 From around the globe, it's theCUBE. Covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience, brought to you by HPE. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2020, the virtual experience this year. I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE, and I have a guest joining me from HPE Financial Services, Doreen Vu, Marketing and Business Development later in the APJ region. Welcome, Doreen. Hi, Lisa. Thank you for having me today. I should say good morning. You're in Singapore. Great to have you here. So talk to us a little bit about your role in financial services for HPE. Yes, I lead the Marketing and Business Development for Asia Pacific Japan at HPE Financial Services. Well, together with my team, we look to create and execute business strategies as well as go-to-market programs collaborating with our HPE and high-value relationship partners to jointly develop revenue growth and profitability goals that we all look to have. So the last few months, massive disruption with COVID-19, disrupting business strategies, disrupting go-to-market plans. What are some of the things that you have seen from that lens of helping customers from a financial services perspective? What have you seen since COVID hit? Yeah, so from a business perspective, COVID-19 has really intensified some of the, what we really knew in terms of the digital transformation that is so imperative in order to compete in today's very, very competitive role. And of course, in that dynamic situation, we also see a lot of customers when the pandemic hit them, they were trying to balance that with keeping their operations on as well as trying to still keep to their digital transformation initiatives. So all of that was really taking away some of what they see in terms of the budgets where it's really quickly deleting, some will actually be late or simply just taking away. So initially, we saw many customers who needed to boost their IT requirement very quickly in order to help their employees to work from home remotely and to continue to support the business online. So there were a lot of requirements in the initial phase. At the same time, we're also seeing that what customers were trying to do that, a lot of this were unplanned and so they had to look to how to do this, all these initiatives, as well as still keeping their cash to conserve it to weather through this storm whereby they are also seeing a decreasing revenue because of some of the lockdowns and restrictions that they are facing. So given how dynamic this whole thing has been and how fast businesses in every industry and pretty much country of the world had to massively pivot or shut down, what are some of the ways in which HPE Financial Services is getting creative to help your customers, as you said, kind of navigate shrinking budgets or budgets that are being quickly depleted. Well, at the same time, these businesses for financial agility need to have a big mind on cash flow. Yeah, so we saw that coming through and a lot of customers was also looking to see how they could continue both their operations as well as still keep their initiatives going ahead. So a lot of customers were trying to figure out what's the best way they can do this while maintaining all of that and keeping all the possible budgets. So we have put together a two-billion offer to help customers in order to tie through this period. And it was through a various lease of initiatives that we have, including some flexible financing scheme that would allow them to take advantage of the programs that we have while keeping the lights on, as well as making sure that they still have the cash to invest and actually adopt and go ahead with their digital transformation strategy. Tell me a little bit about how your team actually helped to create some of those flexible financing options so quickly, given how fast everything changed, what were some of the conversations like within HPE that you can share that led you to understand, okay, this is where we can deliver creativity to our customers? Right, so there were a lot of discussion going on. I mean, the couple of very key areas where we feel that the customers have very important needs is one where the supply chains have been disrupted and yet they have to keep their operations or boost their operations because a lot of people were working from home and so that connectivity needs to be in place, their service needs to be upgraded. So definitely they would need to upgrade their system and so that's where we have our solutions able to help them bring in some of the pre-certified, pre-owned equipment to help them upgrade and that can be done very quickly in the matter of days or even just weeks or days and so they can upgrade that very quickly. So we have a solution to help them to do that. At the same time, we know that cash is going to be very important, keeping their liquidity is very crucial for the business and so we have came together and put through a few of what we call deferral program as well as a relief program will allow them to take advantage where they pay as little as nothing for three months or as little as 1% for the remaining of this year and defer most of the costs to later part. So we think these are the ones that customers really need to because these are where they see some of their constraints in terms of managing both keeping their operations as well as the cash intact. And of course, customers have to plan for what's happening right now, which a lot of businesses and you and I are in this everyone work from home and then there'll be a next phase where depending on the type of industry maybe certain job functions will go back to the office and then maybe there would be a third phase where it's permanently some folks percentage large part probably are going to stay working from home. So your customers have to be able to work with HPE financial services to plan for those phases. And as you talked about, you've got a program to help them swap out equipment with a certified free on program. But I imagine that's equipment ranging from laptops to printers to network and connectivity and security technologies, right? It really spans the whole gamut of what HPE delivers. Yes, so for us, we are looking across the whole spectrum of IT, we pride ourselves as we aspire to be the leader in IT asset economics. And that's really where our strength is because we understand the value in each of these IT assets and it's not just about, you know, conserving cash of any sort but it's also about how to you acquire a whole IT assets with the best solutions whereby you can use it and consume it as well as, you know, you are not tied to a particular set of products and you get the chance to upgrade as soon as you need it. You know, so that's helps the customers in terms of enabling their strategies to go ahead with the various post COVID-19 plans that they might have. So that's where we could help with various options for the customers. Are you seeing, is HPE seeing an increase in e-waste because now there might be businesses that as you said earlier, we have to digitally transform to be compete. That's no longer a nice to have. What's going on from a sustainability perspective? Yeah, so from a, as companies innovate, right? A lot of times those are good innovations but at the same time as you innovate, you know, there are also the downside of where, you know, you create a different set of problems with e-waste and a lot of sometimes innovations might take place. Well, sometimes, you know, it's a little bit of trial and you might not proceed with those innovation. And that's where you might have created, you know, extra IT assets, which would not be used. And that is really a growing problem because, you know, we see 50 tons of e-waste being created every year. And so, you know, a lot of customers are also telling us to say that, you know, how we can help them in this area. You know, and this is really where HPE financial service can do a lot to help because we strongly believe, you know, in recycling out, cycling of our products and, you know, advocating the consumption versus the own mentality, you know, and that's where our various solutions really can help me to help to customers who are thinking about, you know, innovations, who are thinking about, you know, getting their business transform, we have different ways to help them to do that. And a lot of times that's where if, you know, customers look to that, it helps them to not just about building up strategy as well as building a strategy that is committed to sustainability. And continuing on this sustainability topic, I imagine to one of the opportunities that customers have to work with HPE and financial services is to stream on and simplify their environment. I imagine, I think of it, you know, a very simple analogy to spring cleaning, realizing, oh, I haven't used this in a while, I don't need it. Talk to me about some of the ways that from a sustainability and a moving forward kind of future direction perspective, where HPE might be helping customers simplify their IT infrastructures to reduce the amount of technologies and devices that they might need to help them be more efficient as their business strategies have completely changed. Yeah, so I mean, first of all, when the company looks to innovate and looks to adopt new technology, I think one of the key things that they probably will look to is how do they plan to use this? How are they consuming it? And think about, you know, are there better ways that they can consume this IT, you know, it's not so much about having everything and house and owning it, it's also about providing you the level of service that you need as well as, you know, is that what is required in terms of the best way to manage your financial agility in order to meet those requirements? And so that's probably very key for a lot of customers who need to look at both balancing their financial requirements as well as, you know, having the right strategy and contributing again, you know, to the sustainability goals that they might have internally. As we look at HP Discover coming up, you have probably a unique opportunity with this event having to be completely virtual of having customers in every industry in every region of the world now not have to travel. So expenses saved there, talked about them being, you know, cash constrained and budget shrinking, but you probably have the opportunity to talk to maybe a wider audience about what HPE financial services can help customers achieve in normal times and in these current times. Talk to me about some of the things that customers will have the opportunity to learn like maybe sessions that you're doing at Discover. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I think this is one of the great things that's happening right now because everything is virtual. Anyone and everyone can go into Discover where in previous years maybe they're restricted by travels, they're restricted by timings. And so like even myself, you know, here in Singapore, we can't go into Discover you know, anytime and really enjoy that. So I really would, you know, invite all the attendees to view our spotlight sessions which is reimagining your entire technology assets that's delivered by our CEO of Robin. And also we have a future session that's in the women's leaders and technology whereby our COO Jerry Gold talks about leading, you know, through the recovery. And of course not to forget and we still have two more business talks as well as, you know, our demo rooms that in the showcase which, you know, I would recommend everyone to go visit. Terrific Doreen, thank you for sharing what's going on with HPE financial services in the time of COVID, how you're helping customers adjust their business strategies and thanks for sharing the different sessions that they can attend and learn from at Discover. We appreciate your time. Thank you, Lisa. It was great having to be on this sessions. Yep, it's my pleasure. Excellent, mine as well. For Doreen Buu, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2020.