 Okay, we're back here live in Las Vegas. This is HP Discover, and this is where all the actions happening for HP. This week, this is day three of three days of wall-to-wall live coverage at SiliconANGLE's theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events, they start to signal from the noise, cloud, mobile, security, big data, all that is the core pillars of HP, and a lot of us changing big data, a lot of needs available, experts are needed, and that's what we're going to drill into this segment. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm John, my co-host. Hi everybody, I'm Dave Vellante from wikibon.org. Rebecca Harvey is here. She is the worldwide director of product for HP's Expert One. Rebecca, we're looking at your booth all week here. Yes. Awesome, you guys are involved in, and what wants to tell us about the organization and what you guys are doing? Sure, so HP's Expert One program is really designed for IT professionals wherever they are in their career, whether they're brand new students who are interested in IT, who are coming into the workforce, or people who have been in the industry for a very long time. We have, if you think about it as a pyramid, we have a registration level where people can just come in, get access to information, learn a little bit about the HP's products and solutions, white papers, download videos, all kinds of things, and then moving up into training, which is the formal training available from HP Education Services and our training partners. They really look at what are the skills that customers and partners are looking for, and then on up at the top of the pyramid is our certification portfolio. We have about 150 certifications that cover the depth and breadth of HP's product portfolio and solutions. Rebecca, we want to spend the next 10 minutes here inside the queue to get down and dirty on some of the hardcore trends that we see as the most demand. We've had a lot of interviews as past two days with top executives at HP and experts and customers, and obviously big data, the cloud, the security are all in big demand, and there's a variety of different examples out there. We have other companies where expertise is needed, where in some cases, you have to be deployed, whether engineer, resource, where it's a Hadoop, and we had services guys in, there's a lot of activity going on. What are some of the challenges that you're hearing from customers around some of these experts, expertise? I know you guys do a lot of talk about expertise, because innovation is what people want to talk about, and that's sometimes speeds and feeds in some underlying architectures, but really it's about solutions. So how do you guys cross over from tech, platform, big data, all that stuff to the solution side, where there's a lot of demand for expertise? Yeah, I think we do that in a number of ways, because our program is really focused around the job roles. And so when you think about somebody who has to architect the solution, it's not about architecting a network solution or a server solution or a storage, it's about converged infrastructure and the ability to pull all the elements together and create that converged solution. If you think about an integrator, an integrator has very different skills that they might need or an administrator. And earlier this week I spent some really good time with some customers, CIOs, VPs, directors of IT, who really said one of their challenges is this generalist role, because we've developed in the industry so many of these very siloed, deep technical skillset, and they really are looking for generalists who know how to tie everything together. So that's one of the ways that we look at our program. We say, if you're networking certified, what's your next step to move into the converged infrastructure? Cross-training is absolutely critical. So people are, there's some need for specialism, but also happy being generalists, actually not a bad thing either. Right, right. And it's interesting, some of the really innovative things that our customers are doing around the cross-training internally. So they're not necessarily even looking to formal programs to help them, but they're doing job sharing or they're doing job role changes. So somebody has to spend a week in support. So they understand a little bit about what the dynamics of those challenges are. It's very challenging. I can imagine how to productize these things, because you're talking about a lot of different technology. So I got to ask the product questions. Since you run product management, how do you productize this and sell it to customers? What are they buying? Is it menu of services? Is it packages? I think it's a little bit of both. It's educational consulting, right? So they want to look at their unique requirements. And it's also looking at the certifications that are going to best map to what it is they need. So, can you talk about, Rebecca, the balance between, on the content side, the curriculum, as you will, between very specific HP product, mentioned converged infrastructure, and I want to figure out how to exploit this three-power array, whatever it is, versus sort of the discipline of, say, for instance, being a cloud architect, or doing something in the big data field, help us understand sort of the nature of the content. Sure, so it really depends on the level of the individual who's coming into the program. So if it's a foundational level, it's really technology introductions, and we view those as sort of powered by HP, right? It's a network is a network is a network, and we teach people on HP, network and gear, but... Could be pretty much anything. Could be pretty much anything. If you move up that stack, then, into the ASE level, there's a little bit more deep technical skills, the things that you need to know to architect a real solution, right? And at the master ASE level, it is these big solutions. It's big data, it's security, it's data center and cloud, right? Okay, so... So we move them up the stack from more technical foundations, technical, deep technical skills, and up into the solution areas. So that MSC you called it? Yes, master ASE. Master ASE, okay, so that's big data. Security. Cloud. And that's it. We also have a networking and a storage in that space as well. Storage, okay, and that's the point where it gets very specific. Very solutions-oriented. Okay, specific to HP? Yes. Okay, and now talk about who delivers the content, how people get certified, the partner ecosystem. Discuss that a little bit. Sure, so we start with competency models, and we bring customers into those events, we bring partners into those events, HP Subject Matter Experts, and we say, what are the skills that are gonna be needed in this area in the next 12 to 24 months? And we create a competency model, and then we design the courseware from there. So that courseware is very tightly aligned to what the experts have told us is needed. The courseware then is anywhere from three days to five days at that high level, because it is very solutions-focused. They have most of it is hands-on, 90% of it's hands-on. They're given a customer scenario, and they're told go architect the solution, or go figure out how to integrate the solution, or administer it. Rebecca, you know one of the things I want to ask you, because since you're here, given what world you're in, we're obviously doing theCUBE, which is social. I mean, you guys have a lot of video, we notice a lot of filming going on there, but also there's books, right? HP Press, and a lot of, that's been going on for years, for decades, and hundreds of years, people write books and distribute paper. Now it's online, you have real-time information, social networks. How is that changing your business, in terms of getting the word out, creating a community in those times? Sure, sure. So we have HP Press, which like everyone, we have print books, but we also have e-books available. We have huge communities within LinkedIn, within, you know, Elant's job board community. There's all kinds of communities where people are sharing knowledge, and sharing best practices, putting problems out there saying, hey, how would you fix this? And people are really contributing to that conversation. That's part of the expert one, community. When we talk about it, not just being about certifications, it's about knowledge and skills in community. And a lot of people share information with each other, so it's not just a one-directional way. What are some of the things that surprise you, as that world's just evolving? I mean, Facebook just implemented hashtags, just yesterday, so it's how early it is. So this whole new online communities are connecting to each other. What has surprised you about this new world and how people are connecting? I think one of the things that's interesting to me is because we used to have listservs in online forums, right? And you had to have a moderator and you bumped people out if they were being rude or if they were, that's gone. That whole arena is gone, it feels like. People can go out and say anything. And you have to kind of take everything with a grain of salt. I think OpenStack actually does a great job of this with their digital badge community. People vote on how they like the response. Was it a good response? Was that technician able to answer my question appropriately? It's kind of interesting. And then you have flash mobbing, right? People can always start their own groups. That's true. I mean, open source, I mean, we were talking about Apache, how that started. Now, it's so big, anyone can start an open source project. So in a way, knowledge is becoming open source. How do you guys harness that? Is there a way of not yet working on it? No, no, we're working on it. I think part of it is the communities, right? We identify some of our subject matter experts and our greatest advocates. We look at the people who are really involved in our community and we pull those folks into our item design workshops. So they help us create our exams. They help us create the courseware to some extent. So that's the way that we probably address it the most immediately. Share with folks any information on how to get involved and websites and social media coordinates. Yep, hp.com forward slash expert one. And it has all the information about contact us, videos are available on there as well. Videos, webis, training, yep, yep. We have a very active social media manager who drives. He just made it onto HuffPost not too long ago, so. I guess that's a good thing. I guess it's out of the social media terms, people like that. Yeah, yeah, nothing that post is like the New York Times of social media, that's what they want to be. But a lot of volume there, a lot of access. Yeah, absolutely. So on the eBooks, what are the most popular eBooks that you have right now? You know, our cloud computing beyond the hype is very popular, we announced it last year, it's probably one of our best sellers. Actually our exam guides, some of the old school stuff is very popular and does very well because people don't always have time to take time out of the office to do training. And IT professionals kind of condition themselves to self-study. How about some of the hot topics in terms of OpenStack, you mentioned OpenStack. That's obviously a hot topic, you doing anything with those guys at all? We are not, as of right now from a certification perspective. Okay, so HP certainly is good. Yeah, so we're watching that area closely. Like you said, props to that community for the ranking. Absolutely. But that community is growing very, very fast. It is. And very authoritative. Yes. And there's a lot of new skills being developed there. What one skill would you highlight right now if you had to summarize, maybe three, do a top three skills that are relevant in today's big trend. I mean, kind of the most, not the most important, but like in today's HP Discover, what are the top three? I think the most important one is for the IT professionals to take a more business oriented approach, understanding what it is their businesses want and need from IT and figuring out how to deliver on that. So that includes everything from someone who's entry level, understanding how to read a financial spreadsheet, understanding the basics of business, right? Somebody who's at an intermediate level in their professional career, understanding what their business owners' concerns are and challenges are, right? And at the master level, it's designing the solutions that are going to work for business and to be able to have that conversation. So we have a master architect data center and cloud credential program, which is a board review program. And the people that we want to bring into that program, the ones who feel like when they go to present to a CIO, they've got to bring in 17 people to back them up. We want them to be able to come in, present the solution themselves, cost justify the solution and explain in real business terms what that really means. Well, big data is driving that trend too. I mean, you've seen more analytics, much more business oriented dashboards. Yes. Well, what about disciplines like, I got two examples for you. I just want to see if there's a fit here. Let's say I'm out on 28 to 35 years old and I've been a network admin, maybe I was a VMware admin. I'm saying I kind of want to be a cloud architect. Can you help me? Yes, absolutely can help you. Great, so you have courseware that can help me get certified to become that cloud architect so I can go to my management and say, hey, I'm ready for that promotion. Right. Okay, how about now, the other example I'm thinking, John mentioned big data. How about things like data scientists? Is that something that you've started to look at? It is something we've started to look at. I'm not going to say we've cracked the code by any means, I don't know that anyone has. It really is a job role that is becoming very critical, very quickly. So that's something we might see from you guys here. I think that's a fair guess. For Barcelona, maybe. I've, maybe not that too, but fair guess. Rebecca, thanks for coming on the queue. We've got some time, we're up on a time limit here, but I want to get your final sound bite. Big trend for next year that you're watching closely that's evolving quickly. That's going to probably come into the fold for expert one, what are you, what's on the radar that kind of just popping its head out, it's emerging? You just nailed it. Data science? Yes. Okay, yeah, no we, awesome. Data science, Rebecca, thanks for coming. Go to expert one, hp.com slash expert one. There's a huge demand for skill training online. You're seeing things both online and offline. Very successful opportunity to get cross-trained and this real big focus, thanks for coming on the queue. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.