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18
MPS
This year, HP combined its premier
partner/customer event and industry
analyst/press briefing into a single HP
Discover event in Las Vegas – fittingly,
perhaps, as this will be the last time
that HP meets the world in its present
form, as a single company.
This was a truly huge event, with over
10,000 attendees. Yet the organisation
appeared flawless, and presentations and
meetings ran like clockwork, all in the
massive indoor bubble of the Venetian/
Palazzo complex in Las Vegas, with its
miles of corridors, meeting facilities,
restaurants, casinos and shops, complete
with a recreation of Venice with artificial
lagoon and sky. There was no need to
venture outside throughout the four days
of the event, and one was left with the
impression that this is what life might be
like in a colony on the surface of Mars.
HP CEO Meg Whitman explained the
thinking behind HP’s separation into two
companies, principally the desire to create
more focus and agility, and confirmed the
timetable for the split, with HP Enterprise
and HP Inc. due to start operating
separately from August 1, prior to legal
separation from the start of the new fiscal
year on November 1. Together, she and
Dion Weisler, Executive Vice President
of Printing & Personal Systems (PPS),
set out the vision, strategy and senior
management structures of the two new
companies.
Split personalities
Hewlett Packard Enterprise will have a new
identity and green logo, and will focus on
the ‘New Style of IT’ for the Idea Economy
– with four main themes:
n
Transforming to a Hybrid Infrastructure;
n
Protecting the Digital Enterprise;
n
Empowering a data-driven organisation;
and
n
Enabling workplace productivity.
HP Inc. will retain the blue HP logo and
identity, reflecting the need to leverage the
brand heritage for its consumer business,
and its focus on the workspace, rather than
back office infrastructure.
The process involved in separating
into two companies has of course been
complex, and HP appears to have gone
about it with all the thoroughness one
would expect, given its engineering
heritage. Although the two new companies
will operate as separate entities, it has
been recognised up-front that they will
still have many partners and customers
in common, and that the Channel will
play a key role delivering the synergy to
keep these together. There will be a joint
programme for partners who work with
both companies, run somewhat along the
lines of the major airline alliances, with
partners earning points according to their
level of co-operation with each company.
Sense of excitement
Going into this event, one might have
thought the logic behind HP’s split was
to position Hewlett Packard Enterprise
as an exciting new service-led business
driving future growth, and HP Inc. as the
duller hardware business, to be hived off
with lower growth prospects. However,
that would be grossly unfair to the HP Inc.
management team, led by Dion Weisler,
who created a real sense of excitement
and commitment to future growth
potential. Interestingly, given all the
indications that the PPS Division was being
Steven Swift, co-founder of IDeAs, a European network of
consultants specialising in MPS, reports from the last HP
Discover partner event before the company splits in two.
Together
for the last time
led mainly by people with a PC rather than
a printer background, the main focus of
future growth potential identified at this
event appeared to be in the print business.
Against the general market view
that print is in decline, HP believes it can
generate increased revenue by targeting
‘pockets of growth’, leveraging its brand
strength and being selective about where
it plays.
Thus, although home printing volumes
are declining, HP believes it can achieve
growth by reinvigorating the market with a
combination of:
n
Innovative new products, including
new form factors that make printers more
acceptable throughout the home;
n
A truly easy-to-use mobile printing
solution, to address the demand for
printing on the go from mobile media; and
n
New services, such as Instant Ink, which
has been very successful in the markets
where it has been introduced, showing
extremely high customer retention levels.
Superior economics
In business printing, HP believes there is
still some market growth, but they are
targeting what they have identified as
Continued...
Meg Whitman,
CEO,
HP
Pockets of growth:
HP Instant Ink
