“I don’t believe I am the type of person who likes to make a big splash.”
That was one of the comments from Hewlett Packard's new CEO Leo Apotheker as he outlined his vision for the company after just over four months in the hot seat vacated by Mark Hurd. Looking over that vision as articulated, it's perhaps just as well that Apotheker is presumably content with the little splashes as what was revealed was big on vision, small on delivery detail.
The one thing that we can safely take away is that Cloud is now awfully important.
“The world is connected, people to people. People want information where and when they need it...We intend to be the platform for the Cloud and connectivity...Everything that we do in the future will be delivered as a service. It’s the first time HP is trying to put all of the elements of what it’s doing together. ”
Ok, so far, so on trend with the wider industry. All roads lead to the Cloud but what will make up the HP way to the Cloud?
“HP's scalable, converged infrastructure forms the backbone of today's cloud computing, and we expect our leadership in software, services, PCs and web-connected printers, as well as the strengths we've built and the investments we've made, to give us a huge advantage as we help define, deliver and run the truly connected world that spans Cloud and connectivity, from the consumer through the enterprise.”
First off the blocks is a push into infrastructure as a service :
“We have already launched infrastructure as a service for our enterprise customers [available in the private cloud] and plan to launch a public Cloud offering in the near future. We also plan to move into higher-value services that offer greater strategic value...Our strategy is to optimise the traditional technology stack that our customers depend on. [We will] build and manage these next-generation, cloud-based architectures and enable customer migration to hybrid models.”
There will also be a Platform as a Service punt with this aspect including an app store – a la Apple, Salesforce.com, SAP etc - which will open some time this year – or maybe next year.
“We will grow an open marketplace that integrates with our services, a consumer app store, and an enterprise and applications services catalogue. We only vet the applications for security and interoperability to facilitate an environment that is trusted.”
Apotheker thinks most companies will get to the Cloud with hybrid architectures, and that model is what businesses will use for a "long, long time." Such a hybrid view of the world also means lots of potentially lucrative work for the HP services arm as organisations try to bolt the old and new worlds together.
So all of that sounds solid and sensible, if hardly earth shattering or revolutionary, but can end users really expect HP to carve itself convincing Cloud credentials?Apotheker's first response is to claim that seven out of 10 cloud service providers are existing HP customers and four out of five search engines run HP.
OK, that's fair enough, but it's not really putting much meat on the bones, is it? Where's the detail? Unfortunately on this particular outing, details were not on the agenda. For example, Apotheker was asked about which technologies would be used for the HP Cloud infrastructure. His response was evasive to say the least:
“The technology we will be using for Cloud infrastructure is going to be based on a certain number of technologies - let's not go into that right now.”
There were also some downright contradictory statements that suggest that there's a degree of corporate messaging work still to be done on the Cloud push. For example, when asked if HP can catch up with IBM, Apotheker robustly stated:
“We don't think we're playing catch-up to anyone, least of all IBM.”
But when asked about catching up with the likes of Amazon, he said:
“We will catch up and you can ask me then.”
Now that catching up is on the agenda, the question is of course 'how?'. Apotheker has an answer:
“How we catch up is pretty damn simple...We are seeing a lot of demand from enterprise customers who want this service today. They want SLAs, they want security....There aren't many other companies that can provide that globally. In fact, there are none.”
Hmm, IBM might have something to say about that – as indeed might Oracle (where Apotheker's predecessor Hurd has turned up) for that matter. But overall, it was a start – albeit one that lacked the follow-through of detail. Apotheker, rather optimistically, concluded:
“I hope I made it clear this afternoon how all the elements of the portfolio hang together.”
To which the answer so far, has to be...not entirely, but let's see how things develop. Dr Katy Ring of K2 Advisory cautions that there is some way to go:
“HP's mission, according to new CEO Apotheker, is to define and deliver the connected world from the consumer to the enterprise. The ability to deliver context-aware experiences to consumers, small businesses and enterprises is, of course, enabled by Cloud services. The innovative aspect to the HP strategy is that it is being designed with how the individual operates in the digital era, blending personal and professional experiences in a context-aware but seamless and connected set of applications. The company is setting out its strategic direction, taking Cloud as a new design point to harness its enterprise IT capabilities and expand to underpin new public Cloud and app store delivery solutions. This is a profound re-positioning of HP, which builds on both its traditional enterprise and consumer businesses, and distinguishes it from IBM. However, to deliver this strategy will require strong determination, as the company will be playing catch-up with Amazon, Google and Microsoft in terms of data centre investment to build its own public Cloud infrastructure. It will also require a spending spree to acquire the second generation Cloud application "experiences" to seal the stategic deal for the market. ”
