HP initiatives confirm that it means business about software
Sceptics unsure of Hewlett-Packard's commitment to the software business were shaken last week when the firm announced the Asian debut of a global Electronic Business Software Organisation along with a new software technology for electronic business.
The step comes about six months after HP announced formation of a software and service group and underscores the company's commitment to its new software strategy.
HP has been in and out the software business for many years, spinning off some products and using others to enhance hardware, prompting IT observers to wonder how seriously HP was committed to the software industry.
This time, HP has shown consistency, and said it intended to become one of the top three players in the area of e-business.
Any rival, who knows how HP took the PC market by storm and made it to the top in less than four years, will know the threat is to be taken seriously.
Further underscoring HP's commitment is its recent acquisition of several organisations, including Verifone and Symantec Networking, and its strategic partnership with Netscape around software for the Internet.
Central to HP's e-business strategy is HP Changengine, a technology that enables dynamic changes of business processes used in electronic business.
'Software from the Changengine family integrate into an organisation's existing systems, effectively bridging legacy technologies to the Internet,' the general manager of HP's Software and Solution Centre, Beate Bentzen, explained.
The first user of the technology is HP itself, which said it saved US$8 million in internal administrative automation by using its own developed AdminFlow.
One example of applications is management of more than 1,200 changes a week in employee status within the company.
Mr Bentzen said AdminFlow integrated with the company's existing human resources systems, enabling them to announce and manage the weekly changes instantly.
Leading Japanese insurance company Sumitomo Life also selected HP Changengine to re-engineer its IT infrastructure.
The goal of the multi-year, $120 million project is to automate the business processes of Sumitomo's sales force, including policy enrolment and maintenance and claims processing.
The new system also will enable the insurer to introduce 25 per cent of new services to customers by mid-1998 instead of in seven years as it originally was looking at.
Sumitomo is a prime example of how the financial crisis rocking Asia and its resulting state of deregulation is forcing organisations to review their business processes, creating huge opportunities for products of the HP e-business type.
HP said it was setting up a dedicated sales and support team in Asia to face the expected high demand.
