 Hello and welcome back to HPE Discover 2021. My name is Dave Vellante and we're going to dig into HPE GreenLake. We've heard a lot about this. We want to find out how real it is and test a little bit of how, how it can help solve your business problems. We also want to understand GreenLake relative to the competition. HPE was the first, as you probably noted, declared as all in with an as a service model. And virtually every major infrastructure player has now followed suit. So we want to hear from HPE directly how it's different from the competition, where it's innovating. And that means we're going to poke a little bit of customer examples in how the partner ecosystem is adopting and responding to GreenLake. And with me is the right person to do this. It's Keith White, who's the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the GreenLake Cloud Services Business Unit at HPE. Keith, great to see you. Thanks for coming back to theCUBE. Hey, fantastic to see you as always. So thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. So look, we're hearing a lot leading up to Discover and at this event about GreenLake. You got momentum now. Everybody's excited about it. What's driving demand? Where's the excitement coming from? No, it's a great question. And you know, the reality is customers are expecting this cloud experience, right? So they've been using the public cloud. They've been engaging on that front. And this cloud experience has really driven a pretty high amount of customer expectation. You know, make itself serve, make it automated, make it easy to consume. I only want to pay for what I'm using and then manage it all for me on the backend. But 60 to 70% of apps and data will stay on-prem per Gartner and IDC. And so give me that experience on-prem. And so that's why I think GreenLake's gotten so much interest, so much positive growth and momentum is because we're bringing that cloud experience to our customers in their data center, in their colo or at the edge. And that's where they want to see it just as much. And so since the world is now hybrid, we have a fantastic solution for folks. So you were first in this game and so you took some arrows and I'm interested in how GreenLake has evolved. Take us through the journey. Maybe what were some of the bumps in the road that you had to overcome? Maybe how it compares with the competition? Maybe some of the things that they're gonna have to go through as well to get to the point where you are. No, it's true. And the great thing is HPE as a company is really moving to be much more of a cloud services and software company. And we're seeing this from our competition, as you mentioned, have followed suit. But in essence, you have to move from just sort of providing lease type, financing type scenarios for our customers into truly delivering that cloud experience. And that's what's been so exciting over this last year is we've gone from just the basic cloud services, compute, storage, networking and VMs to really providing containers as a service, bare metal as a service, machine learning ops, SAP, VDI. We've now created a set of workloads and as you heard it discover, we're now delivering industry solutions. So electronic medical records for hospitals or high delivery payment transaction processing for financial institutions. So that challenge of moving from just sort of leasing basic capabilities to a true cloud experience that again, pay as I go, fully automated, self serve, all managed for me has really been a challenge. And it's exciting. It's exciting to see customers jump on and really sort of lean in and see the business value that comes from having that level of solution. Keith, am I correct in that? I mean, pretty much every large tech company has a services arm and they could sort of brute force some kind of cloud like experience. And that's kind of what people have done historically. They layer in a financial like leasing financial, as you said, but every situation was unique. It was kind of a snowflake, if you will. And you guys are probably there a few years ago as well. And so I'm interested in sort of how you evolved beyond that. Was it a mindset? Was it technology? Was it sort of cultural? I know it came from the top as well, but maybe you could describe that a little bit. Yeah, the shift comes from our customers because what's happening is, customers no longer trying to buy component parts, they're saying it's really about SLAs. Like, hey, I want you to deliver this for me. In essence, we're running the data center for them now. We're running their machine learning operations environment for them now. We're migrating their mainframe over now. And so what's happening is these SLAs are really what matters to customers. Like it's not so much about the, hey, what are the speeds and feeds and this and that. And so, yes, you can sort of brute force that piece of it, but what you really are having to do is create this deep partnership and relationship with your customer to truly understand their business challenges and then provide them with that capability. Now, I think the thing that's exciting is, yes, the public cloud gives you some significant benefits for certain workloads and certain capabilities. But what we're hearing from customers is, hey, I want to have much more control over my data center. I want to ensure that it has the security required. I want to make sure that I can make the adjustments necessary. And so you're doing all that at a lowered cost with an open platform that I can use a variety of tools and other applications just makes it that much more powerful. So I think that's what we're seeing is we're getting into what are customers really requiring. And then the most interesting thing is, how do you make it work with my entire environment? Because I am running Azure and I am running AWS and I am running Google and I'm running some other things. And so how does this cloud really help me bring all those together to really govern that hybrid estate? And that's where I think GreenLake has really shined. So part of the secret sauce is automation because you have to be competitive, at least within reason to cloud cost. Sometimes it's going to be less expensive. Maybe sometimes it could be more expensive. You've got some advantages in certain cases where there's governance things and we don't have to go through all that, but there's the automation. But you got to be profitable at this too. So there's the automation, there's the tooling, there's the openness. So that was really a key part of it. Is it not that sort of automating? That's right, automation is key. As is really understanding what that customer environment is and optimizing for that piece of it. And so as you heard, we're really excited to announce our GreenLake Lighthouse, which is really providing workload optimized systems that are fully managed for them that provide that capability to run multiple workloads for that customer. But at the same time, to your point, there's a lot of charges that happen on the public cloud side. So data is the new gold, if you will, right? Everyone's trying to monetize their data, trying to use it to make decisions and really understand what's happening across their environment. And in the cloud, if you put it up in the cloud, you have to pay to get it out. The egress charges can be significant. And it's also a bit slower at times because of the latency that happens across that connection. And so we are now in a situation where we're seeing a lot of customers that are really trying to analyze their data, leveraging our HPC systems, leveraging our machine learning operations systems in order to really get that data happening and getting the answers out much, much faster and a much lower cost than what it would cost them to do that in the cloud. So you have some experience at this now. I wonder if we could dig into the customers, how customers are using GreenLake. Maybe you can give some examples of success. Yeah. Yeah, no, you know, it's exciting because, you know, first off, everyone's looking at their digital transformation and that means something different for every single customer. So really understanding what they're trying to do from a transformation standpoint and then saying, okay, well, how can we bring a solution to help accelerate that, to help be, you know, more connected to your customers to help improve your product delivery. We went to Lyandale-Bazelle, for example, one of the largest manufacturers in the world. And, you know, they said, hey, look, we don't want to run our data center anymore. Most customers are trying to get out of the data center management business. And they're saying, hey, run this for me. Let me free up resources to go focus on things that really can drive additional value for our customers instead of keeping the lights on, patching, you know, blah, blah, blah. So we've taken their entire environment and moved it to a colo and we're managing it now for them. And so in essence, we freed up not just a ton of resources, but they've also been able to drop their carbon footprint, which is also this whole sustainability push is significant as well. And then you look at a customer like Carestream, one of the largest medical diagnostic companies in the world saying, hey, we got to be able to allow our doctors to be able to analyze and diagnose things much, much faster through our X-ray systems and through our diagnostic machines. And so they've implemented our machine learning operations scenario to dramatically speed up those types of capabilities. So as you go down the list and you start to see these customers really leveraging technology to meet that digital transformation, saving costs, moving their business forward, creating new business models. It's just, it's really exciting. What about partners, Keith? How have they responded? I mean, on the one hand, that's great opportunities for them. They're transforming their own business model. On the other hand, maybe they were comfortable with the old model. They got a big house, nice boat. But how are they changing their business and how are they leaning in? Similar to what we're seeing, the opportunity for partners is dramatic, right? Because what happens is you have to have a very different relationship with your customer to truly understand their digital transformation, their business challenges, their problems that they're having to address. And so where we're seeing partners really, really sort of see opportunities where there's the services and that sort of deeper relationship piece of it. So in essence, it's creating much more opportunity because the white space is dramatic. We're seeing, I wanna say it's in the $30 to $40 billion worth of market opportunity as we move into an as a service on-prem world. So they're seeing that opportunity. They're seeing the ability to add services on top of that and deepen the relationship with our customers. And it's from ISVs. We're working closely with SAP, for example, to deliver their new rise private cloud customer edition. We're working closely with Lucis, for example, who's doing a lot of payment processing type scenarios, Nutanix and their database as a service scenario and Splunk, because again, we went back to the data piece and these guys are doing so much big data type implementations for risk analytics and regulatory type scenarios. It's just significant. And so because there's such a push to keep things on-prem, to have the security, to reduce the latency, to get rid of the egress charges and everything else, there's just significant white space for both our ISV partners and then from our distributors and resellers, they're getting to change their business model again to get much deeper in that relationship with our customers. So to me, GreenLake is, I mean, it's HPE as a service. It's your platform. And so I wonder if you could think about how you're thinking about, share with us how you're thinking about platform innovation. You got the pricing model, flex up, flex down. Is there other technology we should know about and other things that are gonna move you forward in this battle for the next great hybrid cloud and edge platform? Yeah, it's a great push because if you think about it, we are, GreenLake is the edge-to-cloud platform. And in essence, because we have such a strong edge capability with the Aruba acquisition we made a few years back that's really seeing significant momentum with the silver peak acquisition to give us SD-WAN, you've got that edge connectivity all the way up to our high performance computing. And so you'll see us deliver high performance computing as a service. We're announcing that here at Discover. You'll see us announce machine learning ops. I mentioned SAP, but also virtual desktops. I think the pandemic has brought a lot more work from home type scenarios and customers really wanna have that secure desktop. And so working with partners like Citrix and Nutanix and VMware and Crew, we're able to provide that again, unique scenario for our customers. And so, yeah, the innovation is gonna keep coming. I mentioned bare metal as a service because many people are starting to really leverage the metal that's out there. You're seeing us also engage with folks like Intel on our Silicon on Demand. So this is a really exciting technology because what it allows us to do is turn on cores when we need them. So, hey, I need additional capacity. I need some power. Let's turn on some cores. But then I turn off those cores when I'm not using them. You go to a software, core-based software pricing model like an Oracle or a SQL server. I'm saving dramatic costs now because I don't have to pay for all the cores that are on the system. I'm only paying the licenses for the ones that I use. And so that should bring dramatic cost savings to our customers as well. So we're looking from the Silicon all the way up. You'll hear us talk about Project Aurora, which is our security capability. We're looking at the Silicon level, but we're also looking at the container and bare metal, and then obviously the workloads and the industry solutions. So we're sprinting forward. We're listening to our customers. We're taking their feedback. We're seeing what they're prioritizing. And because we have that tight relationship with them, as we help move them to the direction they want to go, it's giving us a ton of fantastic insight, information for what really matters. Great, thank you for that. So I want to ask you about data. A lot of organizations are kind of rethinking their ideal data architecture, their organization. They're seeing the amount of data that is potentially going to be created at the edge, thinking about AI inferencing at the edge, and maybe reimagining their data organization in this age of insight. I wonder how GreenLake fits into that. How are you thinking about the new era of data and specifically GreenLake's role? Yeah, you mentioned the age of insights, and it really is, right? So we've moved sort of the next phase of digital transformation. It's basically saying, hey, look, I've got all this data. I've got to first get my arms around my data estate, because in essence, it's in all these different pockets around. And so GreenLake gives you that ability to really get that data estate established. Then I want to take and get the answers and the analytics out of it, and then I want to monetize that data either out to my customer set, or out to my industry, or out to other scenarios as well. And so as we start to deliver our MLops capability, our AI and analytics capabilities through HPC, and it's an open platform. So it allows data scientists to easy boot up, a cluster with which to do their models and their training and their algorithms. But we can also then use and instantiate that into the business decisions that our customers are trying to make, again, without the significant costs that they're seeing on the public cloud side, and in a very secure way because they have the data exactly where they need it. You'll see us continue to do sort of disaster recovery and data protection and those types of scenarios, both with our partners and from HPE. So it's exciting to just understand that now you're going to have the tools and resources so you can actually focus on those business outcomes versus how do I protect the data? Where do I start? How do I get my model set up, et cetera? All that becomes automated and self-serve as you mentioned earlier. When you talk to customers, Keith, what are the big sort of challenges that you're addressing? And what's the typical, I know it's no typical, but the real nuts that they're trying to crack. Is it financial? We want to move from CAPEX to OPEX. Is it, hey, we want this cloud model, but we can't do it in the public cloud for a variety of reasons, edicts, organizational edicts, or we want to modernize our state. What are the real sort of sticking points that you're addressing with GreenLake? Yeah, I think it's three-fold and you sort of touched on those. So one is it really does start with modernization. Hey, we've got to take cost out of the equation. We've got to reduce our carbon footprint. We've got to automate these things because we have limited resources and how do we maximize the ones that we have? And so I mentioned earlier, getting out of the data center, modernizing our apps, really monetizing our data. So I think that's number one. Number two is what you said as well, which is, hey, look, I don't need to have all these capital assets. I don't want to be in charge of managing all these assets. I just want the capability. And so being able to sell them that service that says, hey, we can do X number of desktops for your VDI. We can run your SAP environment or we can make sure that you have the analytics structure set up to be able to run your models. That becomes super compelling and it frees up a lot of resources and cash on that front as well. And then I think the third thing is what you said, which is the world is hybrid. And so I need to find out what's going to run best in my on-prem environment and what's going to run best up in the cloud. And I want to be able to optimize that so that I'm not wasting costs in one place or the other. And I want to be able to govern that holistically so I have the ability to see what's happening end to end across that so I can manage my business most effectively. So I think those are the three big things that people are really excited about with GreenLake is they enable those things. And the reality is it also means that they have a new partner to help them really think through how can they move forward? So it's not them by themselves. It's really in a one plus one equals three type scenario. And then you bring the ecosystem in and now you've got things working really well. So big enterprise tech, it's like the NFL. It's sort of a copycat league. And so what- It is. You know what I'm saying? This is you guys all got big- West Coast office. Yeah, you got great resources. Hey, this West Coast office exactly is going to work. We're going to get a short passing game going. And so that happens. So I feel like, okay, you've raised the bar now on as a service and that's going to become table stakes. You know, it's going to, it's a lot of work to get there. I know it's a journey, but when you think about the future for HPE, what's exciting you the most? I think what's exciting me the most is just the reaction that we're seeing with customers. Right? Because in essence, it gets them out of the bits and bytes and speeds and feeds and you know, component goo and really gets into business value, business outcomes, SLAs. And that's what they're looking for because what they're trying to do is break out of, you know, day to day and be able to really focus on their future and where they're going. So I think that's one. I think the second big thing is as you see all these things come together, you know, we're able to basically provide customers with, I would say, a mindset that's like, hey, I can do this holistically, but I can always pick and choose the best that I want. And if I ramp up, I have capacity. If I ramp down, I don't have to pay for scenarios. And so I'm getting the best of both worlds across that piece of it. And then third is, I mentioned it earlier, but this whole relationship thing is so important because you know, this isn't about technology anymore as much as it is about what's the value that you're going to get out of that technology and how does that help us move the company and the world forward? Like I love the fact that HPE was so involved in this pandemic, you know, with our systems, we're able to actually run a set of algorithms and analysis on how to, you know, find a vaccine on how to adjust the things that are going forward. You've seen us now up in space and as we broaden our frontier. And so as a company, you're seeing technology turn into things that are truly helping the world go forward. I think that's exciting as well. Yeah, space, it's like the ultimate edge. It is, yeah. And like you said, to me, it's not about ports and MIPS and gigabytes anymore. It's about the outcome you mentioned before the SLA. You know, the thing about virtual, it's great. We don't have to get in the plane. It's down side we all know. We can't hang out afterwards and have a drink or chit chat about what's going on in the world. But we can reach a lot more people. But the other downside of virtual is, you don't have the hallway track. It's not like, hey, did you check out that demo on IoT? It's really cool. Where is that, you know? So give us the hallway track. How can folks learn more about Discover? Where would you direct folks? You bet. You know, I'm doing a full spot. Obviously, let me start with at the top, right? Antonio Neri, our CEO, he's going to lay out the whole strategy. And then I'll have a spotlight. It's about a 30 minute deep dive on all of these things that you and I just talked about. And then we've got a bunch of breakout sessions. We're doing some with our partners like Nutanix and others, Microsoft as well as we talked about. We didn't really touch on that, but you know, we have a strong partnership with the hyperscalers, with Microsoft and with others. Because in essence, customers are expecting an integrated solution that's hybrid. And so, you know, we're showcasing all of that with the Discover breakouts as well. And they're available on demand. We have a huge opportunity with respect to that. So really excited. And you know, frankly, we're here to help. Like, I hope people understand this is our opportunity to help you be successful. And so please know that our ears are wide open to hear what the challenges are and we're ready to help customers as they need it. I'm glad you mentioned the partnership with Microsoft and other hyperscales. I feel like Keith, the hyperscales are giving us a gift they've spent, last year they spent over $100 billion on CapEx build out. That is like, it's like the internet. Thank you. And now we're going to build on top of it. We're going to build an abstraction layer that hides all that underlying complexity. We're going to connect things. And that's really your job. That's really kind of what you're bringing to the table, I think, with GreenLake and some of these innovations. So really appreciate it, Keith. Go ahead, please. Give it a last word. I appreciate the time as well. It's always a pleasure and it's always exciting to get a chance to share with you. And as always, anytime you want me back, I'm happy to join. All right, well, I'd love to do that. So appreciate that. And thank you for spending some time with us. Stay tuned for more great coverage from HPE Discover 21. Everything's available on demand as well. That is the other good thing about virtual. You go back and watch all this content. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech coverage. Be right back.