As HPE Discover 2016 wrapped up at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas, John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, broke down the event with Jason Newton, senior director of Marketing and Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE)

Furrier began by talking about how HPE stock has been on a 52-week high as of yesterday and mentioned that the Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) tax-free spin-off and merger was helping the company financially as well. He remarked how this combined with great product announcements, the company’s leadership in the converged market, composable, some Internet of Things (IoT) along with great messaging were all important matters during HPE Discover 2016.

Good financials and new focus

Vellante reiterated his stance on HP by saying he has believed for a while that HPE had to shrink to grow. “That’s exactly what happened with the split, because they were able to restructure the balance sheet. And then just recently the spin merge created another tailwind that I think personally is a great financial move for the company. Took down more debt, created cash … to me it positions HP for the growth company that Meg [Whitman, CEO of HPE] said it was supposed to be,” he added.

He went on to say that the company is more focused with a much stronger financials, and it is in a strong position with its product portfolio and have the ability to do many things, such as mergers and acquisitions and developing its research and development pipeline that is driving new opportunities.

The HPE message

Newton commented on the show messaging by saying that it was almost a year to the day that the company introduced the four new areas of focus for the new HPE.

“That message has really resonated with the marketplace. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback, and we learned and further honed that this week,” he said. Noting that the enterprise is not going to transition only once, but there will be many changes in the future and said that HPE wants to help through all the transformations.

Furrier’s impression of the new face of the company is as an “unshackled HPE.” He noticed that there is a smaller company feel.

Leading to the edge

Furrier feels that IoT and Edgeline “stuff” is game changing, explaining that HPE can be a dynamic data center by building a network at the edge of IoT.

“At the end of the day it’s all about making the data center smaller and having all the apps run, wherever the hell that is,” he remarked.

Don’t miss this lively and insightful exchange. Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE