Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:02):
The convergence of edge computing and AI is reshaping how enterprises approach digital transformation with organizations seeking to balance innovation with practical implementation. Marc Waters, senior Vice president of customer Success and services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, joins us to share insights from the front lines of enterprise technology adoption. Marc, thank you for being with us.

Marc Waters, HPE (00:26):
Great to see you.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:27):
So, Marc, in your role, you work with customers globally. What are the key topics driving the discussions?

Marc Waters, HPE (00:33):
Yeah, well, thank you. I mean, I always enjoy spending time with our customers, not least of all here. And I think there's a few themes that we're really picking up. Obviously everyone is looking at operational efficiency and also innovation, and that spans across security and productivity in the core in the day-to-day run of IT operations. It encompasses the future of platform solutions where we get into multiple virtualization, runtimes containers, and bare metal on how you bring all of that together in a multi-cloud world where you got an on-premise and off-premise as well. And of course, the impact of generative AI to business models and innovation. And obviously at mobile, well, Congress secure connectivity and networking is a huge topic for people.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (01:19):
How does HPE provide value through solutions in this context?

Marc Waters, HPE (01:23):
Yeah, and I think it's all about solutions, isn't it? It's about delivering real value. I think the uniqueness at Hewlett Packard Enterprise is we operate all the way across that stack from secure connectivity networking solutions into our core infrastructure from which you can build platforms, hybrid operations software across that platform, and then the service management wrap all around that from day minus one plan and design right the way through day zero implementation, and then day two operate and run. So we can bring all of that together with innovation for our customers.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (01:59):
What approach are customers taking to Gen ai?

Marc Waters, HPE (02:02):
Well, everyone wants to talk about it, that's for sure. And people are just kind of asking, well, how do I get real value from this? And I think there's a few impacts from talking to a number of the telcos here. It's a Marcet inflection point, so it creates an opportunity for new services, new revenue streams, but at the same time, that kind of AI demand puts pressure on networks. It puts pressure on services. So people are needing to react to that in real time. I mean, as the way I think about it is from what I see, AI is proving to be a very strong private cloud workload. What do I mean by that? It runs really well on premise, and that's because people care about IP security. There's this real issue of data gravity, the need actually to provide AI in multiple edge locations to back to that secure connectivity or connectivity networking for AI as well. So yeah, there's a whole number of factors creating that drive towards it being a private cloud workload. And organizations are looking at that. They want to have demonstrable business benefit from AI to prove that out, and then to be able to scale it in a way that is both cost efficient and gives them that real control, both of ip, but also the costs associated with ai.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (03:19):
Which AI business cases do you see having the most traction?

Marc Waters, HPE (03:22):
Yeah, I mean, well, lots of people have got ideas. There's no shortage of candidate use cases. I mean, in my role actually at hp, I look after customer success and some of our solutioning capability globally and internally, we are looking at, well, we've got teams that are effectively listening to customer requirements and creating solutions for that, be that infrastructure bill of materials or even service-centric solutions. And we're starting to bring AI into those use cases to kind of do some of that decision making. And I think that's a great example. I'd call that a contact center use case where you can just really look at documentation information the way you're operating, and just speed up and automate it right the way up into more of a sales copilot. So they bring efficiency into the sales teams. And then probably the, finally, the area I see real provable value customers really going forward is in both engineering and development use cases, just kind of speeding up those processes.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:19):
What are you finding interesting this year at MWC?

Marc Waters, HPE (04:22):
Well, it's my first time at NWC, can you believe it? So I'm having a great time. I'm a bit blown away just by the SHE scale and innovation that's coming around. But I came here with the mindset that you are actually getting this real convergence, aren't you? Between security, between networking and core technologies and platforms. And that's really coming together. And I feel that here. And then probably a real highlight for me is standing on the HPE stand and actually just over there we're talking about multi-vendor network management. And that's really bringing observability and that kind of hybrid operation stack into the network so that we can start to do that in an on-premise and off-premise scenario, which I think is groundbreaking technology. It really leads us to be innovative in network assurance. And when I think about platform and services, it's such a core component part. So I'd encourage anyone who's here to come and check that out. It's really innovative. It's leveraging our ops ramp acquisition. It's been so powerful in our platform business and bringing that into networking and actually proving out what we know and what we've seen, that HP Aruba is leading on innovation and is once again proving to be the disruptor in this marketplace. Long may that continue,

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (05:43):
Marc, thank you for those valuable insights.