Just two business days after the hand-wringing legal completion of its merger with Compaq Computer Corp., the new HP — which now trades as — Tuesday emerged before the world with a new mantra, “We are ready.”
“After eight months and millions of hours of integration planning by our teams, today we are ready to do business as the new HP,”
said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina. “Our management teams are in place in all 160 countries in which we
operate. We have three year-product roadmaps for our customers in place for all of our products. More than 80,000 sales, service and
support professionals are ready to serve customers. Our Web sites and email systems are combined. Our online store is open for
business in the United States, and our joint Web site launched today in six languages and nine countries. All of it under the banner
of the new HP. It is a proud and exciting day for all of us.”
Transitioning into his new role as president of the combined company, Michael Capellas added, “Current economic realities are
driving the information technology market to HP’s strengths. Customers want fewer strategic partners, with global reach and scale.
They want complete, end-to-end solutions based on open, industry-standard architectures. And they want access to the best
engineering and most innovative technologies — a hallmark of HP and a strong differentiator. While execution is essential and we
have a lot to prove, we are confident in our ability to provide increased opportunity and value to our employees, customers,
shareowners and partners. The new HP has what it takes for market leadership.”
Fiorina noted that the companies have been planning the integration since before the merger was officially announced 8 months ago,
adding that its has already named three levels of management and is in the process of naming a fourth.
“Clearly, we are focused on building one strong new company, one strong new team, one strong new culture,” she said.
The named management teams include regional and country managers, as well as the top 100 corporate account managers. Fiorina also
said HP has completed customer support and migration plans, in addition to the three-year product roadmaps, and has a go-to-market
model for each customer segment — consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises. She said the company has
also identified financial targets and established accountability for those targets measured according to how customers define its
success.
The combined company is broken into four core business units:
- Enterprise Systems Group, led by Executive Vice President Peter Blackmore. HP said ESG provides the key technology assets of
enterprise IT infrastructure, including enterprise storage, servers, management software and a variety of solutions. - HP Services, led by Executive Vice President Ann Livermore. HPS, comprised of 65,000 professionals worldwide, is the industry’s
third largest IT services organization. - Imaging and Printing Group, led by Executive Vice President Vyomesh Joshi. IPG provides printing and imaging solutions for the
consumer and business markets, and is expanding into the digital publishing market. - Personal Systems Group, led by Executive Vice President Duane Zitzner. PSG oversees HP’s business and consumer notebooks and
desktops, workstations, thin clients, handhelds and Internet appliances, and is also responsible for emerging technology businesses
in areas like embedded software, embedded computing, home networking solutions and personal storage.
The company has also instituted a Worldwide Operations unit to provide support and strategic direction for the product business
groups. The unit, led by Executive Vice President Mike Winkler, is responsible for managing horizontal processes that extend across
the business groups, including supply chain, e-business, customer operations, total customer experience and quality, global
alliances, finance and information technology.
“While size, breadth and market leadership are important, HP is also strong where it matters most, with our customers,” Capellas
said. “In the three months leading up to the merger — in what continued to be a challenging IT spending environment and despite the
uncertainty surrounding the merger — our separate account teams booked more than $5 billion in combined new business in the
financial services, manufacturing, energy and communications industries.. We have not backed off an inch in our focus on customers.”
Capellas also promised to protect customer investments in both HP and Compaq technology.
“We recognize that customers have made significant investments in HP and Compaq technology,” he said. “We intend to protect those
investments with detailed transition and migration plans.”
In the server space, the company said HP will become the master brand. It will retain its commitment to the Intel Itanium Processor
Family, and will offer Itanium-based servers from the low end to the high end of the product line. The company said that in the
industry-standard server category, the Compaq ProLiant servers will become HP’s IA-32 server offering, along with the ProLiant blade
server architecture for the data center and HP’s Powerbar blade family, optimized for the telecommunications market.
In RISC-based servers, the company will continue with previously published roadmaps for both PA-RISC and AlphaServer systems. HP
will aim the PA-RISC servers at new business opportunities in addition to the installed base, while the AlphaServers will be
primarily focused on the installed base and high-performance technical computing.
Compaq’s fault-tolerant NonStop server family will be rebranded the HP NonStop Server.
In the UNIX market, Capellas said HP will retain the HP-UX platform, but will integrate advanced features, like clustering and file
systems, from Compaq’s Tru64 UNIX. The company also promised to deliver on its announced OpenVMS roadmap, including the port to
Itanium.
In the storage arena, the company will adopt StorageWorks as the product name for enterprise storage products and storage solutions,
while OpenView will be the name for its software storage, and it will adopt ENSA (enterprise network storage architecture) for its
storage architecture.
In software, the company will focus its investments in OpenView management solutions, the Utility Data Center (UDC), Opencall telco
solutions and J2EE and .NET middleware stacks. The company said it will adopt the OpenView name for all appropriate management
software and will integrate TeMIP into the OpenView product family. HP said its OpenView product line will focus on integrated
management solutions and extended management reach for both network and IP devices and Web services management. Meanwhile it will
continue to invest in UDC software by leveraging Compaq Insight Manager and Adaptive Infrastructure offerings, in addition to
Toptools.
In the telco software market, the company said it will consolidate both HP’s and Compaq’s offerings into the Opencall product
family.
As for personal systems, the company will continue to sell both HP and Compaq-branded consumer PCs and notebooks, but will drop the
HP brand for the commercial categories. All other products, solutions and services will carry only the HP brand.
Finally, in imaging and printing, the company will combine HP and Compaq digital projectors into a single product line under the HP
brand within the next 12 months.
