Name: HPE CEO says, ''We continue to be very bullish''
Uploaded: 2022-04-20
Duration: 8 min 21 s
Description: CEO Antonio Neri says supply disruptions, inflation and high interest rates will not stop hot demand for tech.

CEO Antonio Neri says supply disruptions, inflation and high interest rates will not stop hot demand for tech.

HPE CEO says, ''We continue to be very bullish''

Antonio Neri - CEO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Leadership

Antonio. So good to see you again and congratulations on opening your new headquarters in Houston. And actually let's start by talking about that. You know when people hear the name Hewlett Packard, they picture Silicon Valley where the company has this really long history. So why did you decide to relocate to your global headquarters to Houston? Well as you know, Covid changed everything the way we work. And during the pandemic we assess what is the new environment that we need to provide to our employees. At the same time I was building a brand new site for Houston employees And as we went through that journey we decided to relocate their corporate offices to Houston texas. We we have now 440,000 square feet of an amazing space, digitally enabled with a lot of amenities. And you know, what we did is basically assess how people want to work in this new environment, give them the flexibility but also the ability to attract and retain talent. And we felt Houston which is already today, the largest site in the United States and the second largest in the world. It was a great hub to do that. And at the same time we get the best on the other side on the Silicon Valley side because also built a state of the outside. So we got the best of both worlds and now we are all here in Houston which actually give us a great footprint to attract and retain that talent in this new world. Well you're right in saying that the pandemic changed every everyone's ideas about the workplace, whether you know, you're working from home or you're working in the office or some combination of that now that you've built this actually incredible campus, what do you want your employees to do, how do you want them to use this space? We listened to the employees throughout the pandemic, right, what they all said, they want flexible set of capabilities um and also the ability to come and work at their pace, whatever it makes sense for them. And in that environment we established what we call an edge to office programs where the edge employees right? Most of the time they are not at the office, but we encourage them to be at least once or twice a week at the office and the office employees is because they have to be here and we asked them to at least four times a week in the office, but ultimately we want everybody to come here and and collaborate. Let's talk a little bit about the business outlook for HP, you recently reported um solid revenues, strong earnings, a huge jump in orders up, 20%. How are things shaping up for 2022 so far, we think the balance of 2022 will be very strong, we believe it's going to continue the momentum we had at the beginning of this fiscal year. The challenge that we all have and we're dealing with is the disruption in the supply chain From the customer demand in terms of cloud data connectivity, we think that's going to continue to be very strong. We'll talk to us a little bit about supply shortages is the situation getting any better? Well it starts to get better but we believe we are going to continue to be in this environment all the way to the end of 22, beginning of 2023. Obviously our suppliers are trying to catch up with the demand was in the marketplace. They are making big capital infusions to increase the capacity at the same time. We, as a company continues to work with our customers and partners to use our engineering capability to try to change configurations to use alternative components so we can speed up the delivery of their orders as much as we can. But the reality is that we're going to continue to be in this environment all the way to 22, beginning of 2023, I mean these are difficult economic times as well. Besides the supply issues, you know, we're talking here about inflation, rising interest rates, there's talk of a possible recession, how might those factors impede hp ES growth this year? Well, we, we continue to be very bullish and the reason why we abolished is because we continue to see the explosion of data and the fact that customers need to extract every bit of insight from that data in order to compete to win in the marketplace. The one thing we noticed is that the brands, they have done a remarkable job in digitizing their businesses and use the data as a key differentiator are actually winning and this is why we believe I? T spend will continue to be very strong in the foreseeable future. Well let's talk a little bit about that demand and your goals for HP, you get very enthusiastic when you talk about the trend of edge to cloud, explain to our viewers in simple terms Antonio what is edge to cloud and why is it so important for businesses and for individuals? So through the digital transformation we are seeing a new set of architecture are emerging which we call this H2 cloud view of the world, what that means means that if you think about it today, most of your personal life and business life is done in a mobile phone and some sort of mobile device and that's connected to a cloud. So your devices the edge and that's where it's important that we bring the right experience to the edge which includes clouds and data analytics while connected to some sort of big uh kind of brain, if you will, where allow the competition of power gets done. So that's why we believe this age to cloud architecture is going to be now a new way for customers to operate in this digital world, what would be some of those new ways give us a picture of the future. Yeah, well I mean if you go back to the global pandemic, right? So we went into lockdown all of a sudden right, we have to operate in a different way and we send people home so how we enable people to work from home but also in our personal life, you know, think about it, we couldn't go out. So from your mobile device you were able to order your food and be able to be delivered to to your house and that forced a lot of companies to enable these new digital capabilities the same the other way around as we come out of the pandemic, think about the example of Home Depot, we work with them to provide them connectivity in the stores, you start your experience, your mobile device, whatever you're looking for, what is a hammer or screws or nails, whatever it is, as you work into the store, that connectivity allows you to location services to find what you're looking for. So it is a seamless digital experience that we're able to provide to these new age to cloud architecture Antonio I want to talk about you a little bit, you just completed four years as Ceo of HP. What would you say was the single most important leadership lesson you've learned during those years and also during the pandemic, what was the most important leadership lesson, I had to practice my leadership skills to a level and never imagined before. You know, we live in a world that is in turmoil. Obviously there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of crisis, you know when I became Ceo there were of course the beginning of a very strong geopolitical uh situations we go through natural disasters through a global pandemic now to a supply chain disruption to social injustice and to me leading and inspiring people is everything because our employees, our team members, our customers want to work for a company that has a clear purpose and less than any empathy and be able to inspire people to thrive in this environment was was essential. So we're really proud of what we have done uh with my executive team. But boy you have to continue to step up, how has it changed for you specifically the way you're leaving HP culture is everything susie and this is where you know I'm so proud that after a lot of hard work we are now in the fortune list number 19 in the best places to come and work and that was done during a very difficult time. So to me it starts and ends with the culture put on employees at the center of everything you do and drive a customary in perspective and when you do that all, only good things happen