 Good evening everyone, welcome back to theCUBE after dark because it's after happy hour, so that's what I'm calling it. Lisa Martin here with Rob Strasze. We are finishing, close to finishing day two of our wall-to-wall coverage of HPE Discover 23 from the Venetian Expo. We heard the parties already started, but we're still here working because we have some interesting conversations to have and bring to you. Rob, we're going to be talking with Sue Preston next about professional services and the impact that they're helping customers make on their organizations from an AI perspective, sustainability, all that good stuff. Yeah, I just think there's so much to contribute from the learnings that you have from all of the different customers and from building, for instance, all the supercomputers that are out there. So this should be a fun discussion. Yes, Sue Preston is here, as I mentioned, VP and GM, Worldwide Advisory and Professional Services at HPE. Sue, it's great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, glad to be here. So you and your team are on the forefront of working with organizations in every industry I imagine, helping them achieve their goals, whether it's digital transformation, taking on AI projects. Talk to us about through the lens of professional services, how are you delivering HPE's unique value proposition? Yeah, no, great question, Lisa. So I cover all industries, lots of customers, lots of different meetings and engagements that we drive. I think the unique value for me is that we look at harnessing disruption and accelerating outcomes. So really engaging with those customers and looking at ideation of how they can drive their business forward. And then some of the ideas and the unique value that can be driven based on their edge to cloud, hybrid cloud strategy. Right, and talk a little bit about how, what's the engagement process? Like how do customers get started with HPE Professional Services? Yeah, it's fantastic because what we have is we have like Digital Next Advisory, which is a digital journey map. So we can take customers on their journey from, say, retail experience, so they want to prevent customer churn. So we look at how we drive those opportunities with engaging on the digital journey map. And then we strongly follow that because then the customers say to me, well, how? So then we have the edge to cloud adoption framework, which we can take them from A to B to get to that outcome. Having that map is probably hugely important for them. Because it's so nebulous. Yes. Especially when COVID hit and retailers were like, how do we actually do this? How do we do curbside delivery and that sort of thing? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's consensus around their own organization as well because when you build that digital journey with different personas in the customer, they're like, ah, there's that ha ha moment of that's what we can achieve. Yeah, I would assume that you're trying to get them to understand where they are today, how to get to the next level. And do you have different journeys depending on what their outcomes they're trying to build out? Yeah, absolutely. Great question because I think, you know, there's so much that you could cover with those customers. We do a lot of research ourselves on specific industries. So therefore we can guide some of that conversation. And then we've broken down the edge to cloud adoption framework into eight domains, which then can laser focus into some of those areas. What are some of the examples of the domains? So it could be operating model. It could be FinOps. So where you see organizations with their line of business that they want to do charge back. And they might be saying that they're, you know, they're struggling some of those areas. And Sustainable IT is another great area that we've broken that down into a domain as well that can help them achieve the goal. Let's kind of dig into that. Sustainable IT, it's a hot topic as is AI which we'll get to in a minute. Yeah. But so many organizations in every industry are now really laser focused on, if they don't have an ESG program, they've got at least some targets or goals around Sustainable IT to deliver, you know, sustainability as an organization. And a lot of them say, we don't want to work with vendors that don't have either a sustainability or ESG program. Or we only want to work with vendors that can help us meet our goals. Yes. How important is that in your customer conversations? I imagine it's probably a criticality. Absolutely critical. Every customer engagement that I personally and the teams are engaged in, they need to understand where they can drive their IT sustainability journey. The fantastic thing is because, you know, according to IDC, 65% of CIOs are going to their hardware vendor first. You know, looking at Accenture, those customers that are driving their digital transformation with their IT sustainability are two and a half times more likely to be the most performing brands. So from a business, a shareholder, stakeholder point of view. And what we've done is we've looked at how we can engage with those customers. We've got a pre-questionnaire that can measure their maturity. So, and then we can then go back and then build out workshops to say how they can achieve more of their goals. And there's other services that we've just launched recently around RightMix Advisor. So think of the applications, the workloads, the energy consumption, the CO2 emissions that's been driven. And we can guide customers say on the top 10 and then how they can go and address those first because it is a journey. It's not, you know, it's not something that you're going to fix overnight. Yeah, I think that's the key is getting them started, right? And not because it's so, such a big target for them to go and do. And I think that we were just talking to Financial Services, HPE Financial Services about their initiatives for good. Yeah. I blanked on it already. I've got it here somewhere. Anyway, but I think that, to me, seems like somewhere where you guys join forces in there because they're also looking at it using Dunn and Bradstreet or one of these other- CDP. CDP. Yeah, yeah. And I think, so, you know, what I love about my role is that we can look pan-HPE and then drive that journey across the piece. So how are customers looking at driving their coding for their applications? How are they building applications? How do we then look at, you know, from a HPE Financial Services point of view, you'll have heritage environments which have still got repurpose and use. So therefore you're reducing e-waste by upcycling and, you know, keeping that in the circular economy. And then you've also got with customers where we then have our professional services or with our co-location providers. So the announcements this week with Equinix, you know, looking at renewable energy sources, I think it's a fantastic opportunity for me to focus end to end across that whole portfolio with advisory and professional services. What is the customer symbiosis like in terms of customers in different industries helping to guide financial services in terms of some of the new services it might deliver or augmenting some of the existing services? What's that customer connection like? Yeah, it's good. I think there's a difference sometimes with each of the customers on different operating models that they want to work to. And I think for us it's like, we're going in and advising them and then looking at the options, then they'll always, it's driving to the value. So I think it's like, it's not having a conversation around, you know, product features, benefits. It's about how are we going to get them to that value at the end of the day? And we're looking at a longer term partnership and relationship with those customers. It's not just one project. What is time to value? I'm glad that you brought that up because it's something that we hear often as a marketing term, but it really has a lot of significance. When will organizations be able to get in the technologies, apply the services, leverage AI for example, and start generating value to their business, whether it's like a retailer that you said, you know, a great customer experience, but what can customers kind of generally, I know it varies by journey, expect in terms of the time to value that you guys can impact? Yeah, so I think harnessing disruption because if you see a market trend and they've got to react, then how quickly can you create an idea, build a minimal viable product MVP, and then execute against that, that it's driving impact. And I think it's offsetting some of that investment up front, ensuring that they'll have skills gap, they'll have people gap, they'll have talent gap. So how can you build that together and then they can accelerate that outcome at speed? So I think it's, the other element that I focus on is failing fast because sometimes organizations will try too long. Years ago it used to be called shelfware where investments were made in large, big projects, but they never really realized the value because the time it took for them to drive that transformation, they never really saw the value. That makes total sense. And I think harnessing one of those disruptions seems to be AI right now. And so what are you seeing from a services perspective there? Yeah, so I think the way that I look at it, there's two things. So there's AI for good. So therefore if I look at the health sector, pharmaceutical sector, medicine, how drugs researchers, if I look at the, I was talking about it earlier today actually with AI and robotics as well. So with precision surgery, because sometimes where it's really intrusive, so say lung surgery for argument's sake, it can then create patient issues. And one of the things in the UK with the NHS is getting patients out of the hospital, out of ICU, and back into their home environment to improve their recovery. That's one thing. The other thing I think of in being a force for good is predicting weather. So again, I was looking at with the risk of tsunamis or helping again being a force for good from an AI perspective. And then the other thing, today we were with Evil Genius, so esports gaming, predicting sentiment of players and some of those things. So I think there's lots of great use cases across AI. I've got a data and analytics and AI practice. So, and again, I've got some of the best technical resources within that organization. I call them ninjas. AI ninjas, I like that. But are you guys in professional services using AI within your own organizations to help customers plan the journey or find out which pillar they need to be aligning with? Yes, absolutely. So I think what we do is we look at propensity to buy. So one of the elements that we focus on is then looking at, so say for instance with IT and sustainability, there's data sets that you can acquire that then can look at where are you to go best first to go and drive those outcomes with those customers. So we use that internally. And in our operations, looking at how we can predict and fix issues quickly, prior to then having to send a field engineer to site. So in our operational support services as well. Yeah. It seemed that AI is really just, it's a method for getting there right now. And I think it's one of those things that it's probably becoming core to what you do. It's very disruptive, but also to your point about good. Are you using it within the professional services themselves as well? Or I know you're helping the customers with it, but... Yeah, no, we're helping the customers. My organization is mainly focused on accelerating the outcomes with the customers rather than the internal lens. And I think for me, it's, you know, having the innovation at the front of it, like with machine learning, development, training, HP education services, which is in my remit as well. So then how are we creating the certifications and the courses, upskilling, reskilling, both internal resources in HPE, and then also externally with our customers and providing that curriculum of skills. What's been as we round out day two, I know that the concert is about to start, I've been hearing what I think our soundtrack is going on. What are some of the favorite feedback elements that you've gotten in the last couple of days? You mentioned working with, doing an interview with Antonio Neary, but you also get to engage with a lot of customers. Some of the feedback in terms of the programs that you're delivering. What have you heard around the show floor? I was absolutely amazed, like with some of the areas, so Project Sustainability Dashboard and the Sustainability Team, they have been maxed out. The Edge-to-Cloud adoption framework team, the digital transformation teams. So I took my team out for dinner last night to thank them for all of their hard work and commitment for this week, and it's just been amazing. And I think the customers, for me, is when the customers give me that direct feedback and they're letting me know how great my teams are operating, what value they're seeing, and that they see that my teams are part of their team, which you couldn't ask for more. No, being one with the customer is really what it's all about. And hearing that you're delivering on the value that you want to deliver on the HPE wants you to deliver on is give yourself a pat on the back, because I think you deserve that. So thank you so much for joining Rob and me talking about what's going on with professionals and advisory services, how you're really helping customers achieve outcomes. It's all about outcomes, regardless of industry. We really appreciate your time and your insights. Oh, thank you, really enjoyed it. Excellent, good, we did too. For our guests and for Rob's Stretch A, I'm Lisa Martin. Up next, we're going to wrap day two with a great Analyst Roundtable. We even have someone from the space industry going to be talking with us. Stick around, we'll see you in a few minutes.