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More from Cloud AI Journey With HPE

Savannah Peterson

Principal Analyst & Host

SiliconANGLE Media, Inc.

Rob Strechay

Dir./Principal Analyst & Host

theCUBE Research

Brad Parks

Chief Product / GTM Officer (CPO / CMO)

Morpheus Data

HPE synergizes with OpsRamp to rethink hybrid cloud management

The digital transformation era demands efficiency, agility and adaptability. As businesses navigate an increasingly complex IT landscape, hybrid cloud strategies have become indispensable.Following its acquisition of OpsRamp, Hewlett Packard Enterprises Co. has fostered a unique kinship aiming to propagate the hybrid cloud operating model.“What we saw, as hybrid cloud became more pervasive, was that it created a lot of problems when customers went to the public cloud in what we call a ‘hybrid by accident’ way … now, you have created a lot of different operational silos,” said Hang Tan (pictured, right), chief operating officer of hybrid cloud at HPE

Breaking the cloud silos with HPE: The future of hybrid cloud and IT observability

The cloud revolution has been transformative for enterprise IT, but not always in the ways businesses expect. Many organizations found themselves in the hybrid cloud by accident rather than intentionally. Now, they’re saddled with operational silos and inefficiencies from a convoluted technology stackHow big is the enterprise problem of fragmented cloud infrastructure? And how are platforms such as HPE GreenLake poised to remedy the situation?“I think what’s great about Hang [Tan] and what he talks about here is that a lot of people ended up in the cloud by accident and not on purpose and not intentionally,” said Rob Strechay (pictured, right), principal analyst at theCUBE

play_circle_outline Brad Parks' involvement with Morpheus and return to HPE after acquisition

play_circle_outline Integration of Morpheus software stack into HPE portfolio post-acquisition

play_circle_outline Introduction of VM Essentials as a starting point for hybrid cloud conversation

play_circle_outline Impact of AI on product roadmap and runtime flexibility for workloads

Info

Episode 7: Insights From theCUBE Analysts

Savannah Peterson

Principal Analyst & Host SiliconANGLE Media, Inc.

HOST

Rob Strechay

Dir./Principal Analyst & Host theCUBE Research

HOST

Brad Parks

Chief Product / GTM Officer (CPO / CMO) Morpheus Data

Savannah Peterson

>> Hello and welcome back to the Cloud AI Journey exclusive series with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. My name's Savannah Peterson, coming to you from our Palo Alto Studios today. Very excited to be breaking down the third interview in this series, one conducted with Brad Parks here with my co-conspirator and co-panelists, Rob Strechay joining us from Boston, Massachusetts today. Rob, thank you so much for taking the time and welcome.

Rob Strechay

>> It's so great to be here with you and be able to break this down. I think this has been fun, definitely fun for me, and I think a lot of really great information we're getting across.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, and you have a lot of history with some of these guests. I know you and Brad have known each other for two decades, and I can see why you enjoy his insights and friendships so much. Based on the interview that we were able to do recently, we're going to go ahead and play some of those clips back, like we've been doing throughout this series. The first of those segments being his inspiration for Morpheus and the boomerang effect that brought him back to HPE. Let's go ahead and play that.

Brad Parks

>> I was talking with the founding team and it just got me excited. They actually were an internal digital transformation engine inside my former boss's $4 billion private equity firm. They were in charge of modernizing applications, deploying new workloads, doing things like analytics, and being an internal service provider, an application farm for dozens of companies. And if you start to think about the challenges in the enterprise, that's what enterprise IT is trying to do. They want to be a better service provider for their business. So Morpheus was born by practitioners. Now we're selling and providing capacity to those same types of teams in the enterprise.

Savannah Peterson

>> All right, Rob, you've known Brad for a long time and have seen him both through probably the first HPE journey, the Morpheus journey, and now back at HPE since that acquisition. What do you think about this clip?

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think, again, we've known Morpheus their entire life. I've known them since Brad went over there and with the founder, and really that whole journey of that north star for Morpheus around always bringing things together, automation, operationalizing, very complex VM and container environments with all of the other infrastructure pieces really tied together. That north star is so integral to what Morpheus brings to HPE in this hybrid cloud world. I think, again, it did make a lot of sense, and I think I said it when the acquisition was announced, that this was probably a key, especially when you look at the complementary nature to OpsRamp that Morpheus brings.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, there's a lot of parallels in these stories and something that I've been very impressed with with HPE across this series is their ability to acquire companies and optimize them and roll out their best attributes and feature sets within the organization and the platform versus isolate or dissolve that technology. We heard the same story, and actually Brad mentions it in this interview, talking about how his last seven months have been in the company post acquisition. Let's take a look.

Brad Parks

>> Oftentimes small companies come into a big company and they kind of just get absorbed into the borg and they evaporate. One of the exciting things for me is you, our co-founder, head of engineering, former CEO, rather than just being tucked into the borg, we're now actually overlaying the entire Morpheus software stack across the HPE portfolio, and he has 5X the amount of developers to bring to bear to make that real inside HPE and very, very quickly we are becoming the standard software platform that is powering the entire HPE private cloud portfolio. So that is very exciting for me, and I think it's just a good validation of conversations I've had with Hang over the last couple of years. I've known Varma for the last few years. We had a lot of OEMs and service providers that actually used Morpheus and OpsRamp together, so it just feels right and we're off and running.

Savannah Peterson

>> I got to say, it seems like he's just as excited as Varma was and just as enthusiastic about the partnership. Rob, what do you think?

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. I think again, HPE definitely has been focusing down this path of really optimizing hybrid infrastructure, hybrid cloud as we like to say, cloud is not a place, it's an operating model, and I think really bringing things like OpsRamp and Morpheus together has really been critical to where they're going and where they are and how they're going to get there in the future. Because I think that helps bring the different pieces of operationalizing all the way down to the network layers where you can do configuration and optimization in the Morpheus layer of that full stack while you're going and understanding on a day-to-day basis what's happening from a telemetry perspective within OpsRamp using the AI that's really been a key part that they've integrated into GreenLake as well.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, there is a lot going on. You talked about those features. One of the features and offerings we got to dive into a bit with Brad was VM Essentials and really how that's combining the work that Morpheus was already doing with the trajectory that HPE is on. Just one of the many synergistic parts of this acquisition. Let's hear what he had to say about that.

Brad Parks

>> Yeah, you asked what the last seven months have been like since acquisition. Well, VM Essentials was actually a big piece of that. So Morpheus for years, for those who don't know us, we're an orchestration platform that ties into bare metal services, hypervisors, Kubernetes clusters, public clouds. We're focused on deploying workloads, bringing IT effectiveness and efficiency up a notch, which means we've integrated with KVM-based clouds for a long time. About 18 to 24 months ago, Morpheus decided, hey, we know KVM very well. We've actually been using it internally for a number of years. We said, hey, we should provide customers with a built-in runtime option if they want one, while still maintaining best-in-class integration with all of these other runtime choices that are in enterprise environments. So VM Essentials really was the culmination of a lot of work Morpheus was previously doing, combined with the trajectory that HPE was already on. So the VM Essentials software package that we launched back in December really is just the entry into the Morpheus family. It provides you with basic VM vending with a built-in KVM hypervisor, the VME hypervisor, but it also connects to brownfield VMware environments. You can almost think of it as the starting point to have a hybrid cloud conversation. You can start with VM Essentials, but then start to get into the full Morpheus feature set. So that's kind of where VM Essentials plays.

Savannah Peterson

>> It seems like a lot of this technological revolution is really coming down to timing lots of companies that weren't just jumping on the AI bandwagon, but really have been working towards laying the foundation for what we're experiencing now for a super long time. Rob, what's your analysis?

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think you and I have been on this ride together for a while doing things like KubeCon and other events and cloud-native events. I think that one of the things that's really having its moment again is KVM. I think again, when you look at the new stack, I think HPE is really about choice, bringing out their own KVM stack. I think VM Essentials and where Morpheus fits into VM Essentials as kind of a starting point for organizations that are maybe looking at hypervisor alternatives to things like VMware. I think where we start to see is that they're not going to get rid of all their VMware. I've talked to organizations that have five different Kubernetes stacks and container stacks, multiple different hypervisors. I think if anything else, and I think Brad definitely talks about this complexity is really key and solving for that complexity that is not just about HPE, but modernizing what people think about HPE and how they think about HPE as being across this larger span. So giving them an early and easy entry with VM Essentials and then letting them grow into that and helping them bring their entire operations together is key for Morpheus and has been one of their key value props all along, even when they were an independent company. But now even greater that they're part of HPE.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think you're absolutely right. What you're talking about is that embedding of features across the platform and the benefits that that provides for all of HPE's customers. It's compelling and it makes sense to take the best pieces of what everyone's doing together and provide the most compelling solutions for the community. I was impressed given the time period that we're living through right now in technology that we made it as far through this interview with Brad Parks, as we did without saying AI. This next segment, this next clip rather, is about AI, how it affects their product roadmap and how it really just comes down to runtime flexibility and different style workloads.

Brad Parks

>> We have been focused on helping IT teams orchestrate provision workloads into their environments, run things like automation, do, application blueprinting, let's put that focus on AI. What is the enterprise trying to do? They're going to be using different runtimes to meet different needs, and they don't want to be locked into any one runtime. They're going to be tying into third-party stacks from folks like NVIDIA and others. Blueprinting applications, so they can repeatedly deploy those in an automated way as part of pipelines. In this case, AI pipelines. Running automation jobs to do things like training. Well, all of a sudden, an AI stack sounds an awful lot like a Morpheus stack. So if we look at Morpheus within the HPE portfolio, we're providing the underlying runtime flexibility and portability for customers within things like PCAI, but also in some higher-end deployments for very large enterprises who may have thousands of GPUs but still need orchestration, automation, guardrails to make sure data scientists stay in their lane but IT doesn't get in their way. These are concepts that are not new for IT, they're not new for Morpheus. We're just now applying them to this amazing new set of workloads that are transforming a lot of enterprises.

Savannah Peterson

>> One of the things that struck me about what Brad was saying in this particular clip, it's essentially that it's not about the hype. This isn't necessarily a huge challenge for them. As we know, AI workloads are simply different workloads. There's been many different workloads ran on these systems and operating cycles for a long time. But I thought this was kind of refreshing to see him say, hey, this is no big deal. We're ready to do this. And not that it's not challenging, I'm not diminishing the effort necessary there to be successful, but it did seem like just another day at the office and that the Morpheus-HPE combo here was really poised to be a great partner for companies during this time period. Rob, what do you think?

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think I almost can't say it any better myself, Savannah. I mean, I think, again, when you start to look at this, Brad goes into and talks about that platform approach to how things are coming together. That's really that cloud platform. And as you and I both talked to and really espouse that whole platform engineering where people may be deep in one area but have to go across and operate across different areas. That really is similar to what's going on with AI. AI is just an application or a piece of an application feature set an agent may plug in, it may have multiple different parts to the stack. But ultimately it's part of contained in this infrastructure, either VMs or containers on storage, and it needs to be resilient. So I think what Morpheus brings there is he kind of talked about the Morpheus stack and an AI stack is really about how you really optimize applications and those blueprints for those applications to make it easy to get up and running and yet connect them all together. Because AI doesn't make things easier, it makes them more complex and more the reason you need automation.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, absolutely. And you need partners who are there for you to get ramped up and also there to build for a much more heavy workload future in this case. The last quote that we're going to bring up from Brad is really looking at the overview of the different environments that he's a part of helping customers configure and some of the trends that he's seeing across VMs, containers and the like.

Brad Parks

>> The world is getting more complex, more heterogeneous, and it's moving faster than ever before. Yet IT teams are not getting a corresponding increase in people, money, skills. So the gap between kind of aspiration and ability to execute is only going to get wider. So one of the biggest trends that I see is a focus on platform thinking and orchestration and automation within the enterprise. And it sounds self-serving because that's what we do. But to be honest, I think one of the reasons we've grown in high double digits the last few years as a standalone and why HPE did this acquisition and why we are where we are today is, if enterprises are going to scale to meet the needs of their business, if it is going to be effective and is going to be efficient, they have to embrace platform thinking. Which is the ability to provide end-user developers, data scientists with on-demand, self-service access to applications. They have to automate how they deal with infrastructure. So that trend is very real.

Savannah Peterson

>> Brad's perspective here is really interesting. I can't think of too many people who get to see as many different types of things right now as Brad does. Rob, what did you think?

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think again, to get the ROI out of AI and other applications, really you have to have a platform engineering approach. And I think that's what Brad was really hitting on here, is have an approach that is a hybrid cloud, platform engineering type approach that really means you get investment protection. So you get to use what you have today and use it long term and get across those silos and what he talked about, the skill sets that are needed. And the one thing that we know is that infrastructure and technology is going to change, it seems to be changing every week right at the moment, and that stack is going to change. And so trying to say, I'm going to hire for this or hire for that, versus focusing on the platform and taking a platform engineering approach and a cloud approach really is where Brad was going and saying, you got to automate. And I think he's dead on with this. I think that again, if you're chasing the technology, you're basically chasing your tail and at some point in time you're going to fall over and your infrastructure's going to fall over. And I think to me, it's definitely not something that's sustainable. So I liked what he had here to say, and I think the blueprinting effect and blueprinting approach that they take with Morpheus makes a lot of sense here too, because that's really what people and developers want to get up and running and building their applications really quickly. So hats off on this. I think this was a key to why HPE went and made this acquisition and why it's such an integral part of so many different parts of HPE's infrastructure now.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I mean, I think your point is not only confirmed by the social proof of HPE's acquisition, but also the double digit growth that Brad mentioned has been a trend over the last few years over at Morpheus. Very exciting interview across the board. Always a pleasure to break it down with you, Rob, thank you very much for your insights both on this interview as well as across our series. I will say if viewers go back and watch that Brad Parks interview, if they haven't yet, they will learn about his Harry Potter fandom and the magic wand he may have at his house. So hopefully we can see that on our next interview. Rob Strechay in our Boston, Massachusetts studio. Thank you so much for taking the time to do these with me, Rob.

Rob Strechay

>> It's always great, Savannah. Thanks again.

Savannah Peterson

>> And thank all of you for tuning in to this Cloud AI Journey series exclusive for HPE. My name's Savannah Peterson, here in Palo Alto, California, you're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.

Episode 7: Insights From theCUBE Analysts

Savannah Peterson

Rob Strechay

>> It's so great to be here with you and be able to break this down. I think this has been fun, definitely fun for me, and I think a lot of really great information we're getting across.

Savannah Peterson

Brad Parks

Savannah Peterson

Rob Strechay

Savannah Peterson

Brad Parks

Savannah Peterson

>> I got to say, it seems like he's just as excited as Varma was and just as enthusiastic about the partnership. Rob, what do you think?

Rob Strechay

Savannah Peterson

Brad Parks

Savannah Peterson

Rob Strechay

Savannah Peterson

Brad Parks

Savannah Peterson

Rob Strechay

Savannah Peterson

Brad Parks

Savannah Peterson

>> Brad's perspective here is really interesting. I can't think of too many people who get to see as many different types of things right now as Brad does. Rob, what did you think?

Rob Strechay

Savannah Peterson

Rob Strechay

>> It's always great, Savannah. Thanks again.

Savannah Peterson