HP gunning for the solutions space

Asim Raina

SINGAPORE: "HP is playing to win in the solutions space", thundered

Michael Hoffmann, HP vice president and general manger (Business Customer Sales

Organization)- Asia Pacific. He was addressing the media gathering at the Asia

Pacific Press Symposium here today.

HP announced an investment of $ 18 million as part of its strategic thrust

into the solutions market in Asia-Pacific. The investment will be used to help

the company build, design and deploy solutions either on its own or jointly with

customers and partners.

Added Hoffmann, "HP is in a unique position to build a strong leadership

in the solutions area. We already have strong proof-of-concept solutions

developed for the network service provider market. We intend to capitalize on

this and leverage our experience for the other focused segments such as

manufacturing and financial services."

The target markets that HP intends to focus on are financial services

industry, manufacturing, network and service providers, and small and medium

businesses. In addition, it will also focus on some other critical solutions

that include e-commerce, CRM, and operational procurement.

As part of the overall investment, HP also plans to launch two customer

service centers in the Asia Pacific region. In addition, 25 resource centers

will also be set up, out of which, probably two would be located in India.

The first customer center spread across 6,000 square feet has already come

up in Ichigaya, Japan. It provides its customers with a broad set of services

and solutions that include third party technologies such as Oracle CRM, Cisco

ICM, Broad Vision and EpiphanyOne. The second such center is slated to come up

in Singapore later this year.

"The customer centers in Japan and Singapore will provide a higher level

of customer experience for our customers. We have heavily invested in the

customer centers to ensure that customers are able to access the right people,

solutions and services provided by HP and its key partner," elaborated

Hoffmann.

In conjunction with this announcement, HP also launched new printer and

storage solutions designed to make business transformation a reality.

It introduced five new Internet-enabled printers that allow business

customers to leverage the power of Internet by improving speed, efficiency and

delivery of information and workflow processes. These new devices will provide

customers with a wide range of Internet and wireless features from embedded web

server and embedded virtual machine technologies to scan-to-web functionality

and fast infrared for wireless printing.

"HP is revolutionizing the role of printers and with these new printers

our customers will be able to leverage web-based services and information to

maximize their competitive advantage," said Joergen Jakobsen, VP & GM

(Imaging & Printing Systems) - Asia Pacific, HP. Added Hoffmann, "We

want to make Internet work for our customers."

HP also unveiled its Federated Storage Area Management (FSAM) strategy and a

$ 50 million investment in Asia Pacific to support this strategy. FSAM solutions

will enable businesses to manage today's unpredictable storage demands. The

announcement included three FSAM solutions;HP network storage appliance, HP

surestore array 7100, and HP OpenView storage area manager.