 Live from Madrid, Spain. It's theCUBE, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome back to Madrid, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. This is day one of our coverage of HPE Discover 2017. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Peter Burris. Jim Jackson is here as the Senior Vice President of the Enterprise Group at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Good to see you again, and Jason Newton as the Vice President of Global Marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Guys, it wouldn't be a Discover without some big news, transitioning to Antonio. We're about to hear the keynote, but Jim, set up the week for us, the big news that we can expect. Show us a little leg. Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having us here, guys. We're really excited for this week. It's going to be probably one of our biggest weeks of innovation. Pretty amazing Discover lined up. So you're going to see us talk about AI in the data center. So bringing predictive analytics from our NIMBO acquisition, it's called InfoSight. We're extending that to 3PAR, so that really helps our customers predict and anticipate problems and solve them in advance. So that's really software-based, leading with that. Another area is we're bringing consumption-based capabilities, a whole new suite of consumption offerings. We're branding it HPE GreenLake, and it's really think of purpose-built solutions for things like backup, SAP, Hadoop, data lake environments, but it's really outcomes as a service. So we're now able to give our customers the ability to have infrastructure as a service and now outcomes as a service. And the other part of making hybrid IT simple that you're going to hear about is how we're really helping our customers unify and manage that multi-cloud environment. So applications are sitting in public clouds, private clouds. What we're hearing from our customers is, hey, we need to be able to manage this a lot easier and have holistic ability to see all of that. So you're going to see us talk about that on main stage as well. So new brands, a lot of innovation. We've also got some partnerships that we'll be rolling out later today. So a lot happening. Hey, Jason, you've spent a lot of time, sweat, toil, blood on branding, obviously a big part of the branding exercise. Up-leveling the messaging. We had you on two or three years ago and you said, look, we're going to change things. We're going to shift the focus from products and sort of widgets and really talk about what customers care about. How has that gone? Where are you at with that transformation? I mean, it resonates extremely well with customers. I mean, that's, you know, and they, in fact, we just got out of a panel where we had four of our top customers, ABB, Dreamworks, Ikea and Nokia. And we just spent an hour just talking about their digital transformation journey and what they're all about. The room was packed. I think we had over 400 people who were in there and that's showing that we can be an innovation partner to those customers and enabling them to share their stories at a venue like this is really powerful. Yeah, I mean, we're becoming much more software and services-led and it's really all about experiences, providing that experience that our customers are looking for. The follow-up to that. So a lot of people think, well, HP spun-merged its software business, but you're leading with services and software, so help us with that. We're doing a ton in software today. So if you just think of our software portfolio, we have HP OneView to manage our customer's complete infrastructure, estate, server storage and networking. We extended that last year with Composability, so HP Synergy. We have over a thousand new customers since we announced that last year, actually at this event. So we're seeing a lot of progress and, you know, Synergy enables our customers to really have one environment that can flex to the needs of multiple different applications, so reduces over-provisioning. AI, I talked about AI in the data center. So what we're doing with InfoSight, that's software-based. We're extending that to 3PAR and you'll see us extend that to other parts of the portfolio going forward. Naira on the Ruba side of the house, software-based. Aruba is very software-centric and then, of course, we'll be announcing this afternoon our codename project, Newstack, really about helping to manage that multi-cloud environment. So a lot happening in the software space and an area that we're very focused on. So one of the things, by the way, we think that those three things that you mentioned, automation in the data center, on-premise capabilities and a cross-multi-cloud approach to management and managing your assets, absolutely spot on. And we think ultimately, and here's a question, we think that what's going to drive the determination is, what does the data need? So talk to us a little bit about how you are articulating the idea of data as the new value source, the new value and hardware infrastructure and software and these capabilities making it possible for the work to exist where the data requires. Yeah, and I'll start, maybe you can pile on a little bit. So our conversation starts with apps and data. So we're starting the dialogue there. And what we're seeing is really moving from large data centers or only large data centers to centers of data that are really everywhere. So we're starting to see that edge really starting to proliferate and drive a lot more change. And what our customers are saying is, wherever my, regardless of where my data sits, I need to manage it, I need to secure it, I need to process it, I need to be able to translate it into insight. And that's really what our strategy's all about. We've been talking for the last couple of years about making hybrid IT simple and we're really doing a lot in that space. So for example, we announced the acquisition of cloud technology partners and really what we're trying to do there, it's the foremost authority really in helping customers understand how to migrate applications to AWS or even to Google or Azure. And when you combine that with our on-prem capabilities, it really now starts to talk about data. We want to say your data's what matters and we want to help you manage that holistically. The software investments that we're doing enable you to have that complete view. And then from a consumption perspective, some of the things I talked about earlier, rolling that out, right? Making it easier to consume this as a service and only pay for what I use. So we are in alignment. It all starts with data. Wherever that data sits, it's how do I manage it? And that's why Aruba is such a great asset for us because a lot of people think about Aruba as, oh, you just replaced copper wire and Wi-Fi nodes. And hey, don't get me wrong, that's a money-making great business. If you'd ask Kirti, he'd probably say, we're a data business, right? And that's- We did ask him and that is what he said. Is that what he said? Yes, that's the wrong message. That's the wrong message today. All right, yeah, I mean, because that's where the action is happening. That's where the data is being created. And so everything that they're doing around the security 360 platform, the mobile first platform, everything is centered around how do I draw value and context from that data? Well, I want to ask you about Aruba because when you acquired Aruba, we said, wow, this is a great business. It's going to be a growth business. But is it a strategic weapon for HPE? Is it a strategic infrastructure component? From a messaging standpoint, it's all about the intelligent edge. So you've up-leveled that. Where'd that come from? Maybe take us through the anatomy of that. Well, I mean, the message is just exactly what we were saying, that if value's going to be created at the edge, if the data's going to be coming from the edge, we have to drive a whole lot more intelligence into that edge in order to collect, process, analyze, secure the data that's coming in and make use of it, right? So, I mean, that's where the genesis of the intelligent edge came from. Yeah, I mean, I would say the other thing about Aruba that we're really seeing is all about experiences. So when we talk to our customers about Aruba, they're looking to deliver a different experience, whether it's in retail, whether it's in stadiums, whether it's in the campus space, it's all about delivering a better experience. And that's really the value prop behind Aruba. Very software centric, open software, mobile solution. The other thing is, it's enabling us to engage more and more with parts of the company, customers that we might not have had as much engagement before. The C-suite, talking more with the line of business because what they're focused on is how do I deliver that better experience? And Aruba's really playing a key role in doing that. We also have the view that, ultimately, and you started the conversation about data and we totally agree, but it has to be thought from the edge to the core to the cloud. So whether we engage with Aruba, whether we engage with our core data center capabilities and our strengths there, or with services, that's enabling us to holistically have a much more strategic conversation with our customers. So we're excited about that. I'd like to dig a little bit on this notion of AI for the data center or AI for managing IT. Choose for the college of children. We like to talk about the difference between a breadth first, which is I'm going to do this like in this big Broadway and we'll figure out how we're going to get the components to participate versus a depth first, which is let's lean on suppliers who know the hardware, know the software best and ask them to create simulocrums, digital representations that then will allow me to apply AI, machine learning, et cetera. We like the depth first approach, but customers ultimately want to see this bloom into a breadth approach. Talk to us a little bit about how individual elements are being represented, but in a coherent, consistent way so that you can get to a broader overall set of automation across entire infrastructure. Well, I mean, I think that you're seeing the paradigm shift now. I mean, for decades we've been chasing this idea that we could make the one tool to rule them all, this sort of magic management environment, one single pane of glass, everyone says that, right? I've written a lot of research papers that suggested that, right? And look, I think that we're done, right? And the only thing we can do now is how do we embed intelligence to make the infrastructure so smart it can take care of itself? And that's ultimately the experience that our customers are telling us that they want, right? Is I don't want to be an expert on IT anymore. I don't want to touch this stuff. I don't want to deal with it. Not just want, need. Need, I can't handle it, right? I mean, the scale and speed of everything is beyond the capacity. I can't hire enough people to take care of it. So, I think starting there and saying, okay, we're going to start embedding that type of intelligence. Right now it's mostly predictive analytics type of stuff, but increasingly you're going to see more true AI come in, not just in the data center with what we're doing in Nimble, right? But also with Neara, now we call it introspect, right? At the edge, how do we start weaving that across to do a variety of things? Whether it's maintenance or performance optimization or security. And I think thinking of it like a continuous platform across the infrastructure is going to give you that depth and kind of breadth of control that you're looking for. So that leads to kind of an ecosystem question and look at your comments on that. Because the question of breadth or depth, the answer is yes, you got to have both. The ecosystem posture has totally changed in the last year or so. Subsequent as we had PWC on today, we've had Veeam on earlier. These are partners that you're putting forth. We're making a money, right? For sure, right. But they're partners that previously, you wouldn't have profiled, whether on stage, on a cube, wherever. How has the ecosystem evolved? I mean, it's opening up a whole new set of opportunities for us. If you think of when we had ES, a lot of people just felt like, hey, we were going to compete with them, right? Now that ES has spun out, we actually created another great partner in ES, but we've got a whole host of other SI's that want to engage with us. They want to take our capabilities in IT systems, our consumption capabilities, and then align it with a value prop that they'll bring. So you talked about Veeam, for example, right? Data availability is really, really important for customers. So taking HPE and Veeam together, we're able to deliver a great solution from data protection to recovery, really powerful stuff. And we're seeing some great opportunities out there in the marketplace in a very strong ROI. I mean, we have some data that says, hey, over five years is a 200% ROI. Another area, when you think of just partnering, right, is what we're doing with our channel partners. So we're giving them more solutions that are channel-centric, that we're driving through our channel organization, yeah. And then we just announced a relationship a couple of weeks ago with Rackspace. It's a managed private cloud, open source solution. We're using our consumption capabilities combined with Rackspace, their environment. And this is giving our customers the flexibility to now spin up very quickly our private cloud environment that they're looking for with a lot of the public cloud capabilities, very strong economics behind it. And then the Edge, that's the other area. We're seeing lots of new partnering opportunities as the Edge continues to expand. So we believe that innovation is a team sport and we're leaning in really hard. And I know the Gartners and the IDCs don't track who are the best partners, but I think if they did, we would be at the top of the list. Well, and probably a lot of this activity was going on previously. So it's not like you're starting from ground zero, but you just, from a marketing standpoint, you really didn't talk about it because you had colleagues, whether it was from EDS or the software division that's saying, hey, don't talk about that. Help us out here. So how has that changed the way in which you market? I mean, one of the big values is you're going to market. I mean, people are drooling to now partner with HPE. Yeah, and one of the big reasons is, honestly, is point next. Because they see the value in what Accenture, or PWC, or WIPRO can bring from understanding a business or whatever, versus the deep technical knowledge of a point next to come in. And what they really love is the consumption model stuff that we've been able to wrap around it. They see that customers want that, in order to move fast with less risk, you've got to have some sort of financial lever that says, okay, I can start small and I can grow over time. I'm not putting all my money out in one place. And we've been building that with Flex Capacity over the last several years. You're going to see, well, I guess we announced yesterday, GreenLake, making that even simpler to consume. Every one of our partners says, I want to take your IT expertise and that consumption-based model and wrap it around our total solution. And that's what's like white-hot right now. And there's, I mean, unlimited opportunity right now from, as Jim said, edge to core to cloud. And we have another one we're going to announce on stage in a couple of hours. So we're pretty excited about that as well. Oh, and you see that in the numbers too. Yeah. I mean, and we heard of you might have a clue what that is. We're excited about that. Yeah, I know it is. And you kind of gave something of a preview when you talked about the three things that you want to be able to do. Because there's one brand that hasn't been mentioned yet. But ultimately, the business is recognizing that the technology questions that we're raising here are crucial to their future success. But they don't want them to be a continuous source of antagonism. So they recognize that they need the capability, but they want to dramatically simplify the degree to which it's invasive. I once had a CIO tell me that the value of my infrastructure is inversely proportional to the degree to which anybody in my business knows anything about it. Yeah. So how do you then take steps to ensure that your customers don't know anything about the infrastructure, even though they have the infrastructure where the data demands, which is inclusive is going to be at the edge and on premise. Well, I mean, I think that's some of the things we're focused on now, right? So software to make infrastructure much more frictionless and you're not really worrying about managing that infrastructure. It's just there to power the business, to deliver the business. Consumption based offerings with GreenLake, right? This is truly purpose built stacks for specific things because our customers are telling us, I don't want to have to set all that up and manage it, but I want that outcome and I only want to pay for what I use. So those are just a couple of examples of how we're trying to simplify it. Because ultimately it's all about the experience and the outcome and being able to translate all that data into insight. Well, and you're simplifying your face to the world. We heard in the last earnings call, new reporting structure going forward. Hybrid, IT. Yep. Telogen edge and financial services, which is exploding the consumption based on like 22% growth last quarter. So, organizationally, presumably you've started to take that shape and that's how you're presenting your face to the world, is that right? Yeah, and that's helping us to really break down some of the silos that have existed in this company for a while. And you're seeing that really, really becoming much more unified in terms of how we go to market, how we think about engaging with our partners, how we engage with our customers. Are your customers breaking down those silos at a consistent rate? Are you a little bit ahead, a little bit behind? How would you evaluate that? I mean, I think it's a transition. It depends on which customer, which sector. We still see some of them that are maybe a little behind, some that are a little bit ahead. But really, everybody wants to start the conversation much more about how do I move faster? How do I accelerate my business? It's all focused on outcomes, starting at that data level, and then how can you help me, right? And this is where I think some of the acquisitions that we have made, like CTP are very powerful, and then all the software capabilities that we're bringing as well. So we're leading the dialogue much more around that. And the only way they're going to get there is to break down those silos. Absolutely. That's a bet you're making. We have to help them do that, right? We have to help them do that and give them the solutions to do that. Jim, I want to go back to a point that you made about those other two research firms, Gartner and IDC, I think it was. But you said that if they were measuring the value, if there was a magic quadrant for who's the best partner, you guys would be up in the upper right-hand quadrant. But partners in this world, especially here in Europe, are more than just the big guys. Yes. How are you taking steps to ensure that that large mass of crucially important companies out there that still wear a lot of the innovation, a lot of that excitement really is, are coming with you, are able to move with you, because your ability to certainly provide them with financial support is important. But your ability to show them the future and have them see their business in the future is going to be crucial to whether or not they stay with you. I mean, I think we've done a couple of things. We created our Pathfinder program. I'm sure you guys are aware of that, right? So these are some of the newer partners coming up. We're actually investing in them, helping to scale them, because we think it's going to be unique innovation. Another area is this program that we have called Cloud 28 Plus, where we have a whole network of providers, service providers, ISVs, SPs, that's part of a network that we're able to grow and kind of scale that ecosystem. So I don't know if you want to comment anything more on that, but- Up to 700 now, we have the others. So Xavier, you know, is very passionate about this, obviously, but he's done some really good things. But that gives us an ecosystem now of partners who are part of that HPE ecosystem, but different use cases, different compliance needs. They sit in different regions, so we're able to give our customers a lot of that flexibility. All right, got to give us something on the keynote. Just a tidbit. What can you share? A little nugget. I mean, you know, just some of the themes we've talked about, you know, and you'll hear the word friction free a lot. You know, how do we make things invisible and really demonstrating how with services and software and consumption-based, you know, service models, can we do that for customers? You'll hear a lot of those themes. We'll highlight some of the things we've announced over the last, you know, 24 hours, a few weeks, you know, so we'll emphasize what we've done around Nimble and InfoSight and the importance of AI in the data center. We'll obviously spotlight point next and Anna and her energy, she's going to be out there and really firing people up. And a few surprises in the software space that will come today that it'll probably cause the market to do a bit of a double-take and say, who is that? That's doing this again? Yeah, it's us. It's HPE doing that. And you'll see us also talk about a little bit of a vision in terms of how we see the market becoming, you know, starting more at the edge, bringing in AI, composing for different kinds of environments, and then how HP has really been able to invest. So we're going to start to show that over the last couple of years, we've had a very clear agenda of where we wanted to go, and now that's all coming to fruition. So we'll start to show all that holistically in terms of our technology vision. So that's another thing that we're going to be highlighting. Great, perfect timing. We can hear the announcement. Keynotes are coming up. We'll be broadcasting those on our Twitch channel, siliconangle.com, slash twitch, you can go to hpe.com and see the keynotes as well. Gents, great energy, awesome to see you. It's great to see you guys, thank you. We'll be watching the college football ranks. You guys have a fun little rivalry, Ohio State here. The Ohio State. Soon as they're Yale, but nobody cares. Baker for Heisman. Gents, thanks very much for coming to thank you. Thanks guys, appreciate it. Keep my time, but we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break.