Exclusive Interview With David Scott, SVP and GM, HP Storage

 David C. Scott, born in Jamaica, serves as GM of storage at Hewlett-Packard Company and has been its SVP since 2010, succeeding Bob Schultz. He rejoined HP with the acquisition of 3par in September 2010 for $2.35 billion. Previously, from October 1991 to January 2001, he held various management positions at HP most recently as GM of XP enterprise storage business in its network storage solutions organization. Prior to this role, he held various marketing, business strategy, sales and systems engineering positions in HP’s HP9000 enterprise server, HP-UX software and enterprise storage businesses both in the US and the UK.
In 2011, StorageNewsletter.com wrote about Scott: “Getting $2,5 million in cash (and more) following company’s acquisition by HP, personal fortune now estimated at $96 million.”
He holds a BS degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from UK Bristol University.

StoragenewsLetter.com: Did 3par saves HP storage?
Scott: 3par is a very important addition to HP overall storage portfolio. It has been a very successful acquisition in terms of its ability to allow HP to go through a transition of its overall portfolio and emerge very strongly with a rapidly growing platform in the mid-range market.

For last quarter ended July 2014, revenue of HP storage, without services, was $796 million, historically less than $800 million for the first time. What’s the problem?
HP storage represents both sales of external disk storage and storage networking like companies such as EMC and NetApp, but also tape like companies such as IBM. And as such, one has to look, when you’re seeing HP reported storage figures, on the impact of the secular decline in the tape business which is a headwind that those vendors who don’t have tape in their business don’t have to worry about.  

Since the acquisition of 3par by HP in September 2010 for $2.35 billion in cash, 3par products never were able to compensate the other decreasing HP’s legacy storage revenues. Will it happen and when?
If you look at the part of the segment that HP 3par StoreServ operates, in the external disk storage worldwide in the last 3 calendar quarters, HP is the only major vendor to grow market share in each of those quarters according to IDC. 3Par has been able to help HP grow market share against declining platforms like EVA within the portfolio.
When you take HP storage overall, including tape, it is more difficult for 3par to overcome the negative impact.

When will the global business increase?
I can’t forecast when it will increase. We’re in a market condition throughout this year where the overall market, especially in the high-end and more recently in the combined mid range/high end, has been muck weaker than it has been forecast.
So we’re trying to drive a transformation within HP portfolio but in the condition of a weak high-end and mid-range market space. But if those market start to turn and our competitors position continues to be as strong as it is, we see no reason why we can’t continue to do well in external disk storage market.

How many EVAs, stopped last year, are currently used in the world?
I think EVAs has had an install base that has fluctuated over time. I would guess that we have something like 40 to 50 thousands active EVAs across the world.

What do you offer to EVA’s users to migrate?
We have a very strong recommendation for those EVAs users to migrate to 3par. We make it extremely easy for them to do so. Software code online import moves customers either non disruptively or minimally disruptively from the EVA platform to 3par.

How many migrate to the competition?
We have been extremely successful in getting our customers to transfer to 3par. As we have gained market share with the 3par platform in the mid-range, we have been additionally taking market share from other competitors by getting new logo and new customers wins in those markets.

How do you manage your storage software activity with Autonomy?
HP software group including Autonomy has platforms like Data Protector where we have an extremely close relationship. It leverages our StoreOnce catalyst software capability and also a de-duplication capability. We arrange for very tight integration between our 3par snapshot technology with Data Protector, and we provide go-to-market solutions that cover the spectrum of backup, recovery and archive with HP software solutions like Data Protector.
We also have developed integration of technologies like our StoreAll with Express Query with HP Autonomy IDOL 10 to provide fast search capabilities of unstructured information that can be hundred thousand times faster than competitive alternatives on the scale of half a billion objects.

You don’t have any intention to take this software into your storage business rather than into another division?
We currently have more synergies by keeping the different elements of the software business in HP autonomy. It is also the reflection that we, as a storage system provider, also have relationships with many other ISP, backup ISP and vendors as well. So having some distance organizationally helps enable the open approach to backup ISP solution. We created the Data Agile ISP program just a few month ago to reflect that.    

Your European business is growing, what’s the problem in USA?
European business happens to be growing rapidly, and our business overall in external disk storage, as you’ve seen in IDC trackers, is growing overall worldwide. In the U.S, this year there’s been specifically a tougher economic climate earlier in the year and it tends to be that the U.S is one of the most competitive market places where not just all the major vendors participate but all of the new start-ups too.

Do you see a future for tapes and optical discs?
Yes.

You were late in the all-SSD system market with your HP 3par StoreServ 7450 model in June 2013. According to a recent Gartner’s report: “Compared with EMC and IBM, HP has not aggressively marketed, sold and generally mined its installed base.” And also: “HP and its partners have limited mind share in the market.” Do you agree?
No (Laugh). Let me just say.
First of all the 3par architecture supported flash many years ago. In fact with automated tiering, sub-region of automated tiering with our adaptive optimization technology, we were the first high-end tier 1 to support it. It is true that in the middle of June 2013 we brought an all-flash optimized array to the marketplace for the first time. We have aggressively developed it over the last 15 months.
We believe we are in a very good position to take that technology, which is compatible with our hybrid 3par array technology, into our installed base and provide customers with a solution from where they can get from today’s solution to the future and all-flash optimized array without having to create another management silo within their environment. And that we believe is a very strong competitive advantage for HP converged storage platform

What’s the roadmap of HP in software and hardware storage?
We are building on the concept of these polymorphic architecture which have the same architecture from high-end tier 1, trough mid-range tier 1, trough entry-level storage, across hybrid to all-flash, from block storage to other protocols like object and files in the future. We’re trying to deliver solutions with single architecture that are flexible and also integrated between 3par and StoreOnce which provide similar functionality in the backup domain.
We’re also looking to continue leveraging our lead in SDS under our StoreVirtual brand and recognize the need to evolve that as well into other area like object and file-based solutions. But leveraging the power of HP trough technologies like OneView for physical management, Helion OpenStack for open management environments, and integrating into other management centers like VMware and Microsoft as well.

When will you be in object storage?
We don’t comment about future directions in terms of product roadmaps and delivery schedules but our intention is to deliver object storage solutions into the market based on HP intellectual property.

Do you have an acquisition strategy?
Right now one of the thing I can state is that HP has very strong owned intellectual property within its portfolio and there are no major areas of storage intellectual property that we believe we can have to go out and purchase.

Personal questions

How old?
I’m 52.

Hobbies?
Reading, skiing, tennis, and playing with my daughter.

Annual salary and total compensation?
That’s a private matter.

How do you mainly use your fortune as you’re probably one of the richest person in the storage industry?
I make sure that I try and give a good education to my children.

How many vacation days will you have this year?
I don’t count and I take vacation when I can with my family. This year I went to England and Croatia for a couple of weeks.

You’re a UK citizen too?
Yes I have both nationalities.