via Judith Hurwitz

Judith has joined the yearly HP industry analyst summit organized by HP. This summit is dealing with everything at HP, excepted the PCs and printers. Based on the discussions there, Judith is giving her view on the possible future of HP. Very interesting analysis!

I think that HP is at a crossroads. Today it is the largest technology company. This is a wonderful opportunity because size gives customers comfort. […] On the other hand, it provides a challenge. When you are this big, you have to act big and bold. You have to set a leadership agenda that the market and the customers take note of. […]

1. Be Top Dog in Selected Markets. HP’s overall strategy remains consistent: it’s objective is to be either number 1 or 2 in each product category it participates in. While HP has made some strides in achieving this lofty goal, it is still a work in process. […]
2. EDS is larger than HP’s printer business. With EDS as part of the portfolio, the amount of revenue from printers and ink has started to diminish. In fact, HP executives proudly announced that EDS is as large as HP’s printer revenue. […]
3. Procurve chases Cisco in network management. While HP has been in the networking business for decades, it has been a well kept secret. Because of HP’s tight partnership with Cisco, HP has been wary of appearing to compete. However, it appears that HP is now willing to take on Cisco in the networking switching arena. […]
4. The software business is (still) important. HP has long had a love/hate relationship with software. HP has selected management and automation to focus its software business. […]
5. HP does the cloud. […] Clearly, the cloud strategy is a work in progress. But HP is thinking about the right issues as it makes its way into this important emerging area. HP’s intent is to leverage its software assets to create a common framework for its cloud strategy. HP anticipates that it can leverage EDS’s expertise to gain a cloud framework that it can leverage with customers.
6. HP expands Software as a Service. When HP acquired Mercury it also picked up a growing SaaS business. The company is planning to continue to focus on this arena both in the enterprise market and the SMB market. SaaS offerings will continue to focus both on the testing and the remote monitoring markets. […]

HP is very focused on being a provider of IT services, hardware, and software. It has no desire to be a business management or a business consulting organization. While HP is most comfortable in the hardware arena, it is making important strides in this part of the business. […]

The software business, on the other hand, is still at a transition point. While HP has done extremely well with its performance management and testing business, it has had a hard time creating an overall software portfolio. Opsware is clearly being used to provide the foundation for cloud computing but it will take some more time and cycles for this platform emerges as a power. […]

In my view, there will be more aquisitions to come for HP. I suspect that most will be in software and will have to fill the gaps in data management and security. […]

Disclosure: we are at Innoveo member of the Development and Solutions Partner Program (DSPP) and a worldwide Financial Services Industry Partner.

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Solutions blog