Leadership in Technology: Antonio Neri, president & CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise 10/13/21

are you as excited as i am to be here it is so so so good to see everyone in person after such a long time and one of the reasons we are being able to be here in person is because of the wonderful ways our community responded to guidance from cdc guidance from our healthcare professionals by being one of the most vaccinated campus in the country you did it all together by looking out for each other taking care of each other supporting each other throughout the pandemic and then stepping up and doing your part that is the reason we are being able to be here together so kudos to all of you i think you all deserve a round of applause my name is ravi pence i have the privilege to serve as the vice president for information technology and chief information officer at this great institution what that means is i actually work for all of you and thank you for giving me that privilege uh welcome in person for this distinguished lecture series leadership in technology and the purpose of this series is to really bring transformational technology leaders to our campus to have a conversation with us for us to learn their vision and their ideas about the future of technology and hopefully that will spread a dialogue among ourselves where together we'll be able to enrich our brilliant students our amazing faculty members and our most innovative staff colleagues across so that's the purpose of this series so it's such a pleasure to have you all here together now obviously during the pandemic we recognized it and we recognized it before as well how dependent all of us have been on connectivity and access and especially wi-fi connectivity i'm happy to report to you that in partnership with hpe michigan is implementing wi-fi 6e when completed that will be the largest deployment in the country of wi-fi 6c at any organization here you all are doing it here on our campus and nd pumps is there so i want to give him a shout out and there are several people from the hpe team here so thank you all for your partnership in helping us accomplish that and [Applause] and a special shout out to jennifer here who is a proud michigan alum and she was so excited that antonio was coming here to her campus as she put it so jennifer thank you for your efforts as well in bringing antonio here when we hear the words such as global to edge cloud platform as a service company we know that hp is driving that vision and that innovation and thought leadership around it anthony and erie who serves as the president and ceo of hewlett packard enterprise is which is responsible for development and delivery of enterprise technology solutions and services that help organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking the value of data from everywhere and anywhere and that is their vision how can we access the data from anywhere and everywhere and how can they provide that platform to us from cloud to edge during his 25 plus years at hp uh first and then hewlett packard enterprise now antonio held numerous leadership positions i'm sure you've already seen his absolutely impressive bio data so i'm not going to repeat all of that but i just want to share a few things within hp and hpe antonio was responsible for leading teams that delivered many breakthrough innovations so he was kind of considered the innovation person at hpe he was also instrumental in many of hp's acquisitions and integrations including aruba networks a shout out to kill team alcotta if he's hearing this kiriti was the founder of aruba and a dear friend of mine and of course silicon graphics cray and on and on and antonio was in the middle of all of those acquisitions and integrations philanthropy is very close to antonia's heart and he takes special interest in supporting the efforts of american red cross health and wellness and mental health is also top of mind for antonio we just celebrated mental health all day yesterday and it's great that we have antonio here today and we'll have a chance to talk about that also in addition he strongly encourages his leadership team uh to be active in all the social causes that they believe in he encourages that throughout the company which is great anthony is not all just engineer he acts actually loves art and architecture and he personally selected the artist and worked with an artist to design a statue that stands today in the california office that talks about the past future past present and future so he's instrumental in that he loves japanese and korean films martial art movies are his favorite and just like many of us he's a bruce lee fan as i understand he's also a huge soccer fan and we'll potentially have a chance to talk about that as well as we have the conversation and before i invite antonio to come on the stage i also want to share with you that there is a special connection between hewlett packard and michigan and that special connection some of you may know this but i was not aware of it and i learned about it through this process actually jennifer was kind enough to share that information with me because jennifer has family connections here going back and she put it 200 years five generations or so or more but albion what walker albion walter hewlett was the second chief of medicine at our um's michigan medicine between 1908 1908 and 1916 and a cardiovascular physiologist who used polygraph machines to measure cardiovascular activity he was he's considered the father of cardiology actually and had great interest in technology his son bill hewlett founded hewlett-packard in a garage with david packard as we now know the technology interest for bill bill havelock came from his dad who has a name professorship after him at university of michigan so as usual amazing things that happen in the world have a michigan connection again so go blue on that count so without any further delay it is my pleasure and honor to introduce antonio neri an innovative ceo a caring and compassionate leader and a dear friend of mine and a michigan wolverine fan antonio please join me at the stage great to see you antonio welcome it's been a long time coming and we are so thrilled to have you here thank you for joining us absolutely and i just wanted to share with your audiences that as we have this conversation uh rather than waiting for your questions near the end uh throughout the conversation i'll be periodic periodically coming to you so if you have some questions for antonio start thinking about those questions and i know we have couple of people who bring the microphones to you so do please speak in the microphone since this is also being live streamed so that people in the live stream can hear this so we'll be coming to you shortly as we have this conversation together so antonio to get started i know you have a quite an interesting upbringing uh your parents were your son of two sicilian parents but actually born in argentina did a military apprenticeship at age 13 uh so all types of interesting backgrounds so can you share with us how that upbringing has shaped what you're today sure well first of all ravi it's great to be here with you and thank you for the friendship and the partnership with hewlett-packard enterprise we're so proud to enable the next journey here of transformation in michigan um but you know you know my my story is i think is one of those stories that probably available everywhere it's just maybe not being told i'm a son of two immigrant sicilians that actually got married without knowing each other you know my father was in argentina and they told my mom you have to go meet your husband there and they were happily married for 50 plus years until my father passed away but i i was born and raised in argentina although i had a period of time where i lived in italy when they went back for five years in an early age i had this curiosity and interest on in technology but at the time i think about the early early 80s there was not a lot of means to do that and the only way for me to get access to the latest was to join a a military base not as a military individual but but as a civilian and i went to the middle school there where they thought you an apprenticeship so that's why i believe in apprenticeship quite a bit and i did my three years of middle school uh in the in the base and unfortunately an event happened if you recall 1982 there was a war between argentina and england about the parklands island so i was in the middle of that so i got to experience you know an unfortunate event which thought you a lot about lessons in life but from there on you know i continued to work there for a period of time and then i finished my high school while i was working full time and then i joined a company called exxon which is in argentina it's called esso and i was able to get access to more technology and my my story is about learning why you study you know and uh it makes you very strong resilient but also gives you a sense of appreciation for what you can accomplish when you put your mind on and from there on obviously there's a longer journey after that that's terrific and um it you know resonates with me because um a lot of my colleagues here are aware that i was raised by a very very strong mother and she taught me to always see a teacher in everyone i interact with and i recall you have said uh for example that your goal is to continue to learn and be relentlessly curious every day you have to otherwise you know you are you become irrelevant very quickly especially in technology you know the the the passion to constantly learn every single day from the people around you right and have a group of people that are as passionate as you and ultimately get them advanced through their own careers is something that i really care and um and i have a say you're as good as the people you have around you right so but the day i stop learning is the day i basically i'm done you know basically there is nothing more for me to do i think that's not true i think that's a great point and uh what i'm here to tell you is uh there are many michigan students here from the michigan students are brilliant and they learn every absolutely we are very proud of all our students and our alums but continuing that conversation as you have learned all these things all these years by being curious uh what advice would you give yourself if you could when you're 20 years old looking at it from now yeah i mean in my life uh you know not everything went smoothly you have to take risk you know as an example i was working for esso a great american company doing business in south america i used to manage the downstream distribution on the information technology side i implemented the first plc system in argentina when it came down to downstream production in in in that country and then you know i had a good life i was paying dollars if you live in those countries you know the hyper inflation and the evaluate the devaluation of the peso makes you do things in a different way but then i came to a realization that this is not what i want to do this is not where my full potential will be achieved and so i moved and i has to start all over again you know as a lover job and find my way and then eventually i i i moved to holland because i met a girl you know always a girl you know takes you to different places and uh and that's what i joined hp at the time in 1995 and again i started all over again i became a call center agent supporting customers on the phone but to me is that you've got to be bold you have to have a vision for yourself and you have to establish clear milestones you have to get there and at the same time you and i were chatting before we came here is not forget about having fun along the way and you know i had fun in my life learning but also in my personal life so i'm a privilege because i got to work with some amazing people who took the chance of me and that's part of the seo role is to plan succession is to bring people along because you know the fact of the matter i'm not different in life and i'm very pragmatic you're in transition here so how long that transition is god bless you hopefully you go over 100 years but in in business those transitions are very short so um people took chances of me like the first job as a call center agent i was very strong technically you know at the time you know there were the technology of the pc client server you had you know nobels co-unix by advice stuff that people don't even think today uh and i spoke italian and spanish which are my two main languages but my english was terrible in fact i did the test uh basically how what was my proficiency in english and i failed the test and the british jamaican hiring manager say hell with that we we just need to have him support italian and spanish customers we would teach him english and if it was not for him i would not be here and 23 years later i became the presidency of the company so that's lesson in life you have to be bold you have to be aspirational but put goals for yourself and do what you say and then obviously learn throughout the process and then take people and take chances on people along the way because again those are the relationships you will carry for the rest of your life that's a great advice and to you because as we are struggling with talent acquisition right now you know talent finding talented people is very challenging they're in high demand as we look at recruiting great people and so giving people chance and looking at the whole person as opposed to one box that maybe this person doesn't speak english versus something else is such an important advice for all of us so obviously from a call center employee customer support kind of position to ceo that's a pretty amazing uh journey in the 25 years or so uh so did you the day when you became a call center flight did you write at the back of your napkin that i'm going to be ceo of this company someday no so what was the journey like help you understand some of the transition points along the way if you could no i wanted to be a general manager i got exposed to hp at the time and at the time lou platt was the ceo of the company and i got exposed to the culture of the company to the innovation of the company and then how things got done inside the company and i quickly realized one day i would like to be a general manager of one of the business units because the business unit structure inside the company at the time had a lot of the power i call it robs to the ground from the strategy to the product um roadmap to the engineer into the execution to the sales force and you know i said i want to do that job but obviously things change along the way and be in the right place at the right time with people around you that obviously teach you a lot of things and but i throughout the journey i i took a lot of risk because first i was in amsterdam i moved to boise idaho okay that's a big change no kidding right yeah it's a big change but i got to work with the brightest mind who created an amazing franchise which is called hp laserjet probably most of you have an hp lizardjet somewhere in the office or in your house and so there i learned a lot about innovation innovation particularly through an ecosystem with partners then you know 2004 somebody came from the compact business because by then the compact merger with hp have taken place under carly fiorina and said you have a lot of expertise on the services side we would like you to help fix the pc services business hp listed was making 20 profit hp pc we're losing money so let me think about it do i take that job but i said if i can fix that i can actually make a contribution and that will should be a a base where i can spring to the next job we did we actually made in the mid 2008 to the 2010 the number one pc franchise in the world and i opened new opportunity to run the business inside the company called hp pointnext which is all about consulting and advisory and as well as professional services and running services iet services then you know matt came along said i need someone to run the the compute business and the networking business uh so i took over that and then she said i need someone to run the enterprise business and eventually i need someone to run the company so along the way you know and obviously my engineering background kind of facilitates a lot of the thinking behind but in the end i have to move laterally before i move forward and that worked out great i would say but that said there is a lot of lessons there that you need to apply in the way you run the company going forward and one of the lessons is make the organization simpler simpler you know and that's something that i have been on the journey for the last three years and we have the flattest organization on the planet you can imagine between me and one of my sales reps is only two layers so i get to see the truth what's happening versus going through many many many layers and that allows you to be closest to your customers that you care and value so much here there you go no no that that's great advice about uh taking risks along the way taking calculated risks and you know jumping in to help a business that perhaps was struggling to fix it as you put it to much greater scales let me see if there are any questions from the audience before we continue our conversation are there any questions from the audience because i know stephanie has it as well let's go here to yeah if you can identify yourself there's a microphone coming to you uh hi there my name is tamaya i'm an mba student here at uh university of michigan um also a former engineer um so i was kind of curious what led you down the ceo path as opposed to like the technology side being like a cto or like a product officer yeah well you know part of the reason is because when i work with meg whitman which is a dear friend of mine she felt that this company after the big transformation she drove in 2015 which resulted in the split of the company right so you have hp inc which is the pc printers and hewlett-packard enterprise which is more the connectivity cloud data company she felt this is the time for a technologist to run the company and my background obviously in engineering and technology was well suited at the time this is what is important realizing there is different times for different leadership styles and meg came to the company in a very difficult time in 2011. that time the company was 110 billion dollars company which had allowed that in the balance sheet she had to reverse that she had to position the company into the future which basically said we don't want to be an i.t supermarket company we want to be a very focused company and compete and win their own merits that's why the split was done but after that was done the hewlett-packard enterprise is a very technology-heavy-oriented company and she felt uh technologies needed to run the company who understood the culture that's the other big piece of this and so you know for me obviously bco is a privilege especially when you lead a company that has hewlett and pacquiao in the brand but at the same time is a big responsibility to make sure this company is relevant for the next decades and that's what we're doing in with the implementation of the vision to become an h2cloud company that ultimately is all about driving data modernization first because we live in a digital economy and all the outcomes come from the data and so that to me was an opportunity to make a difference and normally ceo tenures are numbered and i'm well on my way to complete that journey with an amazing team you know which ultimately will be the legacy you want to leave but to me the legacy is about the culture in the end starts and ends with the culture very good thank you antonio i think there's one are there any other questions there's one here in the front okay one there okay then we'll come back to you go ahead please hey uh first of all thank you for taking the time out sure i have a two-part question you mentioned the hp compact merger um you mentioned you were in the printing business that time first of all at that time how did you feel about the merger and in hindsight was it a good decision or not i think it was the right decision did we execute it to the full potential of it no but you think about at the time you know you talk about early 2000 what were the trends right and we were in the midst of the internet boom right we're we are in the midst of where pcs were absolutely taking off um and then we're still living in the early phases of the pc client although moving into a more a cloud-oriented uh journey where we failed i would say this is always uh easy to say after after that happened we did not execute to the full potential of uh the cloud opportunity we came actually with a lot of the concept about the cloud we came a lot with a lot of the concept around converged infrastructure software defined architectures but we did not execute it to the full potential the idea was there it was the right idea because you can scale particularly on the back-end infrastructure to a position nobody else had and also on the pc side hp at the time was very strong in unix but not in the x86 and then we were strong on the pc but not on the mobile side so the combination was right but it was not executed to the full potential and then there were other things that play along the way a little bit of drama with board and governance which obviously has been written but ultimately is when you're convicted you've got to be relentless on the other execution as i am convicted today that the next journey of this is going to be all about connectivity cloud and data and customers need an h2 cloud architecture where they can consume every service from the single point of and click and ultimately we need to position customers to extract every bit of insight from that data and i actually argue in a few years from now uh we're gonna have data you know recorded in the balance sheet because it is the most precious asset you have today so yeah good idea but i wish we executed better throughout we'll take one more question for the audience before continuing our decision i think you had your hand up here and kelly and i know there is one on the very very very back so we'll come back to you in a few minutes but we'll go to this young woman right here if you can identify yourself please hi my name is organization um you talked about learning and how important that is i can please sort of learning and you also talked about taking risk but sometimes we fail and we take um good way to learn painful um i'd be interested in hearing thoughts on um you know well you know i have a simple philosophy you have to be vulnerable first even myself right i mean i i'm not perfect i make mistakes like everyone else i'm trying to make the least amount of mistakes and have a contingency plan if we make a mistake but that said we have actually we have done a great job in the company but is a journey on establishing a culture that's purpose-driven right so our company purpose to advance the way people live and work that's why we exist and to make a contribution and the way we do that is by engineering experiences that lock your full potential and we have four core beliefs that we're trying to practice every single day we believe in accelerating what is next this is all about speed you know the the mark that the world is moving to an incredible speed that we have never seen before and technology is accelerating every industry today so being there with the customers and accelerating what is next just take the example where we're doing with andy and ravi here the first step is to deploy the right infrastructure you got to be connected but ultimately what we do with that is through the analytics and the data provide better experiences to faculties to students to everyone so we are just at the beginning of this but accelerating what is next is one of our core beliefs second is we believe in bold moves and this is where courage over comfort comes to play all the time i'd rather take in in the in the hiring of talent someone with the best attitude than the perfect skills i take all day long someone there he's passionate has the best attitude at the right time in the right job we will get the skills fully completed and to me that that speaks a lot but courage over comfort is something that we're trying to steal third one is yes we can the pattern yes we can and there is one core belief we're trying to practice all the time is we before the eye because i mean i can't do everything alone and the we we as a group plays a big role in the team the collaboration the diversity and the inclusion the the different opinions right but once we commit we have to go so there's the debate uh and obviously including people is important but once we commit we go right and that's that's super important and then last but not least which is close to our heritage and dna is being a force for good we are as good as working with the communities remember this is a global company with 60 000 team members in 172 countries ultimately we have to give back to the communities right it's not just for the sake of profit and those are four values are supported by our cultural dna which is partnering with an act those are the three things with an uncompromising integrity that's the thing we win only the right way and so it that's why the structured organization is important the lead by the example is important and you have to encourage people to take risk and make mistakes and reward mistakes because that means somebody was not sitting on the sideline watching the game being played get in the game and play the game so that's that's those are things that's why i said it starts and ends with culture and transformations are not for everyone right and that's why it's important as a leader you position people in the right place you need people to stay focused on executing every day you need some people that are more venture and in taking some risk and and help you with the transformation i think that was terrific advice antonio at michigan i'm proud to share that and this was very evident during the pandemic that the entire campus community and especially the campus id community had a one michigan i.t campus feel that was our culture where we're going to work together and we're going to support this campus and everybody stepped up with agility with you know relentless drive towards focusing on customers and helping our community so you know i couldn't be more proud of the entire michigan id community and that's the kind of uh ways that they executed they focused and they executed and we took risks as well so great advice appreciate that and we'll come back to you another few more questions i'll come back to you but since you talked about you know uh the social good and the responsibility to do something in the community i thought i've talked to you i've heard you talk about the importance of using technology to create a more equitable society would you talk about that uh so can you talk a little bit more about that and what should um be doing michigan be doing to address that challenge potentially in partnership with you and your organization i think there's a lot of opportunities obviously the concept of esg environmental social governance is now taking hold more and more probably accelerated by what we saw in the last 18 months you know all the social challenges hatred uh the diversity challenges we went through obviously the pandemic itself but investors are becoming we're more sophisticated where they want to invest they want to invest not just for the sake of profit they want invest in companies they have a long-term vision how to make the world better to solve some of the biggest societal problems we are dealing with and think about it we live in a digital economy right so think about what happened in the pandemic if you were not connected you were very isolated right and so the challenge and the opportunity is that we have some amazing technologies we have to make it ubiquitous and we have to make it accessible to everyone but when you look at the united states it's kind of fascinating at the beginning of the pandemic yes a lot of companies were somewhat ready to go work from home on a remote environment but a lot of areas in the united states have no connectivity and here is the number one power in the world and you have areas in the united states that had no connectivity let me give you an example we had a school that had no connectivity and so we with aruba team we deploy wi-fi connectivity in the parking lot so the parents can drive the students through the parking lot to download the work go home finish the work come back upload the work that's insane that's completely insane think about it 2021 you know you think you know the latest technologies like cruise ship we have technology they can use we have to retrofit cruise ships to make a mobile hospitals so that we can treat copper patients on cruise ships those are a great example but the fact of the matter is that we now need to avoid creating a digital divide this is the problem we may run into it great technology accessible to only the the few privilege and this is where i work very closely with the world economic forum and a lead a champion ceo group of people that focus around inclusion and diversity with technology enablement to make sure that we provide the right framework and the right access particularly those companies don't have the means to it um and there is obviously with academia we have to partner all day long i mean we think about the kobe research we made available all our super computer power that we had and all our patents to accelerate the research for the copper vaccine think about it the fact that we got the vaccine in nine months it's remarkable normally will take a couple of years right and so technology has a big responsibility we as a leaders have to think about those issues and think about sustainability in mind equity in mind and it can be done it can be done but you have to have a will to do it the problem is a lot of companies get under pressure to deliver the next quarter the next quarter and the next quarter when i became ceo i said we have to say what we do if i tell you i'm gonna do two i'm gonna do two but i'm gonna think longer while i never forget the fact that we have to advance the way people live and work and that's something that i wish we can do it faster because i mean the generation we see here they are demanding different things than when we grow up very well said and the issues around connectivity and access came to light when obviously this campus went fully online fully remote and we had situations where we had not only students but staff members faculty members who to your point lived in certain areas where there were no connectivity options or good connectivity options let's just say or in other cases simply connected with something uh that one couldn't afford depending on the the you know uh areas that you came from so uh the parking lot that example you gave was actually played out in this campus where our team stepped up and significantly enhanced wi-fi coverages across parking lots and other areas to provide whatever access we could but access is definitely a huge issue one positive note on that and i'm very thrilled that the county we live in washington county with the federal dollars that are coming they have decided to invest those federal dollars you might you might have read about it already to actually uh provide full connectivity across washington county independent of the zip code so what we have done proactively is actually reached out of the county and said how can we help so our teams are going to be engaged with them to provide any technical assistance or whatever assistance we can provide to ensure that the entire washington county has connectivity and i wish more such initiatives would be needed across the nation and beyond and i agree with you uh number one country in the world and i mean why do we have access tissue issues and we as a leaders and colleagues and technologists do have a responsibility to respond and do the right thing so so i agree with you there uh i know there were some additional questions here so kelly i'm going to go to you first and then somebody in the back had a question as well so could we get the microphone here and then somebody in the back plays after that hi and thank you for spending this time with the university of michigan and i was really fascinated about and wanted to learn more about the journey of flattening the organization and and how you led that change middle managers are often thought of as connecting the staff to back to mission so i can tell culture is very important to you so yeah thank you kelly i think it comes from part of what you learned throughout the years and part is your instincts there is always this fear well if i change that you know i remove that layer everything is going to go bad you know we're not going to have people you know in control of the situation actually nothing bad happened in many ways positive because now the people underneath the structure they can see the interaction almost real time so you know this morning with the team here i just i get to talk to them like i talk to my direct reports and i'm being very authentic and candid with everything going on they love that but what happens is that we i we used to call it we have a frozen middle actually it's more a frozen mindset because between here and here they hear the top obviously has a view and a strategy in the vision and the bottom are excited about that the question is how we eliminate all the friction in the middle and we empower the managers to do what is right for the customers and then ultimately we at the top get to see that real time as much as possible we used to have a structure in the company in the sales organization that had a worldwide a region a suit region and a country by the time i get the forecast from the country it was four layers everybody judge it and you know conservatives built everywhere and in the end that was not the way to execute the business so i said we eliminate everything we have a sales leader with 10 geos that's it well first of all it's a cost benefit because then and i have to pay all these overhead but what it really show is that actually you empower the people to do the right thing and most importantly you get the truth which is i say you know the truth is in the cold phase when you talk to customers like i do with rabbit um and yesterday was with partners in atlanta same thing i i when i have those a conversation and i spend more than 50 of my time to talk to customers and partners i get the insight i need so then i go back to the innovation roadmap we don't wait months and years i just get it quickly yes they'll learn three things this morning our emotion this morning i learned a couple of things and it would be emotional this afternoon speed matters speed matters and ultimately you fulfill that over time over time but it it's a journey it doesn't happen overnight but because you're coming within the company you have a different followership and a more more kind of implied support versus coming from one side and say i'm going to change everything the fact i know the company the way i do and i know every system every process is a good thing a bad thing because when they come with me we're going to do this they know why you're doing that use that tool is is unusual for a ceo because normally ceo tends to work with the board and you know strategy i get to do both and that's why it's fun and i love interacting with people that's what i do so if you have an idea and you think you can be bald to change and simplify the organization my only push to you go do it nothing bad is going to happen trust me so kelly you heard it here now so and i also heard loud and clear this is to my michigan id colleagues that speed matters uh yeah so i just want to remind you so so thank you that was great i know there was a question in the back uh if you can get the microphone way back there please hi i'm victoria greene antonio thank you so much for coming to speak to us today um i want to pick up some on something you said early on about relentless curiosity like many people in technology i do love that sort of chasing down of understanding and mastering a single subject to understand the intricacies and the ins and outs of how something works but it seems to me that as we progress in our career sometimes we have to know a little bit about a lot of things rather than understanding one thing in depth and i wonder if you could talk about the tension you've seen um between those two strains as you've progressed in your career yeah well thank you victoria i think it goes back to the question that he asked a little bit before right which is basically you know when you are in the engineering career path you love the technology you want to know how things works and and trying to innovate around that but what i learned over the years is that okay that's great but what it's going to do for the customer what what outcome is going to result what outcome is going to deliver and we are on that journey you know one of the things that if you are strong on the engineering side you have to learn what value brings to the customer and when we think about roadmaps here in our company right that is the strategy part of it which is okay this is a customer segment this is the use case it is the technology we think we're going to apply to a use case and i keep telling them showing the cloud all the way through tell me what value is not about faster cheaper better is doing anything in terms of data inside it's doing anything in terms of cost is doing everything in terms of delivering a new experience as engineers they don't think all the way through there at the beginning of the career over time i learned that more and more because i got exposed to other practices product marketing i got exposed obviously to customers how they think if i tell ravi okay i have the best y56 it has this antenna and this they're great okay how many how many user i can put on that thing what experience i can deliver engineers just stumble immediately because they talk about speeds and fees they don't talk about business outcomes that's the thing you will have to learn over time and the only way you learn is by talking to customers is that the truth is in the cold phase figure out the customer life cycle value that's going to bring more than just the technology value itself and it's not for everyone i have to say and this is the challenge we have ourselves right now because we we're talking about becoming an h2 cloud company that you can consume as a service where you can deliver outcomes from all your data and when we have been selling servers storage and networking and that's not how we're going to sell going forward i'm going to sell you a service server storage and work is embedded in that outcome i deliver to you and our salesforce and they are here three of them they have to learn that journey it's not easy not easy i i hear you it's real uncomfortable when you start talking outside of the server in boxes very different different mindset so i can understand your challenge but i know you you'll step up and i know you are stepping up so we appreciate that um we'll come to the audience let's go to dr rosenberg here once uh no no please let's go to you uh by the way uh let's not forget to congratulate dr rosenberg he was recently selected as the michigan cio the year for the health care profession by the rb uh folks so congratulations thank you thank you thank you antonio i have a question about uh how we do our work and where we do our work one of the things we in technology are particularly focused on is the issue of how we're going to be doing our work going forward and then how we'll support other people there's a provocative editorial in the wall street journal about a year ago saying instead of collaborative on-premise work or remote work one of the worst things we might do is pick hybrid because now we're acquiring the problems that the other two solve and and all of that how does hpe and you think about how we're going to be doing our work going forward as we emerge out of the pandemic yeah well let's talk about how the enterprise works today right i said in 2018 that the enterprise of the future would be edge sentry cloud enabled and data driven that was maybe a prophecy i don't know but what happened to the pandemic that became clear the edge is where we live and work and now it's way more distributed than ever we have seen it connectivity again becomes super super critical right for those who are in the working space they always have in our cloud data center a campus and a branch now your home is the micro branch the extension of connectivity is essential um we as a company we actually went through our own journey to define an edge to office program and we went through every job function and we said in this new world this is where people need to go work seventy plus percent of the people would not work at the office at all and twenty plus percent twenty five percent or so will be working at the office they have to be at the office because the collaborative interaction particularly some of the engineering aspects of this is essential you cannot replace it with virtual reality you know the one thing that i learned over the years that innovation happens in the moment you connect in the water cooler or you can you come to a little room and share ideas many of our exaskill systems the supercomputers have been built or designed conceived on the back of a napkin two three people coming together and say this is the next generation interconnect fabric that's the key and obviously we have to create you and i were talking before the the conference here how we are designing those workplaces to basically inspire people to to collaborate in a different way but uh call a hybrid i call it h2 office everybody has the chance to come to the office to collaborate to socialize 100 of them but when you give them someone to dock a pc it's gonna be less than 25 of the people and then obviously digital technologies plays a big role but as we were talking to ravi you know social interaction is as important as you know just interacting over the the zoom call and uh but we you have to have a little bit of mandate position because if you leave it open it's just gonna be a nightmare and people want to know actually in our conversations with jennifer and our leadership team employees are asking what i think i should do it's not like they want to do whatever they want and they want the framework and we give them a framework so that's what we're doing a great question it's really important to provide that framework that guidance because it's true that you know i'm blessed with incredibly dedicated colleagues who want to do the right thing and they're looking for some sort of guidance and framework from the leadership and that's important what happened here now is that because of so much uncertainty and lack of direction what employees are looking is leadership they they tell me and i will follow in most of the cases they want to have a clear direction and if you leave it you know open for everybody you know there are silicon valley companies that said we're going to be all 100 remote that doesn't work i i don't care that doesn't work or the employees will decide where to work no that doesn't work if you are a remote worker and you want to move from california to texas or michigan it's fine no problem but you have been defined to work remotely because that job allows you to do that but if you don't define that it's they're going to struggle we always welcome and people want to move to michigan so i just want you to know that uh it's a great state and anna and our surrounding area is just absolutely stunning and beautiful i know diversity and inclusion you mentioned it several times as we were having this conversation it's important to you it is absolutely very important to michigan as well in fact this entire week under our di summit we we are having many many activities going on across the campus so can you talk about diversity and inclusion from a personal your own perspective and from the hpe perspective yeah well i guess you know again was born in argentina i'm technically italian the army of citizens citizens of the world my two kids were born in boise idaho so uh to me diversity and we speak four languages at home so it's been always core to who i am and you know remember when you live in holland it's a very diverse country very open country so i came to united states you know obviously have the view from outside and then you become a little bit disappointed i will say you know i tell jennifer which obviously is a professional communicator and again english has not been my first language i always said you know i've been taken to a linguistic experience here the twisted words and the shift and make what is supposed to be a simple language way more complex but um but in the end to me it's natural i mean i work always with diverse teams if you look at the call center we were 800 people 21 different nationalities 12 21 different languages it was very diverse gender you know ethnicity we had it all there uh in fact my first theme was a combination of everything you can imagine um in terms of diversity so for me the way i think about diversity is it's not only the right thing from the human perspective but it's also a good thing for business because when you're diverse it makes you stronger and the birth company performs better there is no question there is the data is there it's just and in the last few years and also for historical reasons this country has become way too polarized of many issues and we as a leader not just the government the private sector and the public have to work together and we as a company have a very clear policy about the versus inclusion and when um the events that happened last year we we we said we are not doing enough uh and the first thing we did was to listen because we don't know how to engage in these conversations you're not educated enough about having these difficult conversations and the first thing we did was listen we have all the erg groups you know the latinos the the african-americans and the asians and so we had unique groups right ltgb and so we listened to all of them and we selected specific areas where we want to make a big difference by the actions and um you know and we select the four areas that we're working today which is super important but at the same time when we hire people we also now mandate diversity slates because while we make progress we still have a lot of work to be done but i'm proud of what we have done so far including our board our board has 12 directors including myself is the most diverse board in corporate america you have five up to the 11 if you exclude me which are women one is african-american and uh through the normal you know journey of board uh ten years we will continue to focus on that and then in my team i just hired a new cto uh fidel maruso which is now in charge of the architecture of our transition here as we become an edge to club company but when i look at the technical ranks we have some amazing women that do an amazing job on innovation but so in many different functions but we still have work to do and my dream is to make it core part of the dna you can't force people they have to believe in it and then you have to instill certain principles along the way very well said and at this institution we're very focused on the principles that you laid out and very committed to it and um i shared with you a story about my mother uh my mother early on age seven told me to look at my hand and look at my five fingers and she said notice that these fingers are all different size and different shapes and if you want to get a test done they have to come together for you to do a task and she talked about unity in diversity diverse fingers coming together to get the job done and that that so it was drilled early on and i'm also very proud of our teams here who are responding and doing the work so appreciate that let's see if we have time for another question here so let's go to somebody who hasn't asked the question yet so let's go here and please identify yourself good morning antonio welcome to michigan my name is dan burgess i'm a member of the igs teaching and learning team uh what insights would you like to offer about our education system and how the work that we're doing uh towards providing a workforce for the future and for organizations such as your own yeah well uh i think uh obviously we have some amazing institutions like this one obviously that do a remarkable job but i think uh you know i can give you where i come from right so you know having no access to everything you have access here and to me it's something that we need to appreciate the most but also think about what is relevant in the future while we give opportunity people to do what they love obviously the united states education system is unique not everybody has access to the best schools right as i did it you know i went to a public university at night between 7 00 p.m and midnight because i was working full-time but i think we just need to think about degrees and careers in different ways you know not everybody has to have a phd not everybody has to have a bachelor degrees i think a complimentary also with apprenticeship in certain areas are going to be absolutely necessary and then let's remember that we have to stay ahead of the competition here and therefore there are certain subjects that we need to incentivize people to think more cyber security is becoming you know very very important aspect here i also i just announced two weeks ago or maybe three weeks ago a partnership with the nsa when i think about what they do is mission critical to the country but you think about what it tells right there is a lot of things that people don't understand it and ultimately they need to have the skills to be able to understand it and help the country move forward but there's other other many things i've been in the medical space i'm a director in uh in anthem anthem is the second largest insurance company think about the cost of health care is insane and our job in the world is how we lower the cost of healthcare to provide flexibility and choice to everybody so i think you know the education system here is amazing but i think we need to make it more accessible to to many more people that today are not uh having the opportunity to access that privilege and um and there is different tiers that we should think about it i mean one of the things that we do all every year i think we we probably bring what jennifer 5 000 interes interns every year uh just to expose them uh we do things with high schools early on you know we have a fun program called cold wars which actually is high school students that they come for a day called it's a competition to solve unique problems but this is where the partnership between the private sector and the education system is so so important and we have to have a role also to teach some of the courses as well in fact we do one in texas where we actually provide our engineers go to campus and teach ai for machine learning and that's a way to incentivize people to be part of this journey as we go forward but the access scene is to me is the biggest issue right now we have to solve the cost of education is skyrocketing um i can talk about my daughter go to santa clara university i know the bill i know i i hear you the cost of education and the access is a big issue uh unfortunately we're running our time so i'm going to take the privilege and ask the last question anthony uh we have talked and i know mental health and overall wellness is very very important to you and your employees obviously for you as you think about it so so talk in terms of what do you do yourself to take care of yourself yeah in terms of your wellness and uh what do you encourage and tell your teams about oh remember at the court i'm still an italian and i value uh you know world life balance you know trying to pace myself all the time i have a very strange routine which is basically three times a week um i do this this class which for those who know it's called lagree solid core whatever it is is a intense strengthening class that you do for 50 minutes and i do it at six in the morning so i would get up 5 30 walk to the studio which is around my house by seven o'clock i'm down have breakfast and then i start but by six o'clock in the evening i try to be done trying to be done and and have two three hours downtime before i go to bed and then you know i try to practice my hobbies as much as i can one of them is playing soccer so we are a bunch of crazy argentinians that in the woodlands we played the league and it's amazing these are 50 plus years old meant that when it gets in the field is all about winning i tell you that and uh we expect a lot from the other player you know and therefore i don't care how good you are you're gonna be yelled if you don't deliver on your mission uh and that's why we say now we're trying to have fun but because it's about winning if you're not going to win we're going to pick a fight at least we have fun um so we're trying to do that word life balance workout regimen is important and and then you know spend time with your family as much as you can my daughter is in santa clara my son is with me in houston um and it's good to spend time with my son on a daily basis especially this time because the first year of college uh making sure he's on the right track two different kids two different personalities one very much into you know academics you know and raising the bar the other one is how i can get by with the least amount of work possible although super bright it's just uh different motivations but uh that's what i tried to do and obviously you know i like to travel whatever is possible for fun uh but i have a great team in the end you know as i said uh it's about clarity vision and strategy get involved to go faster i now lead a big chunk of the transformation of the company personally have selected uh with my team uh top 30 employees that are unique skill in different areas so i don't do i don't work directly just with my staff i work with 30 individuals that can be in any level of the organization where we are accelerating some of these aspects of the transformation for march next year and it's fun because i get to roll my sleeves and do what i like to do the most which is innovate that that's terrific advice and i was thinking about maybe playing soccer with you but i don't want to get yelled at so i'll change my mind on that one so but well here's a little story i'm not sure how many now who passed away diego was the hero for argentina obviously he won the world cup and all that i got the honor to meet him and become fairly close because one of the individuals that play with me soccer every sunday it's actually his nephew his name is also diego maradona when you see him plays like his uncle and i went to dubai for work and he at the time used to live in dubai and he said hey we're going to play tonight you want to play yeah of course i'll play with you maradona who doesn't want to play with you so his nephew and i play the game we were all the argentina against the locals we beat them or whatever 7-1 whatever no it doesn't matter but it matters for us oh it looked like it mattered to you by the time when we started the games there were like 200 people by the time we were done with 5 000 people watching the game it's amazing right and then it was this play the diego you know with unique skills but he was already slow you can see his knees his ankles you know and he missed a shot which normally is not and i yell at him i have what the hell up here you know wait there there but this is the way we grew up you know i don't care how much big titles you want you know when you're in the field you have to deliver and he did not more the reason not to play soccer with antonio it's been such a pleasure and joy to have you here we are absolutely grateful and we appreciate the friendship thank you i appreciate your friendship as well and your humility and your uh you know uh it's just so refreshing so thank you and you're always welcome at university of michigan and i know uh your wolverine fans will host you in the other football not so you know the house yeah the big house it will be an experience in itself so thank you so much for your time such a pleasure and before we wrap it up i do want to acknowledge uh stephanie horvath and my executives and washington for their you know countless hours of work and making this happen and the ross i.t team kerry flynn if you're here you

and your team you guys are always fabulous so thank you for allowing us to use this beautiful facility and thank you all for taking time to come in person it is such a joy to see all of you and i hope we can do more of these events and more if you can come and join us as well in future so thank you all and let's give a big hand [Applause] you

2021-10-31 17:42

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