Johan Deschuyffeleer, SVP and GM, Technology Services Consulting at HP, explored the range of consulting services his division offers to HP customers with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante, live at the HP Discover 2013 event.

“We belong to the enterprise group and want to make sure any customer that buys a product or solution is satisfied about implementing that product or solution,” Deschuyffeleer said, explaining his role. The department aims to help make the installation successful after customers buy a product or solution.

The technology consulting services are focused on services, storage, and networking. “They are very focused, as we want to make sure we are the best in class. We also deliver the appropriate training and education services.” Education services offer training on how to use the product, how to manage the product, and how to organize the IT department.

“When customers implement a product without the services, they do not get the full value of it, their ROI is not optimal,” Deschuyffeleer said. His department gains and shares experience with customers “so that they get up and running faster and that they get all the functionality.”

While the consulting services are very focused, “we also understand that our customers want to have a solutions approach. They want to match the needs they have with our product portfolio,” thus the focus on cloud, Big Data and other major trends. The aim is to help customers discover the opportunities Big Data offers to grow their business. “We don’t want to come with a fragmented approach to our customers,” Deschuyffeleer explained, it’s a combination of the data they want to approach, how they want to store it, but also the software available from the HP software team. “We always do that with a total solution in mind.”

“Customers are not looking for a product, they are looking for a solution. You can create a solution by bringing products and services together in a meaningful way for our customers,” Deschuyffeleer stated. “The security element is becoming very important, certainly when it comes to Big Data.”

Asked to identify the hottest trends in security, Deschuyffeleer pointed out his division’s focused approach. “What we do is we look at security when it is really close to the server, to the storage or to the network. It’s important to excel in a few elements and bring it together.” Therefore the focus in security is on storage, network intrusion, and computing.

“Mobility is extremely important,” he added. Along with BYOD, it is “clearly something we need to address. We have a full set of services around mobility. ”

Asked to explain how the IT field varies across different regions, Deschuyffeleer said “there are a lot of things that are common across the different regions, data center transformation is happening everywhere.” HP offers a Critical facility service, which helps customers build data centers and identify a growing need of data centers in developing countries. “What we try to do is to make sure we have a very consistent portfolio that we can deploy across the globe,” because HP serves many large international customers. “We try to have as much as possible local resources, and we complement them with resources from third party – our partners.”

When it comes to Big Data, Deschuyffeleer pointed out, “We are in a phase when people are curious about the solutions it can bring.” The amount of data customers have at their disposal is enormous. “The better customers use the data that’s available, the better their results are. We help customers identify where the relevant data for them sits, how they can use it” and bring it to the business in a meaningful way.

Commenting on mistakes and the risk of IT, Deschuyffeleer stated: “I truly believe that whether you talk about big data or around cloud services, I think it’s really important to sit with our customers and tell them we can share our experience with them” so that they don’t fall into the traps others have, or make the errors other companies have. HP offers Experience Workshops which explore the opportunities of mobility, cloud, Big Data. From the exploration phase, HP can help them implement the mobility, cloud, Big Data solutions.