LOS ANGELES – Hewlett-Packard Co. is looking to leverage its services organization to help enterprises reduce the costs and complexity of IT infrastructures.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s services arsenal was touted Wednesday before attendees during a speech at the HP World 2002 Conference & Expo by Ann Livermore, executive vice-president of HP services.
“With the merger of HP and Compaq, we move from being about number seven or eight in the market to number three in the market,” Livermore said.
Enterprises, Livermore said, are looking to add revenue and cut costs. “But everything has to do with what you do to get a competitive edge in an economy like this,” she stressed.
Additionally, enterprises are looking to reduce complexity and link to customers and supply-chain partners, Livermore said. At least half of HP’s customers report a gap between what infrastructure can do what business strategy demands, said Livermore. Security also is a big issue, she added.
Changes in infrastructure are difficult. “To make changes in the infrastructure, it would almost take an atomic bomb to make some of the changes happen,” Livermore said.
HP, she said, has services capabilities involving tools and consulting services that can either be used internally by an enterprise or be outsourced to HP. The vendor’s services organization includes 65,000 persons in 160 countries, Livermore said.
The vendor is looking to assist with cost and flexibility of infrastructure, reducing complexity, piloting of technologies, and extending systems to work with suppliers and customers.
HP’s services organization is managing its own operations internally, she said. The services group also performs end-user support for Microsoft Corp., Livermore added.
“We’re now with the combination of HP and Compaq the best in the world at enterprise desktop management,” said Livermore.
A legacy DEC OpenVMS user at the show, however, was apprehensive about HP’s commitment to his platform, which has been acquired by HP via the Compaq merger.
“I saw a lot about Unix, a lot about Windows, nothing about OpenVMS,” said the attendee, Keith Miller, IT director at Goodrich, an aerospace products vendor in Troy, Ohio.
The company has ample resources in both Unix and Microsoft environments and also in .Net and J2EE, according to Livermore. Livermore also pledged to maintain support for HP e300o systems, which are in an end-of-life mode, until December 2006.
“I’ll personally commit to all of you that we will keep those [commitments] in place,” Livermore said.
In other developments at HP World 2002:
– Legato Systems Inc. announced that it is teaming up with HP to provide data protection solutions for HP AlphaServer systems running the OpenVMS operating system. Legato will deliver NetWorker Storage Node and NetWorker Client for OpenVMS, and HP will support customers using the Legato solution.
– WRQ Inc. announced the release of WRQ Reflection 10.0, the latest version of the company’s Windows-based terminal emulation and PC-Unix integration offerings. The new line adds increased security through an integrated OpenSSH client and an enhanced Kerberos client and SSL/TLS Telnet encryption. Also featured are Web infrastructure support for better management of host access from a Web portal, additional management controls, and automation capabilities to reduce errors. Users also can display the same look and feel as Windows XP and have interoperability between Windows and Java thin client Reflection offerings.
