 Welcome back to theCUBE's day one coverage of HPE Discover 2023 from the Venetian Expo. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Dave, one of my favorite things to do is talk with our vendors, customers. We're going to get a great customer story. And it's a lottery in Canada, which you just, we just learned some ground-breaking news. We're going to share with our audience some cool things about the Canadian lottery. Very cool. You're going to want to move there. I know, I'm already thinking about that. Please welcome one of our alumni back here, Vishal Lal, GM HPE Software and GreenLake Cloud Solutions, and Adam Janssen's Director of Infrastructure and Operations at Western Canada Lottery Corporation. Guys, great to have you, welcome. Great to be here, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. All right, Adam, can we kind of tease this? And you really blew my mind with some of the things you were saying in terms of the differences between the lottery in Canada and the United States. But talk to us a little bit about Western Canada Lottery Corporation and share with the audience why they're going to be wanting to either move to Canada or buy lottery tickets up there and come home. Yeah, we were just chatting before. So yeah, we operate the lottery business for our three provinces. So Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and our Northern Territories. And so our products are big draw-based games. Down in the States, you guys have Powerball in Canada. We have Lotomac 649. All of the scratch-and-win tickets are sold through us. So yeah, we basically, we need a lot of IT to keep the lottery business running. So I like to say that we're basically an IT shop, but our marketing team might not agree with that. But we have more employees in the organization than they do, so I'd say we're an IT shop. And how long has the Western Canada Lottery Corporation been around? Oh, that's a great question now. You're a question of my knowledge. So it's actually, we're a nonprofit organization and we're an agreement between all the three provinces. So we exist to generate revenue for the provinces. And so all of the money goes and each province does something different. I really like in Saskatchewan, as an example, all of the lottery proceeds go to fund sport for kids. So it's, you know. Oh, amazing. Great, yeah. Wow, okay, but don't bury the lead. Explain how it works in the United States. As you were chatting before, yeah. So in Canada, you know, if the jackpot's 70 million, that's what you take home. There is no taxes or hold back. It's, you know, everything that the jackpot is, is what you actually take home. So yeah. Now, of course, if we go to Canada and buy a ticket and win, we get taxed. We do. So of course, right? So. Maybe we have to move. Maybe that's the move is to move. Talk a little bit about when the reason I was asking about how long the organization's been around is, I want to talk about that it's digital transformation and why you chose HPE GreenLake. But, you know, for storied organizations, cultural elements, or make digital transformation challenging, but they're also essential. They're kind of, they need to go hand in hand. So give us a little bit of the backstory there. And on the digital transformation, what were you looking to accomplish and why HPE GreenLake? Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, you know, we've been an HPE customer for many, many years. I was asking my predecessor and I predated him. So in my speech this morning, I said, you know, a long, long time ago when a galaxy far and away. So I think pre-2000s, we've been an HPE customer. But back in 2018 is when we first looked at GreenLake. So all of our compute was well beyond its useful life. So we needed to do a big refresh and talk into our HPE solution architect. They mentioned the GreenLake model and it really was appealing for us because it's the cloud-like pay-as-you-go type, so you can get as much as you need. So consumption-based models, sorry, that's slipping on my words, but the consumption-based model and then the biggest thing for us was it's a predictable cost. So you're not doing that half to do that massive refresh and big CapEx expense, if you will, every five to seven years. So it's predictable, it's flexible, like I said, it's consumption-based. So it's really helped us be able to spin up new environments when we need because we know we have the capacity. Yeah, and we're really enjoying it. It's worked out well for us. So was that the big drivers to kind of smooth out that uncertainty and that predictability? At the time it was. I think that's why we got started into GreenLake, but now as we're expanding more and more, so we're in the process, we've just recently moved one data center to a colo, we're using Equinex, and so we explored GreenLake through Equinex. We're also looking at Zerdo to protect our data and our workloads. So there's more and more, we're looking at GreenLake managed service. So with our second data center, we're moving to Toronto, which is 1200 miles or 2000 kilometers away from where we have any computers, like technical staff, right? So GreenLake managed service is a perfect platform for us, so we don't have to send our IT staff out to Toronto and travel when we can just have it all managed by GreenLake. Vishal, how common is this in terms of the drivers that you hear from other customers, why do they buy? Yeah, I mean, their story is unique, but I think if you look at the underlying drivers, not that different, right? Very similar to what we are seeing, a predictable cost, right? Managed cost, right? Scalability, a consumption model, right? Automation, right? Think about all those cloud characteristics that come to your premises. Very similar to what we are seeing from other customers. And the journey I think that you've been on, Adam, is not that different from others as well. They start small, they start with their data center. In many cases, infrastructure refresh is the trigger to go to GreenLake, right? Which is exactly I think what's happened in your case. And then the second kind of the big trigger is when customers are at a point, they say, hey, I don't want to be in the business of managing data centers anymore, right? That's not my core competency. Can we go look at options elsewhere? And then as you decided to go to Equinix, we are seeing a lot of customers do that as well, which is why earlier today we announced that global partnership with Equinix. So I would say very, very similar to what we are seeing with other customers in terms of the journey. Start small, grow into a colo, right? And expand the surface area of the solutions from HPE that go into GreenLake. So the refresh coincided with the move to Equinix? Is that right? Correct, yep, yep, yep. No, sorry, the hardware refresh we did back in 2018 and we just moved to Equinix this past year in March, we moved our first data center. So we did the hardware refresh first, but we also, you know, we didn't want to move our old three-par spinning disks, put them in a truck down a bumpy road, right? So we just refreshed all of our storage with Electra so that, you know, we had new equipment going into the co-locate facility, right? We didn't want to take anything that was end of life or coming near, you know, near end of support. So we started with our compute, refreshed our storage, and then, you know, it was a many, many year journey, but then we eventually moved to Equinix. I'll say, so it was a process over time that we moved into the Equinix data centers. Yeah, one down and one to go. We own and operate our existing data centers today, and we've moved to Winnipeg the first one and the second one, we're moving to Toronto, and hopefully in February, that's our timeline. And did GreenLake make it easier than it would have been, say, for instance, to go to the public cloud, which would have been a more complex transition? Yeah, I know, that's a great question. And absolutely, and for us, you know, the back end, the main critical gaming system that we use to operate the lottery is nowhere near cloud-ready. So we have to stay on-prem or in a co-locate facility, so GreenLake is a perfect solution for that, right? Because we cannot move to the cloud, it's just that it's not an option for that application, plus then there's all the auxiliary systems that hang off that central gaming system that obviously need to be tied close together with on-prem or in this case, when we're moving to a co-locate facility, right? I'm going to take a breath, but we're going to come back to that. Okay. You mentioned outcomes of winning the lottery in Canada, which are staggering still in my mind. Talk about some of the business outcomes that the lottery corporation has gotten so far by working with GreenLake and now with Equinex. What are some of the drivers and how does it benefit the consumer, the player? Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, you know, as I mentioned, we operate draw-based games, so we have national games in Canada that spread across all of the country, so that's where we get the big jackpots of not as big as Powerball in the US, but still, you know, close to 70 million. And, you know, those national games, we have to keep up with our other provinces and, you know, deliver those games on time. So, one example that GreenLake's really helped us is we were running out of, we have, you know, test and development environments, and there was many, you know, product development going on at the same time, and we had to quickly spin up two additional full test environments. So, with GreenLake, right? You know you're at the consumption-based model, you know, it was quick and easy for us to look and say, oh, yeah, we can add those test environments, no problem, we've got the capacity. You don't have to wait for the, you know, procurement cycle and ordering hardware and, you know, getting it in. You have that flexibility to scale and to grow when you need, right? What were the characteristics of that workload that wasn't cloud-appropriate? How do you mean, Kara? You said that we weren't going to move that into the cloud, it wasn't cloud-ready. Will it ever be? I mean, what, is it a transaction database? Yeah, I know, it's very Java and Oracle database driven. Yeah. And so it's not cloud-ready, and it's a vendor application that we use. They say they're looking at, you know, their next revision of it, if you will, or their next new version will be cloud-ready and be ready for containers. So, you know, having GreenLake be cloud-ready and be able to easily move into the cloud, you know, or prepare this for the future, right? Okay, so essentially you move that into GreenLake and you get the cloud-like experience. Yep. Why would you ever think about moving beyond that? Great question. And I think, you know, for us, where we'd really like to have that gaming environment be cloud-ready is for testing development environments, right? Okay, yeah. You could do, you know, ideally we're looking down the road is do infrastructure as code, and you could stand up those environments, you know, you test your new game, whatever that is, right? So, to answer your question about, you know, what does it mean to the player? Well, hopefully you can deliver new games quicker, right? So, you have whether it's a new scratch ticket, whether it's a new big massive draw base game, but ideally what we want to get to is in the future is, you know, have those test and development environments cloud-ready containerized so that you can stand them up and you don't have to rely on, you know, your infrastructure on-prem. For our critical gaming system and what we run day in, day out, I don't see us moving to the cloud anytime soon for that. I think it's more just going to be our test environments and that's sort of stuff that we can scale up and scale down and, you know, again, do a lot more automation around infrastructure as code and build up our environments. But that is GreenLake appropriate. Is that correct? Yeah, so there's plenty of things that you can do to make sure that that workload never goes. Absolutely, and that's kind of the direction that we are going with our cloud properties, right? Private cloud that you've heard about at the conference, which is basically kind of like, if you think about the journey that Adam, you've been on, right? You took compute into GreenLake, then storage into GreenLake. We've seen a lot of customers do that, and now the next step is, how do I get into a private cloud, right? Which integrates all of that, integrates virtualization layer, containerization layer, and it kind of is out of the box cloud experience, right? On-premises for those types of heavy workloads that you're talking about. And again, it also gives you the optionality. At some point, if you want to consider going to cloud for some parts of the workload, you can do that, or you can just get the benefits of that cloud on-premises, right? The automation, the scalability, the cost profile, right? The predictability of cost, right? Expansion capability, voice capability, things of that nature that you would get in the cloud. So if I asked you, Adam, what percent of your workloads are in the cloud? Would you include the GreenLake workloads in the cloud? Good question. No, I still consider the GreenLake as being on-prem. I mean, because that's physically where the infrastructure is. So I mean, anything that's not tied to that critical gaming system that I mentioned has to stay on-prem. We generally look at software as a service, right? So a lot of our, you know, whether it be our Atlassian, you know, suite of products or our HRIS system, you know, their software as a service. So those ones I consider cloud. And of course, you know, everybody's got Microsoft, right? And they're tech, right? Right, so those are the SaaS pieces that are in the cloud, but the other core infrastructure. I still, I don't call them cloud, but, yeah, even though it's like a cloud service. Yeah. Well, no, I was just curious as to how people think about that. It was funny watching AWS up on stage, saying, you know, in the fullness of time, it'll all be in the cloud, and Antonia going, oh, actually it's going to be hybrid. You would agree with Antonia. Absolutely. For the foreseeable future. Yeah, exactly. And also I would say the definition of cloud is changing, right? At some point in time, if you look at go back in time five years ago, the cloud meant public cloud, the cloud meant, you know, Salesforce.com, Workday, SaaS properties, et cetera, right? Now as we are seeing kind of the technologies that power cloud come on premises, right? You're getting the same benefits on premises that the definition of cloud is also changing, right? Cloud is getting that cloud operating model. It could be on-premises, it could be off-premises, it doesn't matter, but it's the operating experience that matters, right? So I think the industry is evolving as well. We are starting to see some of that change too. So when we're talking next year, maybe we'll be talking more hybrid cloud. It doesn't matter whether it's on-prem or off-prem. It's all about how do you manage the workload? That's a great point, and I definitely see that as well, where the lines are getting more and more blurred between, you know, what's cloud versus not, right? Right. Michelle, quick question for you. How does the use case that Adam articulated WCO, how does it really shine a light on HPE GreenX value proposition? What are some of the things there that you see that this is just going, yep, nail it, hitting the nail on the hammer on it? I think very similar. I think the journey is kind of very interesting here, right? And like I mentioned earlier, it mirrors the journey of many of our customers, right? And the value proposition they're looking for is, hey, how do I get into a hybrid workplace, which is a hybrid cloud environment, which is I want to run some applications in the cloud, public cloud, very similar to Adam wants to do test dev in the public cloud. And I want to run some applications on premises, you know, with the experiences like Equinix, you have interconnects across the two, right? So you reduce the latency. That is the value proposition around that. What value proposition around the fact that it's quick to provision, very similar to cloud. You don't have to wait six months, nine months to order some servers, order some storage, put it together, right? And from a cloud perspective, it should be instant on, right, that's kind of the value proposition we are driving to, which is, hey, it's out of the box experience. The complexity is abstracted from the customer, right? You provision immediately once you have the infrastructure, right, so it's kind of benefits of that. It's the cost side. I think cost predictability is a big deal, right? Especially in terms of the economic environment we live in right now. I mean, I'm hearing that more and more from our customers, hey, my costs bills, my bills are going up in public cloud. I don't have controls in terms of, you know, how high it can go in a certain month, you know, and how the spikes in that are killing customers, right? So the predictability of cost, that value proposition resonates really well. The one thing we haven't talked about is performance, right? What happens with GreenLake is we are leveraging a bunch of modular building blocks that are optimized for workloads. And what that does is it provides performance levels that are much better than in private cloud for a number of data intensive, number of high-density workloads, right? So those are the types of benefits that we provide, right? It's like on the cost side is the predictability, is the lower cost, is performance, right? The other thing I think we should talk about more is around lock-in, right? What we've done with GreenLake is we leverage a very open system, open standard approach so that, you know, we're not locking in customers into very specific services, right? And that's one thing that we are hearing from our customers while working with public cloud is if I use proprietary service as I get locked in and then I can't, my workload's not portable, right? Our customers are asking us to make sure that the environments they work in have portability across the different environments, not just private or public, but also across multiple public clouds, right? So again, those are the types of value propositions that are resonating really well with our customers. But you'll commit to some baseline, right? For some number of years, one year or three years, right? And then the longer you commit, the better the deal you get. And then you can scale up or down, dial up or down, basically on demand, correct? So there's that base piece. All right, so that's how you create the predictability. Yeah, exactly, yep. And how's that working for you? No, it's working great. Like I said, you know, I think Shell can answer better, but you know, different clients have different GreenLake models, but ours is, you know, we lock in 80% and then we have that additional 20% if we had it like I said before, new test or development environments, we've got that growth, then they monitor the, you know, our consumption and if we burst into that 80% to 100% and we're starting to get where we don't have any physical capacity anymore, it's automatically topped up, right? So we're always trying to sit around that 80%, you should. So scale up, scale down for what we need. And it's, you know, just as Michelle said, that consumption-based model, right? And it's worked really well for us. And HPE owns the asset? Yeah, that's right. And I think kind of, if you think about it, you know, when we talk about GreenLake, right? We talk about workloads. Like you've heard me talk about that multiple times. And that is because certain workloads lend very well to GreenLake and to private cloud, right? I think the type of workload that you are running at them, it is consistent, it's just predictable, right? I would run it on private cloud because a lot of our customers get a lot of cost benefits from it. If you have workloads that have very high predictability, think, you know, Black Friday type workloads, seasonal workloads, where you go up 10 times and you come down 10 times, right? You don't want to run that in a private infrastructure or you'll have to then over provision it to a certain level, right? So those types of workloads, we actually work with our customers to say, hey, you know, think about public cloud for that kind of workload, right? It's a better economic model. What I think a great use case for that is, we know like, so, you know, back to our business model, right? We buy a lot of tickets. And still, it's very much of, you know, you stop at a convenience store, you stop and get gas, right? You go get a lot of ticket, right? It's still that paper, which is, you know, less and less. You got electronic vehicles you've got. So in the younger generation, like, you know, they laugh at you when you have a piece of paper, right? I got to go get a piece of paper? No way. Right? So, yeah, there you go. I do that at the airport when I see boarding passes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but we are out of time. But this has been such a great use case for what Western Canada Lottery Corporation is doing with GreenLake, with Equinix. You're going to have to come back because I know we have so much more we can unpack. For sure. And clearly, we're going to have to move to Canada because we can't bring the winning. Take home all that lottery winning. I want to take all of the back. It's so secure that I can even play, even though I work for the lottery. Hey, that's good to know. So guys, thank you so much. Sorry for cutting you off. We really appreciate you guys. Really dissecting this use case. Really interesting. Thank you. Exciting. Lovely to be here back at theCUBE. Lisa and Dave, thank you. Thank you. Pleasure for our guests and for Dave Vellante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage after a short break. We're back with a couple of guests from VMware and HPE. Talking about really what better together and with this long-term partnership means for its customers. We'll see you after a short break.