Forget the box. The main idea of the new cloud-computing delivery model, software as a service, is to provide simple adoption. All services are literally out-of-the-box. Without managing infrastructure and outsourcing services, enterprises can avoid those long hours backing up and securing their data.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. partnered with Commvault Systems Inc. to provide SaaS backup enterprise solutions managed by HPE GreenLake. The solutions are driven by providing enterprise customers with data protection, backup, and recovery without the use of an army of IT administrators. It leaves these critical areas to the hands of a service provider so that enterprises can focus on business outcomes, according to Chris Powers (pictured), vice president and general manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. 

“We’re seeing more and more of our customers really being more interested in not purchasing the box,” Powers said. “I mean the box delivers something. Really, this is shifting more towards purchasing what is being delivered. And so that’s why these SaaS service models are really that significant.”

Powers spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Commvault GO event in Aurora, Colorado. They discussed the Commvault and HPE relationship, the SaaS model, and the intelligent data platform (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following has been condensed for clarity.]

Martin: What’s the status of the HPE, Commvault relationship? 

Powers: We actually have an arrangement via a capability we call HPE Complete, by which we actually skew up Commvault products. We go through the background working with Commvault, making sure we have application integration so that customers have a lot of confidence in them. And then a customer or a partner can buy a complete solution on a single P.O. from both companies. 

We have integration with Commvault products across a number of our platforms. Commvault is the backbone for our HPE GreenLake backup-as-a-service product. And what that gives is the confidence and the capabilities of having a cloud-like experience for your backup environment. But it’s managed and controlled on-premises. So it brings the benefits of both.

Miniman: Bring us inside your customers; how is it some of their buying patterns are changed? Commvault’s talking about their new SaaS offering. You know storage used to be just something you thought about with a box. Now, the software is one of the key delivery mechanisms for how I manage and deal with my data.  

Powers: We’re seeing more and more of our customers really being more interested in not purchasing the box. I mean the box delivers something. Really, this is shifting more towards purchasing what is being delivered. And so that’s why these SaaS service models are really that significant. And so you could be using these compute storage services, really focusing on them to bring your business outcome as opposed to spending a lot of your time and energy managing the infrastructure itself. 

Miniman: One area I’m surprised I haven’t heard about much … is AI. Help us understand how it fits into this whole discussion. 

Powers: It’s really in two forms. One is AI to support your infrastructure management itself. So a key component of our strategy is something we call the “global intelligence engine.” And that brings with it a combination of monitoring what’s happening within the environment. The second way, though, is actually bringing to market capabilities that support AI-type workloads. And that’s a step that [we’ve] really focused on with our MapR and BlueData integrations.  

Martin: This is part of the Intelligent Data Platform strategy that HPE is talking about. Can you kind of walk us through that IDP pitch? 

Powers: So, first and foremost, it starts with workload-optimized systems. That being either from your primary, from your file-based, from your object in secondary, all the way to managing your cloud capabilities. And it’s providing that data mobility across those platforms. We layer on top of that this notion of the global intelligence engine … and then what we have is effectively then able to make sure that we have SaaS-type plugins for infrastructure management. 

So, it’s really this layered sort of capabilities, but it starts and ends with workloads …  it’s really how do you optimize the capabilities for a specific set of workloads. 

Miniman: You could probably give a good kind of long-term view of [SaaS]. How do you see that as different from the previous trend of outsourcing that we’ve gone through? 

Powers: So, I think that the trend of outsourcing a lot of times turned into … more of a game of asset sweating. And so this notion of continually keeping up from a serviceability standpoint, optimizing the capabilities, I think it was more of a focus from an asset utilization play as opposed to delivering a service. I think the real change now is delivering a service.

Martin: Your perspectives on this new Commvault 2.0 that you’re seeing that HPE is partnering with? 

Powers: I think as all of us within the IT industry are recognizing, it’s this whole notion about service and customer. Really, it’s customer experience and the service enablement that we provide from infrastructure capabilities. I mean we are providing the tools to allow these companies to accelerate.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Commvault GO event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Commvault GO event. Neither Commvault Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE