The time for maintaining the status quo has fallen away. That is the message from Randy Meyer, VP and GM of Mission Critical Systems at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE). Whether the topic is Big Data processing, business transactions driven by IoT or building clouds, Meyer demands higher goals.

“A box doesn’t solve anything,” remarked Meyer. “Software-defined is the new mantra.”

Meyer talked with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE from SiliconANGLE Media team, at Red Hat Summit 2016 in San Francisco. The VP discussed the intricacies of data processing. Meyer determined it’s “not just collecting the data” but also how you marry it that creates value and usefulness. He gave the example of a German companies that utilizes sensors to illustrate the importance of analyzing the right data in IoT.

The person at the end of business transaction

A central thesis of Meyer’s keynote presentation during day three of Red Hat’s Summit was the concept of people within IoT. Meyer explained this using a retail store as an example. A customer orders an item from the website. Naturally that customer then expects his or her exact order to be in a shopping bag waiting for pick-up. The customer doesn’t want to hear they had the wrong color or size.

When this happens the onus is placed on the associate, when the error is not their fault. That is importance of a smooth inventory system through IoT. Because customers don’t think about their order when it all goes right. Instead, the customer assumes it will go right.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE