HPE CEO Antonio Neri On Data Management, Teaming With VMware, And Why Competitors Are Going To Hit A Hardware Wall

Talk about the competition a little bit. You’re fighting Dell Technologies, but at the same time you’re a big VMware partner. How’s the relationship between you and VMware going?

We have what I call the pure-play competitors, you know, Dell, Lenovo and what I call China Inc. The other one is obviously the public cloud. And then you have a bunch of stops in the middle. And so listen, I think our strategy against [Dell Technologies] has been totally opposite. They want to get bigger, scale. We want to get smaller, leaner and more focused. And I think, you know, we'll see. The jury is out, but the reality is what customers want is fast innovation and simple architectures they can deploy. Not a complex portfolio.

That’s why we have done a remarkable job simplifying platforms, focusing on fewer things, making it better, but then continuing to bring that innovation that keeps us ahead. The difference between us and them is very simple: We have an edge-to-cloud strategy. They don't have an edge-to-cloud strategy. Now they talk about that edge. You know, it's amazing to me when I was looking at a presentation they gave for the IPO they talk about the edge, but they don’t have an edge [strategy].

But with VMware, we have a good partnership. They realize they need us. For [VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger], being independent and agnostic is what he needs. We always want to give our customers the best choice. So in the end we are a multi-stack company and a multi-cloud company because in the end customers have a choice. The reality is customers are not going to put everything into one cloud on the public side.

As you grow, how do you stay nimble? Because you are going to get bigger.

For us, it’s to stay true to our strategy. And this is something that Meg and I worked together on over the last 15 months before she left. So this is not a coincidence that we have the strategy that we have. This was the smoothest transition in two decades. And so we think about innovation in three parts: organic, inorganic and through partnerships. Obviously, we want to invest organically. At the same time, we think about the inorganic plays that add to our portfolio to accelerate our strategy. We’ve done several acquisitions. You know … Cape Networks, Niara and Rasa Networks. And we will continue to do that when it makes sense.

On the core business we have SGI, Nimble, SimpliVity. On the services side, we have Red Pixie, CTP [Cloud Technology Partners] and Cloud Cruiser. Stay focused on that and make sure you integrate that in a platform. And then ultimately get efficient at what we do. And that’s why we put in place HP Next, which at the core is to rearchitect the company.