Transcript of a discussion on how a massive corporate split led to the re-architecting and modernizing of IT to allow for the right data center choices at the right price over time.

1. Page 1 of 9
Inside Story--HP Inc. IT Moves from a
Rigid Combined Legacy to More
Choice Across Cloud, On-Premises
with Data Center Transformation
Transcript of a discussion on how a massive corporate split led to the re-architecting and
modernizing of IT to allow for the right data center choices at the right price over time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript.
Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the
Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions,
your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success
stories.
Our next data center architecture modernization journey interview explores how HP Inc.
(HPI) has rapidly separated and modernized a set of data centers as part of its splitting
off from what has become Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).
We will now learn how HP Inc. has taken four shared data centers and transitioned to
two agile ones, with higher performance, lower costs, and an obsolescence-resistant
and strategic infrastructure designs.
Here to help us define the data center of the future are Sharon
Bottome, Vice President and Head of Infrastructure Services at
HPI, and Piyush Agarwal, Senior Director of Infrastructure
Services, also at HPI. Welcome to you both.
Piyush Agarwal: Thank you.
Sharon Bottome: Thank you.
Gardner: We all know the story of HP Inc. splitting off into a
separate company from HPE in 2015. Yet, it remains unusual.
Most IT modernization efforts combine or at the least replicate
data centers. You had to split off and modernize your massive
infrastructures at the same time -- and you are still in the
process of doing that.
Sharon, what have been the guiding principles as you created new IT choices from a
combined corporate legacy?
Bottome

2. Page 2 of 9
Split-second reaction
Bottome: When the split happened, leadership had to make a lot of decisions around
speed and agility just to get the split done. A new underlying IT infrastructure wasn’t
necessarily the key decision maker for how the split went.
We therefore ended up on shared infrastructure in four data centers, which then ended
up being shared again as HPE split off assets to Micro Focus and DXC Technology in
2017. We ended up in a situation of having four data centers with shared infrastructure
across four newly separated companies.
As you can imagine, we have a different imperative now that we are a new and separate
company. HPI is very aggressive and wants to be very fast and agile. So we really need
to continue and finish what was an initial separation of all of the infrastructure.
Gardner: Is it fair to say, Piyush, that this has been an unprecedented affair at such
scale and complexity?
Agarwal: Yes, that is true. If you look at what
some of the other organizations and companies
have done, there have been a $5 billion and $10
billion company that have undertaken such data
center transformations. But the old Hewlett-
Packard as a joint company was a $100 billion
company, so separating the data centers for a
$100 billion company is a huge effort.
So, yes, companies have done this in the past, but the amount of time they had -- versus
the amount of time we are seeking to do the separation makes this totally unthinkable.
We are still on that journey.
Gardner: What is new in 2018 IT that allows you to more aggressively go at something
like this? What has helped you to do this that was not available just a few years ago?
Learn How the Future
of Hybrid IT
Can Be Made Simple
Bottome: First, the driver for us is we really want to be independent. We want to truly
transform our services. That means it's much more about the experiences -- and not just
the technology.
We have embarked predominantly on HPE gear. We architected the new data centers
using the newest technologies, whether it’s 3PAR, HPE Synergy, and some of the other
The old Hewlett-Packard as a
joint company was a $100
billion company, so
separating the data centers
for a $100 billion company is
a huge effort.

3. Page 3 of 9
hardware. That allows us to take about 800 applications and 22,000 operating systems
instances and migrate those. It's just a huge undertaking.
But by using a lot of the new technology and hardware, we have to then transform our
own processes and all the services to go along with that.
Gardner: Piyush, what have you learned in terms of the underlying architecture? One of
my favorite sayings is, “Architecture is destiny.” If you make the right architecture
decisions, many other things then fall into place.
What have you done on an architectural level that's allowed this to go more smoothly?
Simpler separation solutions
Agarwal: It’s more about a philosophy than just an architecture, in my view. It goes to
the previous question you asked. Why is it simpler now? Just after the separation, there
was a philosophy around going to public cloud. Everybody thought that we would save a
lot of money by just going to the public cloud.
But in the last two or three years, we realized that the total cost of ownership (TCO) in a
public cloud – especially if the applications are not architected for public cloud – means
we are not going to save much. So based on that that epiphany, we said, “Hey, is it the
right time to look at our enterprise data center and architect it in such a way that it
provides cloud-like functionality and still offers flexibility in terms of how much we pay?”
Having HPE Synergy as the underlying
composable infrastructure really helps with all of
that. Obviously, the newer software-defined data
center (SDDC) architectures are also playing a
major role. So now, where the application is
hosted is less of a concern, because -- thanks to
the software-defined architecture and best-fit
model -- we may be able to move the workloads
around over time.
Gardner: Where you are on this journey? How does that extend around the world?
Multicloud, multinational
Bottome: We are going from four data centers in Texas -- two in Austin and two in
Houston – down to two, one each in Houston and Plano. We are deploying those two
with full resiliency, redundancy, and disaster recovery.
Now, where the application is
hosted is less of a concern,
because – thanks to the
software-defined architecture
and best-fit model – we may
be able to move the
workloads around over time.

4. Page 4 of 9
Gardner: And how does that play into your global reach? How are you using hybrid IT to
bring these applications to your global workforce?
Bottome: Anyone who says they are not in a multicloud environment is certainly fooling
themselves. We basically are already in a multicloud environment. We have many, many
platforms in other people’s clouds in addition to our core data centers. We also have,
obviously, our customer resource management (CRM) as a cloud service, and we are
moving our enterprise resource planning (ERP) into another cloud.
So it's a multicloud environment and managing that and changing operations to be able
to support that is one of the things we are doing with this transformation. How do we
support all of these cloud environments? We have partners along with us. We are using
managed service providers (MSPs). We are very much outsourced, too. So it's a journey
with them on learning how to have them all supported across all of these multiple clouds.
Ticketing transformed
Gardner: You mentioned management as being so important. Piyush, when it comes
to some of the newer management capabilities we are hearing about – such as HPE
OneSphere -- what have you learned along the journey so far? Do both HPE OneView
and HPE OneSphere play a role as a continuum?
Learn How the Future
of Hybrid IT
Can Be Made Simple
Agarwal: It’s difficult to get into the technology of OneView versus OneSphere. But the
predictive analytics that every provider uses to support us is remarkably different, even
in just the last five years.
When we were going through this request for proposal (RFP) process for MSPs for our
new data center transformation and services, every provider was showing us the
software and intelligence on how tickets can be closed -- even before the tickets are
generated.
So that’s a huge leap from what we saw four or
five years ago. Back then the cost of play was
about being in a low-cost location because
employee costs were 80 percent of the total. But
new automation and intelligence into the ticketing
systems is a way to move forward. That’s what
will drive the service efficiencies and cost
reductions.
New automation and
intelligence into the ticketing
systems is a way to move
forward. That’s what will drive
the service efficiencies and
cost reductions.

5. Page 5 of 9
Gardner: Sharon, as you continue on your transformation journey, are you able to do
more for less?
Bottome: This is actually a great success story for us. In the new data center
transformation and the services transformation RFP that Piyush was mentioning, we
actually are getting $50 million a year in savings every year over five years. That’s
allowed us, obviously, to reinvest that money in other areas. So, yes, it's been a great
success story.
We are transforming a lot of the services -- not just in the data center. It's also about how
our user base will experience interacting with IT as we move to more of these
management platforms with this transformation.
Gardner: How will this all help your IT operations people to be more efficient?
IT our way, with our employees
Agarwal: When we talk about IT services, there is always a pendulum. If you go back
15 or 20 years, there used to be articles about how Solectron moved all of their IT to
IBM. In 2001, there were so many of those kinds of deals.
But within one to two years
people realized how difficult it
was. The success of the
businesses depended not just on
IT outsourcing, but in keeping
the critical talent to manage the
business expectations and
manage the service providers.
Where we are now with HPI, over the period of the last three years, we have learned
how to work in a managed services environment. What that means is how to get the best
out of a supplier but still maintain the critical knowledge of the environment within our
own IT.
Our own employees can therefore run the IT tomorrow on some other service provider, if
we so choose. It maintains the healthy mix of relationships between the suppliers and
our employees. So, we haven’t gone too far right or too far left in terms of how the IT
should be run from a service provider perspective.
With this transformation, that thought process was reinforced. We realized when we
began this transformation process that we didn’t yet have critical mass to run our IT
services internally. Over the period of the last one-and-a-half years, we have gained that
critical mass back.
The success of the business depended not
just on IT outsourcing, but in keeping the
critical talent to manage the business
expectations and manage the service
providers.

6. Page 6 of 9
From an HPI IT operations team’s perspective, it generates confidence back -- versus
having a victim mentality of, “Oh, it’s a supplier and the suppliers are going to do it,” that
is opposed to having the confidence ourselves to deliver on that accountability with our
own IT employees. They are the ones driving our supplier to do the transformation, and
to do the operations afterward.
Gardner: We have also seen an increase in automation, orchestration, and some very
powerful tools, many of them data-driven. How have automation techniques helped you
in this process of regaining and keeping control?
Automation advantages
Agarwal: DevOps provides, on the one hand, the overall infrastructure, orchestration,
and agility to provision. Being part of the previous Hewlett-Packard Company, we always
had the latest and greatest of those tools. We were a testing ground for those tools. We
always relied on automated ways of provisioning, and for quick provisioning.
If I look at that from a transformation
perspective, we will continue to use those
orchestration and provisioning tools. Our
internal cloud is heavily reliant on such
cloud service automation (CSA). For other
technologies, we rely on server
automation for all of the Linux and Unix
platforms. We always have that mix of
quick provisioning.
At the same time, we will continue to encourage our developers to encompass these
infrastructure technologies in their DevOps models. We are not there yet, where the
application tier integrates with the infrastructure tier to provide a true DevOps model, but
I think we are going to see it in the next one to two years.
Gardner: Is there a rationalization process for your data? What’s the underlying data
transformation story that’s a subset of the general data center modernization story?
Agarwal: Our CIO was considered one of the most transformative in 2015. There is a
Forbes article on it. As part of 2015 separation, we undertook a couple of transformation
journeys. The data center transformation was one, but the other one was the application
transformation. Sharon mentioned that for our CRM application, we moved to Microsoft
Dynamics. We are consolidating our ERP.
Application rationalization (AR) remains an ongoing exercise for us. In a true sense, we
had 1,200 to 1,300 applications. We are trying to bring that down to 800. Then, there is a
further reduction plan over the next two to three years. Certainly the application and data
center transformations are going in parallel.
We will continue to use those
[automated] orchestration and
provisioning tools ...for other
technologies, we rely on server
automation for all the Linux and Unix
platforms. We always have that mix
of quick provisioning.

7. Page 7 of 9
But from a data perspective -- looking at data in general or of having data totally
segregated from the applications layer -- I don’t think we are doing that yet.
Where we are in the overall journey of applications transformation, with the number of
applications we have, in my view, the data and segregation of applications is at a much
higher level of efficiency. Once we have data center transformation and consolidated
applications and reduce those by as many as possible, then we will take a look at
segregating the data layer from the applications layer.
Gardner: When you do this all properly, what other paybacks do you get? What have
been some of the unexpected benefits?
Getting engaged
Bottome: We received great financial benefits, as I mentioned. But some of the other
areas include the end-user experience. Whether it’s time-to-fix by improving the
experience of our employees interacting with IT support, we’re seeing efficiencies there
with automation. And we are going to bring a lot more efficiency to our own teams.
And one of the measurements that we have internally is an employee satisfaction
measure. I found this to be very interesting. For the infrastructure organization, the IT
internal personnel, their engagement score went up 40 points from before we started this
transformation. You could see that not only are they getting rescaled or retooled, we
make sure we have enough of that expertise in-house, and their engagement scores
went up right along with that. It helped us on keeping our employees very motivated and
engaged.
Gardner: People like to work with modern technology more than the old stuff, is that not
true?
Learn How the Future
of Hybrid IT
Can Be Made Simple
Agarwal: Yes, for sure. I want to work with the iPhone X not iPhone 7.
Gardner: What have you learned that you could impart to others? Now, not many others
are going to be doing this reverse separation, modernization, consolidation, application,
rationalization process at the same time -- while keeping the companies operating.
But what would you tell other people who are going about application and data center
modernization?

8. Page 8 of 9
Prioritize your partners
Bottome: Pick your partner carefully.
Picking the right partner is very, very
important, not only the technology partner
but any of the other partners along the
journey with you, be it application migration
or your services partners. Our services
partner is DXC. And the majority of the data
center is built on HPE gear, along with
Arista and Brocade.
Also, make sure that you truly understand all of the other transformations that get
impacted by the transformation you’re on. In all honesty, I’ve had some bumps along the
way because there was so much transformation going on at once. Make sure those
dependencies are fully understood.
Gardner: Piyush, what have you learned that you would impart to others?
Agarwal: It goes back to one of the earlier questions. Understand the business drivers
in addition to picking your partners. Know your own level of strength at that point in time.
If we had done this a year and a half ago, the confidence level and our own capability to
do it would have been different. So, picking your partner and having confidence in your
own abilities are both very important.
Bottome: Thank you, Dana. It was exciting to talk about something that has been a lot
of work but also a lot of satisfaction and an exciting journey.
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. You’ve been exploring with us how HP
Inc. has taken four shared data centers and is transitioning to two more agile ones, with
higher performance and lower cost. And we’ve learned how the multicloud data center of
the future approach provides such benefits as a strategic and obsolescence-resistant
design, DevOps benefits, and pushes people to do more with less with their applications.
Please join me in thanking our guests, Sharon Bottome, Vice President and Head of
Infrastructure Services at HPI. Thank you so much, Sharon.
Bottome: Thank you!
Gardner: And Piyush Agarwal, Senior Director of Infrastructure Services, also at HPI.
Thank you, sir.
Agarwal: Thank you for having us.
Picking the right partner is very,
very important, not only the
technology partner but any of the
other partners along the journey
with you, be it application migration
or your services partners.

9. Page 9 of 9
Gardner: And a big thank you as well to our audience for joining us for this
BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story discussion.
I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing
series of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.
Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your own IT community and do
come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript.
Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Transcript of a discussion on how a massive corporate split led to the re-architecting and
modernizing of IT to allow for the right data center choices at the right price over time.
Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.
You may also be interested in:
• Better management of multicloud IaaS proves accelerant to developer productivity
for European gaming leader Magellan Robotech
• Ryder Cup provides extreme use case for managing the digital edge for 250K mobile
golf fans
• How Norway’s Fatland beat back ransomware thanks to a rapid backup and recovery
data protection stack
• How hybrid cloud deployments gain traction via Equinix datacenter adjacency
coupled with the Cloud28+ ecosystem
• HPE and Citrix team up to make hybrid cloud-enabled workspaces simpler to deploy
• Citrix and HPE team to bring simplicity to the hybrid core-cloud-edge architecture
• New strategies emerge to stem the costly downside of complex cloud choices
• Huge waste in public cloud spend sets stage for next wave of total cloud governance
decisions, says 451’s Fellows
• How HPE and Docker together accelerate and automate hybrid cloud adoption