HPE Boosts Networking Forecast on AI Demand

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You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

Tim Stenovec (0:16)

We're going to keep our conversation going here about AI, the build out that's being caused as a result of it.

As we talk to the CFO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, she joins us now, that's Marie Myers. Great to have you with us. I know that you were listening to some of that conversation there, maybe I could begin just by getting your perspective on sort of where things stand. Of course, you have heard those who are anxious about what this might mean for humanity, those on kind of the doomer end of the spectrum here, but you are integrally involved here in the wider build out of the systems that are buffeting and powering this AI renaissance. How are you feeling about this moment? How should we think about the moment from your vantage?

Marie Myers (0:51)

Well, good afternoon, David Christina. It's an absolute pleasure to be with you this afternoon. I've actually just come from our Investor Day here in Sunnyvale on our networking business. And clearly, we're in a moment of time where there's just phenomenal momentum driven by AI and architecture, and also just in terms of how AI is really transforming work and our lives. I use AI personally every day, and I've been a very strong advocate in my role as the CFO of HPE and actually building agents to help us run our own business. And we've seen tremendous success in transforming workflows, frankly, that we've had for decades that perhaps were somewhat useful. But today, I'm seeing just enormous change and it's really benefiting the way we work. However, I'd say what's really important is the approach around responsibility. And as a company, we've had an all-star, I would say, about responsible AI.

Carol Massar (1:49)

I do want to ask you, I know you've made some big investments and some collaborations are upcoming, and we're going to talk about that. But when you look at the effectiveness of AI in your business, you said you use it every day, do you draw distinction between the usefulness of generative AIs and agentic task-based systems?

Marie Myers (2:08)

Absolutely. And I would actually even add into the list you've given, there's also automation. So myself and my team, we typically look across the board spectrum of use cases, and then you have to figure out which one is the right one to use for the different workflows. And in terms of the benefits, I would say clearly the agentic capabilities have really sort of taken off in the last 12 to 18 months. I think it's a moment many of us were waiting for, as enterprises perhaps laid the early stage foundations with generative AI. I almost would start with automation, generative AI all the way through now, where agentic workflows and the development of agents is becoming much more common in the enterprise. And clearly, I mean, at home, honestly, I have my own agents that help me out every day, just to sort of keep my own life managed. But at work, I rely on those agents for some really critical, as I mentioned, really critical workflows. We redesigned a call that we had on a Monday. It used to be a 300-plus PowerPoint deck that would take my team weekend to do today. Say it in.

Carol Massar (3:12)

I was going to say, listen, I'm an AI skeptic, but if you can solve that, I'm right there with you.

Marie Myers (3:17)

Exactly, exactly. And it takes a lot of time away. And actually, what I think is really more important is that it made the conversation so much easier with the team.

Tim Stenovec (3:27)

Marie, you mentioned your investor day, and I know there was a big deal announced here, a $1.2 billion order from a cloud computing company. Talk a bit about that, the contours of that deal, and indeed, what the message of that deal is sending as you see it.

Marie Myers (3:41)

Yes. Look, that deal is really important for us because it is our first big AMD sort of helios announcement.

Clearly, for us, it's the entire AI system, which includes both our networking switch, all the way through to software and other hardware. But what's really sort of probably taking everybody by note today is the integration of the helios switch into that rack, and actually at the investor day, one of my favorite parts of the day was actually folks seeing this switch. It is literally, if you see it like a work of art, it's incredibly wide because this rack is much wider than normal racks, and there's 1700 copper cables that are interwoven in this switch. So I never thought I'd say it like that, but the general manager of the team here has done an amazing job to produce what I think is going to be a work of art in switch history. So but it also just underscores the performance needs and the levels that are really rising in terms of performance just for AI itself, that you need to actually have a switch that works like this and runs like this. I'm so excited that with the acquisition of Juniper, we were able to develop this technology using the best of what HPE had prior to the acquisition and then taking the Juniper engineering and coming to market with A&D to announce this deal.