Live Blog: HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman

HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman is set to address the HP Enterprise Discover 2016 conference today at 5:00 p.m. ET/2:00 p.m. ET. ChannelE2E is on hand to live blog the event. Among the chatter we're tracking...

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HP Enterprise Software

Overall, HPE's software business performance has underwhelmed me in recent quarters. But ChannelE2E expects plenty of updates from Paul Muller, VP of HPE Strategic Marketing this morning.

Details: Here's a point by point update from Muller, paraphrased by ChannelE2E.

• Software-defined is NOT about the data center, it's about redefining the enterprise business. And all businesses being software businesses.
• There are three big types of digital disruption. Including (1) business model disruption -- such as you leveraging Airbnb to disrupt hotels; (2) process disruption which removes friction from the buying cycle; and (3) technology disruption like wearables, IoT and cognitive computing.
• The good news on digital disruption technologies: You can get feedback much faster on application rollouts. The bad part about it: You better be able to tackle change management quickly. The big challenge on software is cultural -- and the shift from waterfall to agile, which many companies haven't mastered.
• Every conceivable area of the technology industry is being disrupted. You've got to educate investors, employees and all observers to look at the balance sheet in a new way and really understand what the numbers mean. Tying that back to HPE, keep an eye on SaaS bookings rather than software revenues, for example.
• Keep an eye on HPE's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions, which will leverage big data to drive application delivery. For instance, the system will increasingly predict the cost of future application development and/or potential fail points.

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HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman & Team

HPE delivered stronger-than-expected financials in its most recent quarterly results. But where is HPE heading next -- particularly with hyperconverged data centers, hybrid cloud and big data solutions? Details: Paraphrased comments from Whitman are below.

• Whitman started with an update on the overall business, including details about the HPE IT services business spin-off and combination with CSC. Whitman announced the move a few weeks ago, and simply drove home her earlier points about the deal. The transaction is expected to be completed by March 31.
• HPE will continue to focus on secure, next-generation software defined infrastructure -- including servers, storage, networking, converged and hyperconverged systems, and the Helion Cloud offerings.
• HPE is re-defining IT at the edge and in the IoT area with Aruba.
• Machine learning and deep analytics capabilities also are core focus areas.
• HPE still has a Technology Services division -- not to be confused with the IT services spin off. It includes 20,000 service professionals.

Visit Page 2: Meg Whitman on Digital Transformation, plus HPE Cloud interviews

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Meg Whitman on Digital Transformation

"We've been talking about digital transformation for decades," said Whitman. The U.S. census, for instance, began to go digital back in 1951, she noted. But more and more processes are getting digitized and accessible via APIs. Pay close attention to HPE's Synergy Composable Infrastructure strategy, with specific announcements expected at the conference.

• When it comes to digital transformation, nobody has been more impacted than the CEO and CIO.
• She pointed to case studies involving Boeing and General Electric, which are connecting devices and sensors to drive automation and insights that make air travel even safer.
• Whitman recently rode in an autonomous car. She noted that each autonomous car will generate data that's equivalent to four Libraries of Congress. A baby data center was in the car's trunk, as compute moves to the edge of the network, she asserted.
• "Digital transformation is no longer a choice. It's a requirement."

Boeing CIO Ted Colbert

• HPE is a "digital transformation factory" that assembles infrastructure, software and more for customers.
• Customer Boeing has "pioneered" high-performance compute as a service, working closely with HPE on such platforms as Apollo, the aerospace giant said.
• Microsoft's top security executive stopped by to describe how the software and cloud giant leverages HPE Fortify for line of business applications.
• Building on the security theme, HPE says it has 5,000 security experts and 10 Security Operation Centers (SOCs). HPE SecureData (formerly Voltage) is one of the key offerings that customers are adopting.
• Another big push involved Haven on Demand -- an on-demand machine learning system that runs atop Microsoft Azure.

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Dropbox CEO Drew Houston Stops By

Drew Houston

• Customers want the best of both worlds -- fast application rollouts to employees, while also ensuring security, according to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston.
• To deliver that reality, Dropbox moved some of its infrastructure away from Amazon Web Services into a private Dropbox infrastructure -- leveraging solutions from HPE.
• "It was a pretty fast migration. We migrated hundreds of petabytes of data with nobody noticing. It's like swapping out jet engines mid-flight without passengers noticing."
• HPE is now a Dropbox business customer, and the duo has a channel partnership as well.
• "Our view is hybrid cloud is real. Today," added Whitman.

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HP Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Antonio Neri

• Executive VP and GM Antonio Neri took the stage next.
• First, he pointed to the Helion Cloud Suite, which offers hybrid cloud management with infrastructure.
• Second, keep an eye on Helion Cloud System 10, which is pre-integrated with best-in-class hardware and software, he asserted.
• Third, he said Helion Stackato will allow developers to write applications that run across OpenStack, VMware, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, among other platforms.

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HPE and Docker Partnership

• HPE announced plans to bundle the Docker engine on all HPE servers.
• Docker CEO Ben Golub stopped by, and said developers that use Docker deploy applications 13 times faster, typically have one-third the errors and faster fixes to the errors.
• "The fact that you can get servers and hyperconverged systems from HPE is really remarkable," said Golub. The management tools between Docker and HPE OneView work seamlessly, he asserted.
• "Developers want to write amazing code; they don't want to worry about how it gets deployed."
• Virtualization vs. Docker. "Virtualization is a fantastic technology but it was built for moving around servers. Docker is for moving around applications," Golub said.

Visit Page 3: Interviews with HP Enterprise Cloud team

HP Enterprise Cloud

Tom Norton

HPE abandoned its own public cloud, and instead partners with third-party public clouds. Some of the effort involves cloud bursting from customers' on-premises HPE infrastructure to third-party clouds. But HPE is also expanding its own software portfolio to run in third-party clouds -- and to manage hybrid clouds. We expect to hear from multiple sources later today, including:

• Tom Norton, chief technology, Cloud Services;
• Jeremy Willenborg, cloud sales enablement, Americas;
• Angela Rizzo, director, demand generation, HPE Helion; and
• Bobby Patrick, CMO, HPE Helion may also join.

Details: Here's some of the chatter from this session...

• HPE drove home the point that the company's cloud stacks are compatible with classic software stacks like Windows Servers. For instance, HPE's Cloud Foundry offerings are much more Windows-compatible than previous Cloud Foundry-type solutions.
• Whatever happened to Eucalyptus, the Amazon-compatible software for private clouds? The company says Eucalyptus is alive and well. It's most popular form is HP Enterprise Services running and managing Eucalyptus workloads for end-customers. In other words, HPE is a Eucalyptus managed services provider (MSP) for customers that want private clouds that are compatible with AWS.
• Helion OpenStack version 3 is well-designed for SMB customers and midmarket customers that want to comply with regulatory mandates, HPE asserted.
• HPE ArcSight is the company's monitoring platform to detect and mitigate breaches across HPE offerings like OpenStack and more.
• Generally speaking, bloggers at the session were confused by all of HPE's different cloud offerings. On the product side, HPE responded, look at HPE Helion Stackato to build cross-platform offerings. And also look at HPE Cloud Service Automation, the company said.
• For MSPs, HPE conceded that it didn't yet have a single dashboard for managing customers across multiple clouds -- on premises, public and so on. Right now, such a scenario would be nirvana but it doesn't exist yet, the company said. Still, company representatives said they're thinking seriously about that.

More Coverage Wednesday, June 8

Everything mentioned above occurs on Tuesday. We'll also be sharing more details from the conference on Wednesday as well. Keep checking back.