'Demand More'- HP’s new slogan

SAN JOSE, California: Hewlett-Packard announced an ad campaign with the tag line "Demand More," and detailed what it said was its new strategy aimed at its largest customers. In a discussion of the new campaign, HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina and other top executives from the computer and printer maker called the latest strategy "adaptive enterprise."

They also unveiled some new software and computer-services offerings tied with the strategy in an effort to help companies get more out of the information technology they already have.

Elements of the plan, such as utility computing in which companies pay for only as much computing power they need, were previously in place at HP, under the name "adaptive infrastructure." HP said it is now providing a road map for customers to put its systems in place and manage change in their businesses.

HP's competitor, IBM, calls its own next generation computing strategy "on-demand" computing. Since closing its $19 billion acquisition of Compaq a year ago, HP has tried to position itself as a viable alternative to IBM, the world's biggest computer and computer-services company. Indeed, that was one of the central arguments by Fiorina in favor of the Compaq deal.

"This does feel like a relaunch of a strategy they've been working on for a while," said Roger Kay, an analyst at IDC. "One of their goals is to position themselves better against IBM and I suppose this does that."

HP said that its "Demand More" campaign could account for as much as 25 percent of the $400 million Palo Alto, California-based HP has earmarked for its +HP campaign, which has the tagline "Everything is possible."

Like HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc. are also chasing a similar market, and all have their own terms for what is essentially the same vision: new layers of intelligent software and systems that will meld unwieldy networks into easy-to-use systems.

IBM calls its effort "on-demand computing" and Sun calls its efforts "N1." "Everybody is doing this," said Paul Phillips, manager of competitive strategy for Sun, an HP competitor. "They're (HP) trying to move themselves closer to the IBM model but without the depth and experience IBM has."

HP, with the Compaq merger, gained a computer-services organization that is now one of the five biggest in the world. In addition, Compaq's ProLiant server line enhanced HP's position in the high-end of the market, analysts say.

"We don't think the way to solve complex technology problems is to throw more people at them," Fiorina said at the press conference.

For its part, IBM last week met with analysts to talk about the "on demand" strategy that its Chief Executive Officer Samuel Palmisano unveiled last year. The meeting focused on topics similar to HP's, such as improved data storage management software.

IBM also said it would start allowing customers to increase or decrease the amount of computing capacity they use on a day by day basis, said Bill Zeitler, who heads IBM's server and systems group,

Zeitler said that on-demand capacity offering would be extended from its most expensive computers to include storage and less expensive modular computers, called blade servers. Among the new services, HP also unveiled on Tuesday was the HP Virtual Server Environment, a new Unix program that lets companies balance and monitor their computer-server resources based on prioritized business needs.

HP also updated its OpenView software that helps to manage computers with a self-healing component, that suggests corrective action to problems.

In addition, the company announced upgraded ProLiant blade servers, which stack up like books on a shelf to save space and cut down on power consumption needed to cool data centers.

© Reuters