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HP aiming to be software major plans Netaction

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CIOL Bureau
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Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia): HP is giving new life to its software business that

is predominantly Openview dependent and wants to become software major. It has

lined up a simple proposition to achieve it: have 70 per cent of the businesses

coming from software licenses and the rest from services.

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HP’s senior sales and marketing executives for software, unveiling the

company’s ambitious drive into the software party, before its Asia Pacific

channel partners here today said the company is investing heavily in developer

programs, sales channel programs and adding more teeth to its direct marketing

efforts through HP Software Solution Organization worldwide.

Though HP is pitched against CA and IBM in the network management segment

that brings it over $1 billion annually, it has put together a more ambitious

vision of becoming the plumber in a world which it perceives to be dominated by

Web services. Called Netaction, HP’s new initiative appears to be a quick

answer to Microsoft’s .Net and Sun’s SunOne. But HP begs to differ. "We

are not competition to either MS or Sun. We are more of an open industry

standard player and our solutions talk to any other software, says Peter van der

Fluit, vice president, HP’s worldwide software sales and marketing.

Though Openview is HP’s mainstay for now, it is rapidly building a

foundation for its Web services business by bringing together disparate pieces

of software solutions under Netaction umbrella. Several pieces are coming

together into making this. HP’s recent acquisition -- Blue Stone -- brings in

the Web server that competes with iPlanet, BEA Weblogic and IBM Apache. It has

HP Application Server, which it is giving away free for developers to download.

It has a core services framework where its platform independent platform Chai

and the e-services framework e-Speak concepts merge. These three components sit

on HP’s Internet Operating environment. Over this is built the HP’s Web

services container. It is here HP will make its money by deploying various Web

services for its customers.

In the coming year, HP is planning to launch Opencall Media platform and the

next year it will launch a communication portal platform. Opencall is HP’s

trump card in the VoIP segment that allows enterprises and network operators

like telcos and mobile phone service providers to offer voice and data

communications using Internet Protocol.

HP’s thrust in the coming years will be on Enterprise IT services market,

telcos, SAN/Storage and it will focus on voice call services using Opencall for

2002-03.

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