Laying the Groundwork for a Future-Ready Organization

Michael Reeves: Thank you for joining us on Solving for Change. Excited to have you here today. We'reat MOBIA Connect in Whistler. Appreciate you making the journey, taking the time. Appreciate the partnership and the collaboration, longstanding relationship with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

And I'm excited about today's conversation because we're not going to talk about technology. We'll maybe touch on technology, but we're going to talk about something different that, you know, HP is certainly transformed their company around in the last number of years. And before we get down that road, if you don't mind, it'd be great if you could just do a little introduction.

Terry Sledz: Sure.Yeah. Thanks for having me. My name is Terry Sledz. I'm the western Canada sales specialist for GreenLake. I've been working with HP for 14 years based inEdmonton. Thelast four years I've been solely focused on GreenLake. So myaccount base is primarily western Canada with a few mix and match, matchaccounts in Ontario.

Great.

Michael Reeves:Thanks, thanks for that. I'd like to open it up with a question, and we were talking about this before we got rolling. GreenLake and HPE have really tried to take a leadership position in trying to educate customers and change the game around how customers buy and consume technology, or maybe I should say not buy and consume technology in the manner that, you know, we've all known for a number of years.

Because if you look at companies, they traditionally have a planning cycle. They have capital dollars for a budget. They have expense dollars for a budget. You know, they go away, they plan, they do their thing, and then they say, "Okay," to the groups. They push out the budget and say, "Here's your dollars." And you guys have been first to market, I think, with an amazing strategy around how you want to change that paradigm and approach things differently.

And I'm wondering maybe if you could just spend a little bit of time talking to us and, you know, sharing your experience and your knowledge. Because that's what I'm hoping people will take away from today's session is, you know, "I want to change how we consume technology. I'm not quite sure what the best approach is and how to engage in that discussion internally as well as with partners like HPE." I'd like you to maybe take a few minutes and you can talk about that.

Terry Sledz: Yeah.There's a lot to unpack in that. What I would say is historically, you're right. Customers will consume hardware. They'll buy hardware and they'll deprecate it over a term: three or four or five years. In fact, we worked with a customer who sunset a core switch, but had to keep it running in the datacenter.

They have to power it up because the finance team said,"It's still an asset on our data, you know on our sheets. So we got to keep it running. So, on our balance sheets." So we said, "Okay, fine."

With GreenLake, we've come along and we've offered customers an ability to consume technology and pay for it monthly. And we meter the solution. So those are the basic tenets of GreenLake.

And it's, it's certainly changed the dynamic of how customers consume hardware. It forces them to rethink not only their budget cycles buthow they plan for refreshes of technology or how they plan for projects that are, that are on the books or something that they've maybe over-budgeted for in the past and didn't work.

So there's many different reasons and rationales as to why customers are bringing in, uh, a GreenLake. Um, but you're right. The, the maintenant is that they're not owning the assets any longer. They're consuming a service. And so the service can be as simple as infrastructure as a service. Orit could be infrastructure with, uh, Uh, you know, what we call outtasking services where we offer an ability to manage the assets for them so that they can have their team focus on other parts of their business, workloads and other things rather than, you know, making sure that the hardware is running in the data center.

Michael Reeves: Yeah.I appreciate you sharing that. And, uh, you know, I know you've got a whole,uh, methodology or an approach that you use when you come in. Yeah. you know,start an engagement with a customer. Um, and I'm wondering maybe if you couldtalk a little bit about that cause you really do spend a lot of time lookingat, you know, how the comp, how the, how your, your, your target customer has,um, traditionally bought and consumed and use the technology, um, you know,when they buy, how they buy, and the inefficiencies in that model, um, that youbasically, you know, take off the table, um, when a customer engages withGreenLake.

Terry Sledz: Yeah,we, what I try to do is focus on outcomes. I'm not a technology guru by anystretch. What I'm looking to understand is what what is your plan for the nextthree months, six months, a year? What, have you looked that far in terms ofwhat the outcome is for your business? For your, for your IT department to beable to enable, you know, the various uh, you know, groups that you support.

Um, so. The conversation generally starts there. We, we, wetypically have a conversation and it's not all about, not at all abouthardware. It's about what are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying todevelop in terms of, um, technology? How well are your teams supporting theexisting infrastructure today?

Do you want them to continue doing that? So it's more about aphilosophical discussion about how they're, you know, historically consumingthe hardware. Are they buying it? Do they have teams or are they outsourcingthe support for that technology? Um, are you bringing in all kinds of tool setsto manage that technology?

Uh, what does your security look like? What are your, you know,security platforms? Uh, are you feeling comfortable about, uh, about being, youknow, ransomware attacks and those sorts of things. And so, we get into these,these philosophical discussions and then from there we, we try to determine anear term outcome.

Let's start maybe small and then, you know, leverage it asmaybe a proof of concept. Or, in some cases, it becomes a fully deployed,managed solution with a whole host of DR backup solutions that aren't owned byHP but they're third party ecosystem partners that leverage those. Thosetechnologies, and we bring that to bear with, uh, our ability to manage, um,and in fact we can even e bond our versions of, of, uh, of, I guess it'd be inthis case, Remedy or ServiceNow, because we leverage ServiceNow, and we cantake care of that swivel desk.

We'll take care of the service and management tasks for you. Soit can be as detailed as that, or as, as simple as a storage solution for someproof of concept, uh, solution. Yeah,

Michael Reeves:great, great insight. Thank you. The, um, uh, the next thing I'd like to spenda little bit of time talking about is, and it's especially prevalent now whenyou're in talking to customers, and that is, you know, when it's talking aboutAI, and I don't want to spend any time talking about AI specifically, but, um,that again changes the cost curve and the need for agility and the need topotentially scale, um, to have, um, infrastructure available to be able to, youknow, take on a new, what I would say these days, are sudden projects aroundpeople trying to, you know, bring AI into the organization and it seems uh,GreenLake's a, it's a great platform for customers to be able to have a veryagile and quick approach to, you know, take on some of these new, you know,typically very strategic and could be large scale projects that they're tryingto bring into the organization and I know you guys within the, the GreenLakemodel can be very responsible, very responsive, very agile, um, can, and really,can really Respond to customers quickly in terms of trying to help them, youknow, get this, this platform enhanced in some way.

Terry Sledz: So, youknow, it's really important that we right size the environment from the startand part of that is Leveraging a host of tools understanding what their projectplans are and getting to know their business Um, you know, we, we look for fulldisclosure, we don't always get it, but we want to understand, you know, thatwe're installing something that they're going to be consuming relativelyquickly, but there, but there's a capability for them to burst into a reservecapacity.

And they can select what that reserve capacity is. So typicallywe'll install what we call an 80 20 model where there's a minimum commit of 80percent of that hardware that's going to be billed for monthly, and thenthey're going to be consuming the other 20%, and that'll be a variable billmonth to month.

Now that variability can be 80 20, it can be 70 30, it can be60 40. We can, we can scale the variability of what it is they need toaccommodate the burst that they're going to see or the business demand thatthey expect to see. Um, and, and if we start exceeding that capacity, then wehave a very simple way of growing even beyond the capacity that's already beeninstalled on day one.

So we can invoke what's called a simple change order, Um, andBecause the customer is already under a contract with us, uh, all of theprocesses to, you know, go through legal and procurement to get that contractin place isn't necessarily something that has to be followed for a change orderbecause all the terms and conditions are already established.

We've already established a price band for the customer. So,um, you know, a customer might be consuming in price band 1, but we've alreadyidentified the price in bands 2, 3, and 4, should they grow, and those pricesare fixed for the term. So there's no variability in cost to them, to acustomer, and they have an ability to forecast on their own.

If we're starting to consume, you know, another petabyte ofstorage, what is it going to cost us? And they can see very quickly what itwill be because it's already been defined in the contract.

Michael Reeves: No,it's great. And, and I know you, you know, you've talked about it and touchedon it a bit in the discussion today, but you do have a lot of capability aroundtools and monitoring to, to really help the customer, you know, help them stayas efficient as possible in terms of understanding, you know, what they'reconsuming and how they're consuming it.

Um, as an extension of the Ops team, but you get into this andwhen I think about Green Lake, um, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you getinto this whole discussion around FinOps and I really look at. And GreenLake isbeing, um, kind of a foundational element to, to a FinOps strategy. Now there'smore to it than, than just GreenLake, um, but I don't, I don't know if you haveany comments or opinions around that as it fits into kind of the base or theplatform or the foundation for maturity around FinOps.

Terry Sledz: I wouldsay that it's not, we're not a FinOps solution, but we contribute to, you know,offering more accountability around financial management around the solutionsthat we bring. Um, you know, historically we, we manage in a public cloudmodel, you know, we're a private cloud offering in a public cloud model.

Um, and so we can bring to bear some of those, uh, costunderstandings with our tooling. So we have an ability to link up to Azure, forexample, and, and compare our costs to Azure. So if a customer wants to seewhat workloads are running in the cloud, a private cloud versus what it couldcost in the public cloud.

They can do a very quick comparison. Um, we offer, um,capability around, uh, show back and trace, and look back to see what costsare. So organizations that are developing a services catalog can bill back to,you know, different business units if that's how they so choose to manage theenvironment. But there is certainly more financial, uh, accountability in themodels that we bring and the tools that we bring with it.

Michael Reeves: Yeah,no, that's great. That's one thing that's resonated with me around theGreenLake program is you do, you know, every, everybody has these capabilitiesand can certainly, you know, build these into their, to their teams and theiroperational models. But, you know, end of the day, a lot of folks don't havethe time or, you know, they're just trying to keep the lights on where you canbring all of this knowledge and ability and technology and operationalperformance in day one, which I think is great.

Especially now with. You know, there's just so much leakage interms of infrastructure and people just pushing out to cloud or trying to bringworkloads back into the cloud. And was that the right decision, not just interms of the technology piece, but in terms of the cost envelope as well?

Terry Sledz: Yeah, Ithink one, one area that's critical that, that we bring, you know, to thediscussion and the tooling is that there's a host of people that we engage withinternally within HP and with our partners.

When a solution is deployed on a customer prem, there's a,there's a opportunity for the customer to educate themselves to how these toolswork, but we're lockstep with them along their journey through Greenlink. Wehave a regular cadence with them to understand what their current businessstructures are and what their strategy is with IT, but we're also looking at,you know, what we can do to help them manage their costs.

We have capabilities in the tooling to allow them to do thatand we can. Share with them what we're seeing, but the tools that we use for,say, billing are the same tools that they can use for forecasting. And there issome AI built into it because there are thresholds that if we exceed certainthresholds in the tooling, it will alert us, it'll alert the customer so thatthey can start that conversation about, well, what is the next step of ourgrowth?

How do we plan this? Not with a month's notice, but with, youknow, several months notice.

Michael Reeves: Yeah.I appreciate that. Um, and next question, I'm going to kind of switch gears alittle bit here. I think everyone's kind of got a flavor of, you know, howGreenLake works and, and, you know, some of the, some of the benefits to it.

Um, you know, back, touched on this a little earlier in theconversation. So when, when, when you go in to see a customer or somebody that,you know, hasn't been exposed to GreenLake. Um. How do you, how do you go inand have that conversation? The reason I asked that question is, you know, youcan always get a meeting and people are always curious because they're alwayslooking for better ways to consume technology by technology.

And, um, you know, there's, there's, different folks that youtypically are going to need to have as a stakeholder around trying to buy intoand adopt and embrace the model of GreenLake. And I'm just wondering if youhave any anecdotes, some experience, some best practices in terms of you're intalking to the IT organization and they're really excited about GreenLake and,you know, They need to now take that, you know, through the organization to getsupport for it.

So I don't know if you have any approach, experience, bestpractices, anecdotes.

Terry Sledz: Iwouldn't say there's any one best practice, but there's several differentexperiences. Every organization has their own reasons for leveraging GreenLake.Um, some of it's financial, but some of it is, you know, um, they've hadoutages in the environment.

And I guess that does lead to financial impact if they're, um,You know, non public sector, there's um, you know, their systems were down,the, the, um, point of sale systems were down for weeks or not weeks, days orhours and created some problems for them financially. So um, when we, when wego into the, into the customer, it's good to have a good understanding of, oftheir history, their history, their, what their challenges have been, um, with,you know, that industry.

Um, we also look at, um, Some of the technologies that they'vehistorically run out of, it's like, in a lot of cases we're the incumbent, butnot in all cases. So we have a good handle of, of what they're doing and howthey've consumed hardware over the past. And most of them are capitalizing thegear.

They're trying to balance their budgets for the five years. Anda lot of times they run out of hardware and they're, the last end of the, the,um, the life of that hardware and they're trying to plan, um, For the nextstep, so they're debating, do I leverage, uh, my support renewal costs or do Iengage in GreenLake and, you know, transfer those costs into a, a newtechnology under GreenLake?

Um, so there's, there's different perspectives that customershave. It's good to have that understanding to determine, you know, what valueprop or what value position that GreenLake brings to them.

Michael Reeves:Because I find that, um, you know, there's a, there's a technology discussionthat has to be had. and then there's a financial discussion that has to be had.

And, you know, in some organizations, um, you know, especiallyif you're, you know, you're engaged with, um, you know, the folks that areoperating the technology, it's trying to kind of, you know, get all thatunderstood and, um, start to build that plan and that messaging and thatcommunication that, you know, needs to be taken to the other businessstakeholders.

And, uh, you know, sometimes that can be challenging. Um, Um,within a lot of companies for a variety of reasons, could be culture, it couldjust be like some of the things we talked about earlier in terms of how they'vetraditionally approached, you know, annual budgeting and planning. And now, youknow, you're, you're bringing this new, new approach, um, to the table.

Um, so I'm just wondering if there's anything from, uh, asenior leadership perspective when you get up into the executive, uh, role.around communication. Is it to, um, you know, there's, there's a, I'm surethere's an agility discussion to have. There's a, you know, um, financialdiscussion to have around optimizing cost and utilization of resources.

And I'm just wondering if there's anything in particular inthere that you find that resonates more so one or two things than other thingswhen you're, when you're getting up at the executive level.

Terry Sledz: Well,uh, you know, I know a lot of times it's the executive that does approve thebudget and it's up to the directors to spend it.

Um, but if, if the director is, is motivated to save money,Then, um, you know, over the long term, GreenLake can be that. Um, a lot ofthat is sort of how the budgets are allocated and dispersed. Um, we do get intosome budget discussions, but we do, we do have a, a certainly a technology, atechnology discussion as well.

Um, we talk about the efficiencies of the technology that, thatcontinues to evolve and get better over time. Um, and you know, More, moreinterestingly and lately, uh, are the conversations we're having aroundvirtualization, uh, that's really changed the dynamic of how customers areconsuming hardware going forward.

So that is certainly having an impact on the discussions. Iwould say the financial, um, responsibility is, is probably a predominantconversation we have with the directors as they take it up to the leadership,but we also focus on the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. 'cause at theend of the day, it's the outcomes and not the budget that.

that the executive are responsible for.

Michael Reeves: Mmhmm. Mm hmm. Well said. And just on that theme, we're kind of, we're getting tothe end here, and, uh, um, you know, you've talked a bit about the value ofGreenLake. I'm just wondering if you want to summarize that again. Um, and, uh,I, I, I think about this often, and it's, um, you know, what, What does goodlook like, um, you know, when you go in and work with a customer aroundGreenLake, um, you know, what's the checkbox for the customer, um, you know,how do you provide that value to them, less concerned about what's good for usand for HPE, um, you know, what does that good look like?

Terry Sledz: Yeah,great question. Um, what I would say is there are those that, um, embraceGreenLake because they've had some challenges. And the value proposition aroundGreenLake meets those challenges. There are, there are those that were a littlebit skeptical at first, um, but once they embraced GreenLake and understoodthe, the resourcing, the, the, the technical capability of our people, uh, thecare and feeding that we provide to our customers on a, on a, on a monthly andweekly basis, um, that is proven invaluable to the customer.

I believe they feel that we're vested with them, that we are anextension of their IT community, um, and, and we, it enables full disclosure ofwhat they're doing. Um, and with full disclosure it allows us to be more, uh,capable in delivering a proper solution to the customer. Um, you know, I, Iwould say also that, um, you know, I've been doing this for, you know,Greenlink specifically for seven years, And, uh, I do see an absolute value in,uh, how we bring to bear a consumption model to the customer, especially asthis IT, uh, hybrid IT environment evolves.

Um, and HP has done a great job in, in enabling the toolingthat customers need to, to get there. So, while some of that may have not havebeen in place in the early, uh, inception of GreenLake, it is continuing to be,uh, a predominant. Uh, tenant that HPE follows, uh, and they're all in on, onmaking sure that that happens for our customer base.

Great.

Michael Reeves: And,uh, the two things that come to mind for me when I think about Greenlink is,uh, one is, um, is, is agility. giving the customer, you know, a much fasterpath to help them, you know, solve their technology problems to support thebusiness. And, um, you know, the other one is just reducing friction. Um, andthat's in terms of budgets, in terms of being able to, you know, work with HPEand companies like us, so they can quickly, you know, help address the needs ofthe business and get project support, et cetera.

And, um, and I think those are really valuable elements tolayer in on top of

Terry Sledz: thefinancial construct. You know, and, and just on that point, I completely agree.And in fact, you know, if you look at customers that typically procure hardwaretoday, they're looking at their budgets and they're buying or they're leasing.

And, and when they look at Greenlink, they go, Oh, well, we've,we've got this solution. And, you know, then this is, this is it. This is theend all be all. This is what we're going to go with. And we don't have anyother options. Well, quite frankly, you have multiple options with Greenlinkbecause, If you want, at the end of the term when GreenLake's over, when youdecided you don't want to do GreenLake anymore, or leverage a GreenLakeservices offering, you can go back to the capital purchase, or you can lease.

But what GreenLake offers you is an ability to expand, grow,um, uh, under an existing, uh, uh, contracting platform, uh, very easily, verysimply. You can do refreshes, You can extend month to month. Uh, you can extendannually. You've got, you've got even more options than you did if you werejust simply procuring hardware.

Yeah, no, that's great. Really, uh,

Michael Reeves: somegreat points in there. High value for sure. Or the, um, I, uh, don't have anyother questions for you, but, uh, the, the only uh, other thing I'll ask is,uh, um, I don't know if there's any social media channels, uh, or if there's a,uh, way you would like people to, to learn more, get more contact you

Terry Sledz: well,uh, certainly can reach out to Terry Sledz at terry dot sled@hp.com.

Okay. Uh, I don't have any social media platforms, uh, althoughwe were looking at one mob at one point. Um, uh, but that was more of abranding and marketing exercise. But yeah, that is one way to reach Terry. Um,reach out to HP. com. Great. Well, we'll put

Michael Reeves: youremail address in the show notes as well, so people can have it all in front ofthem.

But, uh, you know, again, I'm, I'm, Very, very thankful for thetime that you've given us today, and I appreciate the support here at theevent. Um, it's great having you guys. It's a, it's a long time relationship toour company. And, you know, our team's super excited about Green Lake. It'sbeen, it's been wonderful, and it's, uh, it's definitely, Um, and you know, alot of companies and customers are super excited about, you know, what youfolks can help them with and how we can collaborate and partner together to beable to help them solve problems.

So, thank you for that. Thank you very

Terry Sledz: much forthe opportunity. Thanks, Terry. Thank you.

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