Khalid Athar: How would you like to comment on the year 2019 for the industry on HPE specific?
Wolfgang Egger: 2019 was a very promising year for HPE. We have made a lot of progress in the business. We won a huge market share with leading positions. However, the more important aspect I would like to really emphasize on is how we made significant breakthroughs in some of the areas with new innovations that we launched within the company. An example of these innovations is regarding our assets service offering which we call “GreenLake” – we have the vision that in two years from now, you will get everything from us as a service, so you only pay for what you really need and what you really use.
Today, 60% of our data centers are over-deployed. And with our “GreenLake” offering we have an offer that really fits exactly to the needs of the customer, so they don’t over-deploy and hence they don’t over purchase. The greatest thing is our flexibility in this model – you can purchase per server, per storage or per virtual machine, per container or even per transaction – we can really tailor it for the needs of the customer.
K.A.: Would you like to tell us a bit about the new digital workplace in Dubai which reflects HPE’s overall culture?
W.E.: Absolutely. We have just come to this new digital workplace that is a mix of what we call inclusion and diversity through different ways of working. We have created a great culture of diversity in our office not only in terms of where people come from but also in terms of their ages and backgrounds. We have experienced veterans but also young students who are working on different projects and they get a chance to work in cooperation with senior employees which is a great thing for them. Nobody, including myself, has a dedicated desk to sit which forces us all to utilize the dynamic environment.
The outcome of the above environment is that I myself, for example, am able to sit with the director of HR to plan the next fiscal year on one day and the next, I would be sitting with the sales team to work on a complex project while still feeling we are all in our regular comfortable environment.
Everything here is digitally enabled – people can be digitally located easily and anybody could simply come up to each other. We have open communication and a very relaxed environment which promotes a chain of idea creation and exchange of these ideas within the teams. A great working model in my opinion.
K.A.: How far down the digital transformation journey has the Middle East market come and what initiatives & investments has HPE made in this regard?
W.E.: The market in general has come far ahead. The good thing in the Middle East is that the governments lead the digital transformation and the industry supports this journey. In some other areas, such as Europe, it is the other way around. The industry is usually pushing the Digital Transformation and the governments are usually lagging behind. A great example is Abu Dhabi who enabled their data federation model to really scale for new services for the citizens and are still scaling further up. We have a great working relationship with them and this is an exemplary model when it comes to digital transformation.
In regards to the digital transformation journey of HPE itself, I am proud to tell you that we have not only worked on this amazing facility (the current office) but have been working on a multi-million dollar project which we call the “Digital Life Garage”. HP was founded about 80 years ago in a garage in Palo Alto where David Packard and Bill Hewlett worked in a garage on a project for the Disney company that would contribute to the improvement (such as audio quality) of Walt Disney films. This is what is today called the “Silicon Valley” and now our vision is to create this Silicon Valley in the Middle East.
The idea is to invite customers to come to us and think outside of the box. We have the methodology to help them disrupt the industry – whatever the industry is, you can be the old-fashioned industry or the modern industry. What we do is partner together with start-ups, local industries and/or governments to have this disruption across a myriad of industries.
K.A.: Would you like tell us about some of your latest partnerships and how do they contribute the overall HPE’s vision?
W.E.: One of our major partnerships on a local level is our recent MoU with DEWA’s Moro that was signed at GITEX 2019. This will really help us with the local landscape in terms of many services that are consumed in the UAE. The second one is Cray where we are working on Super Computers as Cray is a market leader, a superhero, I would say, in that space.
Essentially, we have a vision of data vision enterprises. We truly believe that at the end of the day, every issue we are facing globally, be it climate, world hunger or even diseases, can be solved via data driven AI models running on powerful computers. We are actually working with a German University to help cure diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The data is there for many, many problems – is to securely pull it together and analyze it with our AI abilities to drive out conclusions. We truly believe that the Cray acquisition puts us in a position to solve one of the most challenging topics on this face of this globe.
K.A.: Lastly, your outlook for 2020, what will be your major area of focus for the next year?
W.E.: We are looking for double digit profit in the region and it will be a market share winning story for us. I want to be very open about my two priorities here. One is of course, to build the business here, to deliver on the expectations of the overall business and fulfilling the demand from our customers to get their businesses further developed as well. This is the top priority. The second priority is our responsibility towards the planet – thinking about sustainability and the footprint that we leave behind. At HPE, we not only follow the rules and have a commitment towards this, but we always try to go beyond to ensure we do our best to create a better world for our future generations. In fact, this is something I am really proud of at HPE.
The next year will be more steps forward in the same direction. We will work to improve the way people do business and continue on this journey of digital transformation.
