 Approximately two years after HP split into two separate companies, Antonio Neri was named president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Under his tenure, the company has streamlined its operations, sharpened its priorities, simplified the product portfolio, and strategically aligned its human capital with key growth initiatives. He's made a number of smaller but high leverage acquisitions and returned the company to growth while affecting a massive company-wide pivot to an as a service model. Welcome back to HPE Discover 2021. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and it's my pleasure to welcome back Antonio Neri to the program. Antonio, it's been a while, great to see you again. Hi Dave, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's really our pleasure. I'm just going to start off with a big picture. Let's talk about trends. You're a trend spotter. What do you see today? Everybody talks about digital transformation. We had the four smarts to digital last year. Now it's really come into focus but what are the big trends that you're seeing that are affecting your customers' transformations? Well, Dave, I mean, obviously, we have been talking about digital transformation for some time and in our view, it's no longer a priority, it's a strategic imperative. And through the last 15 months or so, since we have been going through the pandemic, we have seen that accelerated to a level we haven't never seen before. And so what's going on is that we live in a digital economy and through the pandemic, now we are more connected than ever. We are much more distributed than ever before and an enormous amount of data is being created and that data has tremendous value. And so what we see now customers need more connectivity. They need a platform from the edge to the cloud to manage all that data. And most important, they need to move faster and extracting that insight, that value from the data. And this is where HP is uniquely positioned to deliver against those experiences and way we haven't imagined before. Yeah, we're going to dig into that. Now, of course, you and I have been talking about data and how much data for decades, but I feel like we're going to look back in 2030 and say, wow, we never saw anything like that. So we're really living in a data-centric era as the curves are going exponential. What do you see? How do you see customers handling this? How are they thinking about the opportunities? Well, I think customers realize now that they need to move faster. They need to absolutely be much more agile in everything they do. They need to deploy that cloud experience for all the workloads and data that they manage. And they need to deliver business outcomes to stay ahead of the competition. And so we believe technology now plays even a bigger role. And every industry is a technology industry. In many ways, every company, right, is a technology company. Whether you're in healthcare, you're in manufacturer, you're a transportation company, you are an education, everybody needs more IT, not less IT. But at the same time, the way they want to consume it, Dave, is very different than ever before, right? They want an elastic consumption model and they want to be able to scale up and down based on the needs of their enterprise. But if you recall, three years ago, I knew when I had this conversation, I predicted that enterprise of the future will be edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven. The edge is the next frontier we set in 2018. And think about it, you know, people now are working remotely and that edge now is much more distributed than we imagined before. Cloud is no longer a destination. It is an experience for all your apps and data. But now we are entering what we call the edge of insight, which is all about that data-driven approach. And this is where all three have to come together in ways that customers didn't envision before and that's why they need help. So I see the definition of cloud changing. It's no longer a set of remote services. Some are up there in the cloud. It's expanding on-prem, cross-clouds, you mentioned the edge. And so that brings complexity. Every company is a technology company, but they may not be great at technology. So it seems that there are some challenges around there. Partly, my sense is some of what you're trying to do is simplify that for your customers. But what are the challenges that your customers are asking you to solve? Well, the first, they want a consistent and seamless experience. Whatever that application and data lives. And so for them, they want to move away from running IT to innovating on IT. And then obviously they need to move much faster, as I said earlier, about these data-driven approaches. So they need help because obviously they need to digitize every aspect of the company, but at the same time they need to do it in a much more cost-effective way. So they're asking for sub-geometric expertise on process engineering. They're asking for defining the right mix of hybrid experiences from the edge to cloud. And they need to move much faster at scale in deploying technologies like AI, deep learning and machine learning. And Hewlett Packard Enterprise is extremely well positioned because we have been building an edge to cloud platform where you provide connectivity, where you bring computing and storage in a soft to define scalable way that you can consume as a service. And so we have great capabilities with our HP.x technology services and advice and running side, but we have a portfolio with HP GreenLake, our cloud services, the cloud that comes to you that are addressing the most critical data-driven workloads. Probably about 24 months ago, you announced that HPE was going to basically go all in on as a service and get there by 2022 for all your solutions. I got to say you've done a good job communicating to Wall Street. I think culturally you've really done a good job of emphasizing that to the workforce. But how should we measure the progress that you've made toward that goal? How are customers responding? I know how the market's responding. Three or four of your big competitors have now announced, but how should we measure how you're tracking to that goal? Well, I think the fact that our competitors are entering the as a service market is a validation that our vision was right. And that's good because in the end, it tells us we are on the right track. However, we have to move much faster than ever before. And that's why we're constantly looking for ways to go further and faster. You're right. The core of this is a cultural transformation. Engineering-wise, once you state the North Star, we need to align our internal processes to think cloud first and data first versus infrastructure. And we have made great progress. The way we measure ourselves, Dave, is very simple. It's by giving a consistent and transparent report on our pivot in that financial aspect of it, which is what we call the annualized revenue run rate, which we have been disclosing now for more than a year and a half. And this past quarter grew 30% year over year. So we are on track to deliver a 30% to 40% cable that we committed two years ago. And this business is going to triple more than one year from now. So it's going to be three times as bigger as we enter 2022 and 2023. But in the end, it's all about the experience you deliver. And that's why, architecturally, while we make great progress, I know there is way more work to be done. But I'm really excited because what we just announced here this week is just simply remarkable. And you will see more as we become more a cloud operating driven company in the next months and years to come. I want to ask you kind of a personal question. I mean, COVID-19 has sharpened our sensitivity and empathy to a lot of different things. And I think CEOs in your position of a large tech company or any large company, they really can't just give lip service to things like ESG or ethical digital transformation, which is something that you've talked about. In other words, making sure that it's inclusive. Everybody's able to participate in this economy and not get left behind. What does this mean to you personally? Well, they remember I'm in a privileged position, right? Living a company like Hewlett Packard Enterprise that has Hewlett and Packard on the brand is an honor. But it's also a big responsibility. And let's remember what this company stands for and what our purpose is, which is to advance the way people even work. And in that, we have to be able to create a more equitable society and use this technology to solve some of the biggest societal challenges we have been facing. Last 18 months, it's been really hard on a number of dimensions, not just for the business, but for the communities. We saw disruption. We saw hardships on the financial side. We saw acts of violence and hatred. Those are completely unacceptable. But if we work together, we can use these technologies to bring the community together and to make it equitable. And that's why it's one of my passion, because as we move in through this digital economy, I keep saying that connecting people is the first step. And if you are not connected, you're not going to participate. Therefore, we cannot afford to create a digital economy for only a few. And this is why connectivity has to become an essential service, not different than water and electricity. And that's why I have passion and invest my own personal time working with entities like World Economic Forum. Educating our government, which is very important, because both the public sector and the private sector have to come together. And then from the technology standpoint, we have to architect these things that are commercially accessible and viable to everyone. And so I will say that it's not just my mission. This is top of mind for many of my colleagues, CEOs that talk all the time. And you can see a movement. But at the same time, it's good for business, because shareholders now want to invest in companies that take care about this, how we make not just a world more inclusive and equitable, but also how we make it more sustainable. And with our technologies, we can make the world way more sustainable with circular economy, power, efficiency, and so forth. So a lot of work to be done, Dave, but I'm encouraged by the progress, but we need to do way, way more. Thank you for that, Antonio. I want to ask you about the future, and I want to ask it in a couple of different angles. So I want to start with the edge. So it seems to me that you're building this vision of what I call a layer that abstracts the underlying complexity of the, whether it's the public cloud, the cross-clouds, on-prem, and the edge. And it's your job to simplify that, so I as the customer can focus on more strategic initiatives. And that's clearly the vision that you guys are setting forth on. My question is how far do you go on the edge? In other words, it seems to me that Aruba, for example, awesome acquisition, can go really, really deep into the far edge. Maybe other parts of your portfolio, you're kind of more looking at horizontal. How should we think about HPE's positioning and participation in that edge opportunity? Well, we believe we are becoming one of the merger leaders at the intelligent edge, right? This edge is becoming way more intelligent. We live in a hyper-connected world, and that will continue to grow at an exponential pace, right? So today, we might have billions of people and devices, but so we are entering trillions of things that will be connected to the network. So you need a platform to be able to do that scale, so there is an horizontal view of that to create these vertical experiences which are industry-driven, right? So one thing is to deliver a vertical experience in healthcare versus manufacturing or transportation. And so we take it really far, Dave. I mean, to the point that we just put into space, 256 miles above the Earth as a supercomputer, that tells you we take it really far. But in the end, it's about acting where the data is created and bringing that knowledge and that insight to the people who can make a difference real time as much as possible. And that's why I start by connecting things, by bringing a cloud experience to that data, whatever it is, because it's cheaper and it's way more economical. And obviously, there is aspects of latency, security, and compliance. They have to deal with it. And then ultimately, accelerate that insight into some sort of outcome. And we have many, many use cases that we are driving today. And Aruba is the platform, by the way, which we have been using now to extend from the edge all the way to the core, into the cloud business. And that's why HPE has a unique set of assets to deliver against that opportunity. Yeah, so I want to talk about some of the weapons you have in your arsenal. Some people talk about, hey, we have to win the architectural battle for hybrid cloud. I've heard that statement made. Certainly, HPE is in that battle. It's not a zero sum game, but you're a player there. And so when I look at as a service, great. You're making progress there. But I feel like there's more. There's architecture there. You're making acquisitions. You're building out Esmerelle, which is kind of an interesting data platform. And so I want to ask you how you see the architecture emerging and where HPE's sort of value add IP is. You're a big player in compute. You've got actually you've got chops in memory, disaggregation. You've done custom silicon over the years. How should we think about your contribution to the next decade of innovation? Well, I think it's going to come at different layers of what we call the stack, right? Obviously, we have been known for an infrastructure company. But the reality is what customers are looking for are integrated solutions that are optimized for the given workload or application. So they don't have to spend time bringing things together, right, and spend weeks, sometimes months, where they can do it in just a matter of minutes or days so they can move forward innovating on IT. And so we are really focused on that connectivity as the first step. And Aruba gave us an enormous reach through the cloud provisioning of a port or a Wi-Fi or a one. As you know, as we move to more cloud-native applications, much of that traffic through the connectivity will go into the internet, not through the traditional fixed networks. And that's why we did acquisitions like Silver Peak, because now we can connect all your agents and all your clouds in an autonomous, software-defined way. As we go to the other spectrum, right, we talk about workload optimization. And for us, HPS model is the recipe by which we bring the infrastructure and the software into that integrated solution that can run autonomously, that eventually can consume as a service. And that's why we made the introduction here of HPE GreenLake Lighthouse, which is actually a fully optimized stack that, with the push of a bottom from HPE GreenLake Cloud Platform, we can deploy whatever that is required and then be able to federate it so we can also address other aspects like disaster recovery and be able to share all that knowledge real time. Swarm learning is another thing that people don't understand. I mean, if you think about it, swarm learning is a distributed AI learning ecosystem. And think about what we did with the DZNE in order to find cures for Alzheimer or dementia. But swarm learning is going to be the next platform sitting on this H2Cloud architecture so that instead of people worrying about sharing data, what we're doing is actually sharing insights and be able to learn through these millions of data points that they can connect with each other in a secure way. Security is another example, right? So today, on an average, it takes 28 days to find the bridge in your enterprise with Project Aurora, which we're going to make available at the end of the year. By the end of the year, we actually can address zero-day attacks within seconds. And then we're working in other areas like disaster recovery. When you get attacked, think about the ransom, ransomware that we have seen in the last few weeks, right? God forbid you have to pay for it. But at the same time, recovery takes days and weeks sometime. We are working on technology to do it within two, three seconds. So this is where HP can place across all spectrum of the stack. And at the same time, of course, people expect us to innovate in the infrastructural layer. That's why we also partner with companies like Intel, where with a push of a bottom, if you need more capacity of the core, you don't have to order anything. Just push the bottom, we make more calls available so that that workload can perform. And when you don't need it, shut it off, so you don't have to pay for it. And last but not least, I will say for us, is all about the consumption availability of our solutions. And that's what I said in 2019. We will make available everything as a service by 2022. We have to say, as you know, there is no need to build the church for Easter Sunday when you can rent it for that day. The point here is to grow elastically. And the fact that you don't need to move the data is already a cost savings because cost of aggressive data back and forth is enormous. And customers also don't want to be locked in. So we have an open approach. And we have a true H2Cloud architecture. And we are focusing on what is the most valuable aspect for the customer, which is ultimately the data. Thank you for that. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, and again, another weapon in your arsenal, is you mentioned supercomputing before, up in space, where we're in the cusp of exascale. And that's the importance of high performance computing. Used to be viewed as just a niche. I've had some great conversations with Dr. Go about this. But that really is the big data platform, if you will. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that fits into the future. Your expertise in HPC, you're obviously a leader in that space. What's the fit with this new vision you're laying out? Well, HPC, high performance computing, in-memory computing, are the backbone to be able to manage large data sets at massive scale. And deployed technologies like deep learning or artificial intelligence for this massive amount of data. And we talked about the explosion of data all around us. And the algorithms and the parameters to be able to extract insight from the data is getting way more complex. And so the ability to collocate data and compute it at a massive scale is becoming a necessity. Whether it's in academia or whether it's in the government, obviously to protect your most valuable assets or whether it is in the traditional enterprise. But that's why with the acquisition of CRE, SGI, and our own organic business, we are absolutely the undisputed leader to provide that level of capabilities. And that's why we are going to build five of the top six exascale systems, which is basically be able to process the billion-billion, meaning billion-square transactions per second. Can you imagine what you can do with that? What type of problems you can go solve? Climber problems, right? Obviously, be able to put someone back into the moon and eventually in Mars. The first step to put that supercomputer as an edge computer into the International Space Station is about be able to process data from the images that they take from the ice caps of the Earth to understand climate changes. But eventually, if you want to put somebody into the Mars planet, you have to be able to communicate with those astronauts as they go. And you can't afford the latency, right? So this is what the type of problems we are really focused on. But HPC is something that we are absolutely super committed. And it's something that, honestly, we have the full stack from silicon to software to the system performance that nobody else has in the industry. Well, I think it's a real tailwind for you because the industry is moving in that direction. Everybody talks about data. And workloads are shifting. So it used to be, I got OLTP and I got reporting. Now you look at the workloads. There's so much diversity. So I'll give you the last word. What really is the most exciting to you about the future of HPE? Well, I'm excited about the innovation we are bringing to the market. And honestly, as a CEO, I care about the culture of the company. For me, the last almost three and a half years have been truly remarkable. As you said at the beginning, we are transforming every aspect of this company. When I became CEO, I had three priorities for myself. One is our customers and partners. That's why we do these events, right? To communicate, communicate, communicate. They are our North Star. That's why we exist. Second is our innovation, right? We competed with the best innovation, solving the most complex problems in a sustainable and equitable way. And third is the culture of the company, which at the core is how we do things in our team members and employees. I represent my colleagues here, the 60,000 strong team members that have incredible passion for our customers and to make a contribution every single day. And so for me, I'm very optimistic about what we see, the recovery of the economy and the possibilities of technology. But ultimately, we have to work together hand in hand. And I believe this company now is absolutely on the right track to not just be relevant, but really to make a difference. And remember that in the end, we have to be a force for good. And let's not forget that while we do all of this, we have some farm with technology. We have to also help some, to address some of the challenges we have seen in the last 18 months. And HPE is a whole different company that you knew three and a half years ago. And as you said, knowledge is the right thing to do. It's good for business. Antonio Neary, thanks so much for coming back at theCUBE, it's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for having me, Dave. And thank you for watching this version of HPE Discover 2021 on theCUBE. This is Dave Vellante. Keep it right there for more great coverage.