Enterprise applications Toolkit

HP sets out its software and services strategy

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 25 Apr 2007 14:44 BST

HP vice president Ann Livermore has detailed a range of products and services that are intended to fill out HP's portfolio "for the next five years".

The new hardware, software and services, which were unveiled on Tuesday at the company's Technology at Work event in Berlin, will help it compete with its rival IBM, HP hopes.

Livermore said: "Customers want us to help them achieve more with less. They want to mitigate risk… and use information to competitive advantage."

The main hardware product launched on Tuesday is the Neoview business intelligence (BI) platform, which consists of a fast BI/data warehouse server, running on industry-standard Intel hardware.

HP also introduced the Adaptive Infrastructure Maturity Model (AIMM) — a service to help organisations assess their positioning and future strategy in terms of efficient use of their IT assets. Organisations are assessed in terms of maturity from one to five.

HP has further extended its services management range of tools, with five new additions.

The Demand and Portfolio Management tool is aimed at helping companies get an improved return from investment analysis, project planning and resource management.

Application Transport Management is aimed at improving the way in which organisations move applications and services from development to operations.

Business Services Management is aimed at helping customers align IT with the rest of their business, so that services, and especially availability, can be improved.

These products and services are not traditionally strong areas for the company. "This has been a whole new area for us, but this is where we need to be," a senior HP executive told ZDNet UK. "We have the products, and now we have the sales operation in place, to show what we can do."