, for lack of a better analogy, like a portfolio available to the IT organization. How do I help enable those constituents to make informed workload placement decisions? AI is just a new workload profile type, but I have the same kind of core thing, right? What are my data performance, things that drive those decisions and helping them make a, with kind of a matrixed approach, that informed placement decision that goes into it. Is that a piece that you bring to the customers and how you engage with them? How do you engage with them around bringing that intelligence? Because I think part of it is that customers just don't have the skill sets, especially when you start to get into AI and Gen AI and hybrid and things of that nature, you really get into this, it's very complicated realm. So are you bringing that to them as part of the engagement with them upfront is when you're going and looking at Hybrid Cloud with them? So there's one part which is in the assessment, first we need to understand the as is, what are the skills that you have? What are the needs, the challenges? And then this is when we try to bring together our expertise and understand where they need us to be more in a managed services environment where we bring everything as a turnkey solution so they don't have to worry about it so they can really dedicate their resources, where they need it to the business. And I think yes, but we need to understand first where are the gaps. So if you don't go through that assessment and have that common analysis with the right people because it's not only bringing the IT people in that conversation, you need to bring the business. And many times there's a big bridge between the IT and the line of business where you need to bring them together so they're really exchange around their challenges and what is the future and how does it look like for the company? So I think it's more about as is and then we understand where are the gaps and yes to answer your question, we bring those skills when they are needed. I am fascinated by this conversation because of people and change management and the cultural issues that this brings it out. Because as you said, it's not just the IT teams that need to get on board, it is also the business people and they often speak different languages. So how do you, and I'm really interested in the fact that you are working on this as an issue and you see this as a really critical way that this technology is implemented, how do you work with your customers and how do you bring people along because that really is the critical to make any of this successful. The people have to be on board. A different methodology. We brings actually our professional and service, advisory and professional services where we have really talented team that can help here but also our ecosystem of partner. I think that when we do not have the skills we do exactly the same. So we've got a fantastic ecosystem of partners that can really help us there. So sometimes it's with GSI, sometimes it's with other consulting companies that can really help us and really try to build that assessment aligned to what the customers want. So you're right, I think it's a mix of what we can deliver but also leveraging all the skills that we have to the different partners. I think even at an offering level if you look at some of the things that we've done and where our private cloud portfolio has really grown, it's beyond can I deliver a reference architecture and a stack of kit, it's more of can I actually deliver and operate a cloud for you? So delivering those kind of SLAs and experiences that underlying substrate that now lets you run and focus your resources higher up in that stack on those types of AI workloads and driving kind of business benefits and outcomes from that. That's where I think in that partnership our advisory and professional services helping guide towards that but taking and delivering the needed I as components for you to run those solutions higher in the stack. And that's where HPE GreenLake comes in, right? I mean, that's where you see this helping them solve some tough challenges. What are some of those challenges that you're helping them solve with GreenLake? Yeah, in some ways, I think it even comes back to the cultural change. Rebecca that you mentioned before is it's one thing to provide the technical components, right? Those building blocks of infrastructure but now delivering them in a scalable, repeatable, consumable way that literally does it, frees up those internal operational resources to be higher up in the stack focused on driving value to their constituents be it their developers or application owners or end customers or wherever that kind of goes. The GreenLake model allows us to bring these components and solutions together and deliver more of an outcome-based experience, right? Again, helping them make more optimal use of their own precious resources. And I would add to that if you want to, what is HP GreenLake? You'll start because I know that we're hearing a lot of things. I think it's HP's portfolio of our cloud solutions, IS, SAS solution, but also flexible as a service solution that we do in a customized way also for our customers. So, and it's also complemented, as I mentioned, by our partners to bring some integrated solutions as we discussed earlier with some of our ISV partners just to bring the ease of business and the simplicity to the companies. And having said that, I think that where I want to go is that that gives really plenty of options to the customer to decide where they want to stay from a very standardized platform towards something that is very customized depending on the level of maturity that they have and depending on the business needs that they want to answer. The challenge is, I think they're always the same that we mentioned. It's how can I scale up and down? How can I be secure? How do I work with an open AI-enabled platform? How do I get the performance that I need with the right workload placement? I think it's all of those things that you just start writing your wish list and you hand it over and you say, now what do you build for me? And the answer is, well, it can be very standard if you're happy to come with us and join and maybe get 80% of your needs, but then you'll be able to scale and it will be able to really get a platform that will be with you in the next two, three, five years or you want something completely customized that we can do also. But then, what's the future look like? You don't know because you will have to redefine it on a yearly basis or whenever you go for a roadmap. And I think you love road maps. I do. Sustainability has been a real theme at this conference. I'm curious, Brian, how you work with customers to make sure that they're being sustainable by design and not doing it as an afterthought, but also really being intentional and deliberate about their approach. No, it's super important and it's one of those starting points as we look with customers. A, helping them refresh aging infrastructure less efficient, how are they taking advantage of these things, where we can achieve greater workload density with a smaller footprint. And even if you look at the deliberate nature of where HP's gone with things like the sustainability dashboard being built into the GreenLake Cloud Platform. So even as we have different offerings coming on board, I now have that visibility of the discovery and reporting to help customers truly understand that overall cost and footprint of their workloads, how do they help make more informed and intelligent efficient decisions with those things. Workload placement decisions are factored in with that as well, right? How am I leveraging more efficient, lower carbon footprint solutions based on co-location, more efficient hosting, greater density or choice of cloud platform? And avoid over provisioning also. That's definitely what we bring to HP GreenLake also making sure that you have exactly the right starting capacity that you're going to use and you are able to grow maybe with some buffer capacity to help there, but yeah, all aligned to that sustainability. This would seem like an advantage again to private cloud, but that cloud operating model that spans across there and having a common cloud operating model no matter where you live or where your apps or data lives. This seems like a good way for people to again, if they want to scale up or scale down, especially where they just want to get started with a foundation model. Maybe they don't need 10,000 GPUs today. This is a place where they can start and then grow into that as they understand their needs and you get the data, it comes through ops ramp, you can start to build. Is that really where you focus on your roadmap and where you're going? It is, and this is really why even that pivot to focusing on this as a scalable service offering as opposed to a reference architecture, right? Is delivering that service, the control plane, the user experience and now it becomes expanded as you need to, right? You're able to provide a consistent experience and simply start to grow where you need capacity or in a modular way, expand to different footprints, be it edge locations or co-location or whatever you're trying to achieve. By doing that in a scalable, repeatable way, customers can do so confidently without incurring the burden of now I have tech debt because I've chosen a forked solution that at some point I'm going to have to upgrade and maintain or manage or however that's going to go. This is really designed to meet that model, meet you where you are now and help you kind of future-proof and grow as you need to. Excellent, well, Brian and Valerie, thank you both so much for coming on. This has been a really fascinating conversation. No, appreciate it, always a pleasure. Thanks a lot. That wraps up day one of theCUBE's continuing coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona. I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob Stretcher. Stay tuned for more, come back tomorrow, I should say, for more of our continuing coverage. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in high-tech enterprise coverage.