For customer-facing businesses, creating an enjoyable experience is crucial. By harnessing the power of technology and data, The Walt Disney Co. is taking customer satisfaction to new heights.

Partnering with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Disney is integrating cutting-edge tech to enhance guest experiences and streamline operations across its many theme parks. This collaboration is set to transform the way visitors enjoy Disney’s magical worlds, according to Alexi Varanko (pictured, left), vice president of cloud, data, SRE and product engineering at Disney.

Disney’s Alexi Varanko and HPE’s Paul Hunter discuss how Disney implemented HPE GreenLake.

“Using technology, we’re able to ensure that we have smooth operations at the parks that lead to positive impacts on the guest experiences — from building and serving applications to everything that improves park entry systems for the guests coming into the parks to the support of the backend systems that support the cast members that help create that magic and keep the overall experience  positive,” Varanko said.

Varanko and Paul Hunter (right), North America managing director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight at HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the Disney and HPE partnership, underscoring the shared vision of leveraging technology to enhance experiences and streamline operations. (* Disclosure below.)

HPE’s role in Disney’s technological journey

The linchpin of the Disney and HPE partnership is the latter’s role as the official technology provider for Disneyland Resorts for nearly two decades, according to Hunter. This collaboration has evolved, with HPE’s GreenLake platform playing a crucial role in delivering cloud-like experiences on-premises.

“The difference now is there’s even more urgency, because there’s this promise of what AI can bring to our customers,” Hunter said. “Some of them know what some of it might be, but they don’t all know what it will be. Discovering how and when they’re going to deliver that to the business is really urgent in a world where they’ve got the same amount of resources but they’re having to manage with even greater complexity.”

Disney’s public cloud shift has transformed its operational dynamics, fostering greater agility and access to new capabilities. HPE GreenLake complements this by providing a seamless experience, offering on-prem infrastructure with the same flexibility and scalability as public cloud services, Varanko explained.

“HPE GreenLake helps us to deploy computing power and storage capacity closer to the data source,” he said. “That reduces latency and  improves performance, and it’s helped us to process and analyze data more efficiently and more effectively across all of our distributed systems across the enterprise.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of HPE Discover: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Intel Corp., the primary sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE