 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE at HP Discover 2014, brought to you by HP. Okay, welcome back everyone live here in Las Vegas for HP Discover 2014, this is theCUBE. For our wrap-up for day two of the wall-to-wall three-day coverage of theCUBE of HP Discover, all the moves, the turnaround is being documented. We said that we were going to be documented. They have not kicked us out, yet we're like a tick embedded in HP. We are not going to leave until we get this thing documented. Dave, we're doing a good job. Jeff Frick covered for me this morning. Thank you very much. Dave, good job this morning. It's watching from remote. Big morning for us. Wrap-up, what's the take guys? How was the morning? I mean, I wasn't here, but give us the overview. Well, it's good. I mean, I think we had a lot of server action going on. Look, server's a big business for HP and it's a business that's flat to down, but there's a lot of innovation that they're pumping into it. It was interesting to see Martin Fink up on stage today. I mean, HP is doubling down, tripling down on server and that's moving right into their cloud. What Martin Fink showed was a completely new architecture they call the machine, massive scale, big giant shared central memory, but this big in cartridges that's totally scaled out. So moonshot like to the extreme. So that to me is important because it makes HP relevant for the future and it gets back to their roots of invent. So that was sort of one thing. The other thing is I think their cloud story is coming together. We've been documenting the cloud story for a while. It was like pushing at a piece of string for a long time there. Like what's really behind this? But I think Sargillai and team have done a really good job of bringing that together. And you can tell because they've brought in some really senior sales guys. We talked with Kerry Bailey today. They got a new CMO, Bobby we had on today. So they're starting to invest in places that is going to get a return on the sales side. So that says it started to get real. And HP showing leadership in OpenStack. The last thing I'll say is I had a comment. I tweeted this out. Meg Whitman talking about government and policy and politics was so much more passionate and comfortable than anything I'd seen her present related to enterprise technology. I mean, I would vote for her. She was talking about, you know, HP won visas. She's talking about. Is that a criticism of her? I don't know. It just sounded like a criticism. That tweet, I read that as a negative. I don't know if it knows. I mean, I guess we could take it that way. But she was really good when she was talking about politics. She had a clear passion. I mean, I was drawn into her. The audience was clapping, you know, genuinely, not golf clap, as you like to say, but it was genuine. So I don't know if that's a criticism. It is her passion. There is no question about it. She's going to make another run from politics. And I said, I'd vote for her. That was just striking. It's just a comment I make. It's like we're in an Oracle open world and Larry didn't show up. I said, you know, what was going through my head at that time was, hmm, we got a sense of what Oracle's going to look like when Larry Ellison dies, disappears, whatever. So I don't know if it's a positive or a negative, but it's, I think anybody watching would have had that same. Well, I think the one good thing that's really positive about it is she is passionate about it. And she's using that to drive a lot of this new innovation that's really the kind of extension of moonshot, if you will, in terms of lower power usage. She talked about how much power data centers are using now. The whole innovation is about getting that down. We're rearchitecting based on today's technologies and not just kind of adding to what was developed in the 50s. So I think if she uses that to continue to drive the passion on the innovation, I think that's a good thing because clearly she got worked up about it. Well, I think it fairs us to Meg. I'm not sure what CEO is that interesting when they're talking about technology, you know? So, but anyway, John, I appreciate you coming back. You've been bouncing around all over the place this week. You went out, you did the Nimble event. You got a crowd chat launch going on, very successful crowd chat launch was picked up by Recode and Forbes and some other outlets. So you've been busy. How'd it go? I had a busy night last night. I was up, so I think I pulled it all night or pretty much. We launched CrowdChat, the platform for business. As you know, Dave, we're excited by this product. And it's getting rave reviews. It's starting to get out there. We put a release out as well. Got Kara Swisher at Recode, who runs the Wall Street Journal reporter in her history was the Heron-Walt Mossberg, built All Things D Now. She's an entrepreneur, media entrepreneur doing Recode and been very successful with that, strategic relationship with CNBC. She saw this and she was floored. She was excited. And I think what was really interesting is that she wrote a really interesting article and she was kind of being Colombo like we do when we ask people questions. But she kind of got it. Her story, she nailed it. It was a very nice piece, but fair. But more importantly, she got what we were doing. She understands the container of our CrowdChat engagement container, she understood the search feature and all the deep analytics. And she was very impressed that we built a massively scalable, highly elastic, born in the cloud, real-time global platform for less than a million dollars. So that was nice. Forest picked it up, Rob Hoffman covers online advertising, the Google beat, Facebook advertising. Saw the potential for active conversations and the greatness around what that could possibly be. So very successful with that. The Nimble thing was fantastic. I was doing the intro before Dave and I was just about to, live from Silicon Valley. Nimble is the kind of company that you look at and you say, hey, that's a company that HP should look like as well. Built from the ground up, modern era, delivering the value to customers. And that ultimately is what happens with success. And now in this market, you go with the right product, right time and scales, and then jumped on a Southwest that got delayed. And now I'm here for Saga Lai. Great day. And I'm excited, Dave. It was a very busy day. Can't wait to have a few cocktails. So I want to ask you, we had an interesting conversation yesterday with David Scott. And he touched on something that we haven't really, I haven't been searching for this. You know, I've asked a lot of people, what's the difference between the sort of flash bubble that's going on now and the one that occurred with previously with the whole virtualization, storage virtualization, and I guess data dupe was in there as well, data de-duplication. And he hit on something, John. And I wonder if you get a sense of that when you're in Silicon Valley. He said, we were lucky. The recession basically gave us the ability to have escaped velocity before the other guys caught up. So we were able to reach a critical mass. And his premise was that that's not going to happen for a lot of the flash guys because the cartel, what I call the cartel, IBM, HP, EMC, et cetera, they all have flash, they all have flash strategies and they're there. So it's an interesting premise, one that I hadn't thought of, there's no recession to slow them down. I guess there was in 2008, 2009, but not like what Scott went through with 3PAR back after the dot-com boom you guys know. Silicon Valley was quiet for a long, long time. But John, what's your take on that? Having that knowledge going out and observing the Nimble launch. Well, Dave, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. There's really the issue here, it's a big picture, bubble and recession, right? So, David Scott's initial point was, all the best innovate, I'm now speaking and using my own words, but this point was, recession's where the action gets done and no doubt in my mind, he's absolutely correct, I've seen it before. The best innovation and the best types come out of a recessionary period. Look how Facebook came out during that time, post-web 2.0, pre-web 2.0, right during web 2.0 and the 2008 when they scaled up. And now we're living in a bubble where the frothyness of it is about getting the rocket ships into orbit. So it's when the music, it's like musical chairs. When the music stops, if you don't have a chair, you're dead. So companies like Pure Storage as an example, you mentioned storage, it's Nimble event this morning. Great example, four billion dollar valuation. That's insanely high. So you've got to think about the optics on that. That's essentially private equity, essentially a liquidity-like event. How are you going to hire employees? What are you going to do? How are you going to achieve that kind of value? You've got to go all the way on that one. And now, if we're at a point now where they're a private company, Dave, and if they don't get liquid public soon, there's no way they're going to be able to retain the talent and hire a new talent. You're talking about Pure with the four billion dollar valuation. I'm using Pure and other companies as a benchmark. But you said four billion dollar valuation. Who are you talking about? Pure. Pure. But the same with Cloudera, right? But Cloudera had a liquidity event where the founders took off the table. Cloudera is four. Nimble is three. I mean, Pure is three. Nimble is two. Billions. Billions, still. Private companies don't have an active marketplace to truly give the value where Nimble Storage is a public company. They're valued quarter by quarter, day by day, some say, but ultimately their performance drives their value. A lot of trades change hands. That's called a marketplace. There was no marketplace in the private equity market. So what you have now in this market is this escape velocity push where if the rockets don't get into orbit, they blow up. So the question is, how long can it last? And this puts pressure on the investors, on the management, and also the ability to hire talented people. So what happens is, the pressure to get into orbit, people take shortcuts. And that really could be catastrophic. So what Dave Scott was really referring to was, at those kinds of valuations in this market, you got to get there fast. So I agree with him, and it's a real problem. And it's just hope that everyone gets into orbit before the bubble bursts. Yeah, but then you get reality. We had Sean on from Spectrum Health talking about, they're not making giant gambles on risky bets. And they like being with a big established firm that they have a relationship with the technologies kind of continue to change and come and go. And so while from an investor perspective and a starter perspective, those are really interesting and significant things to think about. From the guys that are actually realizing the value of this technology, the practitioners, the guys that are putting it to work and really changing things and driving those big valuations, you know, they're... Well, there's buyers out there. They're liking it, but they're not racing, right? They're not racing headstrong into it. But I do think that the whole flash thing and the flash-enabled applications and the way that people are going to accelerate the value even faster is still actually underrated. Let me be clear on something. So first of all, the question was about escape velocity. The real big winners, the unicorns, or the black swans, whatever you want to call them, they happen during recessions. During the frothy times now, with the big guys that come out of recession, they have holes in their product line, but still a great liquidity market. So if you look at a company like Docker, I was just tweeting on the BHP crowd chat we just had about the Helion. Docker, Jerry Chen, the investor, Greylock, XVMware. You don't think he knows the inside baseball and what Paul Moritz wants? He's essentially baking out a company that could be sold. So the game on the VC side is peg devaluation high so that that's your starting point on the bid. So in the negotiations, get the numbers up on the valuation. You know, you play the numbers and you get it up. Now that's your negotiation with the M&A. So a classic M&A market is really hot right now, Dave. M&A is hot. That bubble is real. And that's because HP, IBM, need to fill major holes. They have blown gaskets in their engine, so to speak. They got to fix the tooling, you know, Sargalai and cloud. I'm sure he's got a big M&A list. I'm sure Meg Whitman's going to give him some budget. He'll throw out some stuff out there. I'm sure if you're talking to Antonio, same thing. So hot M&A market is different from companies that want to be a durable, long-term player. So that's kind of my take. What about the cloud piece, John? I was saying earlier, it sort of took a while to come together. Am I being too harsh? I mean, I still feel like, you know, HP's got to get some big name logos. I mean, attaching your wagon to OpenStack has benefits. But also, when we talk to practitioners, I mean, very few. I mean, I've probably personally, in the last six months, spoken to, addressed, I would say, three or 400 practitioners. And in intimate meetings, not one on one, but like 10 on one. And I've asked every single one of them, who's doing OpenStack? And probably of those several hundred, maybe three or four actually doing OpenStack. Is it too much of an emphasis on OpenStack, do you think? Well, no, it's all, right now, it's all developer community and cloud service providers. I mean, for HP's clearly putting a lot of wood behind that arrow, is it, they think they can move the needle or they? No, I think it's one of those deals where, if they don't do it, what are they going to do? They're going to spend a lot of resources on something that's going to be a short-term bandaid. And I think they're making the right move, which is to try to leapfrog everybody else. And plus, they got to do it. I mean, it's John Furrier, he summed it up like that when OpenStack first came out. He said it's a Hail Mary against Amazon. And you know what? And we've gone back and forth and yeah, VM, we're about, it really is the industry's alternative to Amazon. Full stop. The beauty is that Amazon defined a new way of doing things and now the big guys are trying to figure out other ways to deliver those values with different configurations. But I liked what we had Bill Vecchia talking about what cloud really represents. It's a development mind frame. It's a flexibility mind frame. It's a way to move quickly. We used to say, well, it's just a deployment methodology really is all it was. But really it's more of a mindset in the way that you get things done. Well, DevOps is a, what I learned in the crowd chat launch and talking to the analysts and the press out there the past couple of days, Dave and Jeff, is that we are at DevOps. We built that scalable platform and we are pure DevOps when we built there. That's not normal right now. You are kind of an outsider or a weirdo by if you're a kick-ass DevOps guy. Now that's coming more mainstream. It's more of a high end. We always say they eat class and spit nails. Those DevOps developers. That truly is the case. But what's happening now is the acceleration of the DevOps culture into operations. That means, that's what kind of Vecchia is getting to is that but that framework, that mindset, that's a total mind bender. Going from six months, six years, six months of six week shipping cycles. But you know it's crazy though but Sean from Spectrum, what do you say about that? 1600 projects on his list he's trying to prioritize 3,400 funded but even he in an old school guy that likes mainframes and old stable systems is doing a lot of these projects in more of a DevOps way and more of an agile way. So I think that the agile methodologies are actually a little bit more permeated down into old school stack industries and maybe we give credit. It's a classic emerging market Dave and Jeff and here's my take on it. This is my vision on this. It's a no-brainer. Everyone says, oh yeah, DevOps is the way but then you say, okay, there's two critical major disruption problems or opportunities. One is it's a complete process reconstruction on the business side and technology architecture. So it's a complete transformation. It's not like tweak this, tweak that. It's a complete rip, reconstruct, re-architect, make more efficient, a new engine, so to speak if you want to use a car analogy. That's one problem. That's got inertia against it. And two, who's going to do it? Who's talented to do it? There's no talent. There's not a lot of talent out there. The amount of work to be done for the DevOps talent pool right now is not there. So the winner in my mind will be whoever can turn DevOps into an easy-to-deploy technology-based approach by basically making DevOps abstracted away. So you get spitting nails, eating glass in the box. That to me is the ultimate home run. And whoever does that first in cloud, in IT, wins everything. And I don't see anyone yet there doing it. Some highlights for me, some signal is there. ServiceNow, you know what ServiceNow is doing when they're out there approaching their business. Things like Splunk, what they're doing. And believe it or not, MapR, who was here, guys. MapR is the quiet giant in the big data world, right? They're the Rodney Dangerfield of big data. They get no respect. But they actually have a ton of success and they're in the main engine on the enterprise. They spend a lot of time just delivering not so much time on press releases giant funding announcements, which their ecosystem is dropping all the time. All right, guys. So I'm excited to be back here in Vegas for tomorrow as well. Live wall-to-wall coverage. That's the wrap for day two. Join us tomorrow. Stay tuned with theCUBE. Come visit us. We'll be extracting the soup from the noise. A lot of big dates tomorrow. I'm going to hear from Jim Gontier. I'm looking forward to that tomorrow to hear about the market share. And I want to hear what he has to say to counter the Cisco. Antonin here is very polite. He's a very chill guy. Gontier's going to bring the hammer. I can't wait to talk about that. And then just more and more analysis. Dave and I are going to talk more about the big data survey we're doing. We're going to kind of cross connect that with what's going on with HP, the enterprise. Keep watching. This is theCUBE. We'll see you tomorrow.