HP joins the dots in software strategy

HP's software vision - outlined 12 months ago in Berlin - finally took shape yesterday as the company rolled out a raft of products and updated features to support the strategy.

Bill Russell, vice president for HP's software division, said: "This is a set of products that have sprung from a strategy set out a year ago. We've exited from eight business interests either by selling off or shutting down. We've consolidated in only the areas that we want to build in."

Speaking at HP's Software Universe in Monaco, Russell claimed the company is putting its money where its mouth is.

The products - which integrate technology inherited from BlueStone - focus mainly on HP's OpenView management tools.

"This is less about strategy and more about execution," Russell said of the week-long software event for customers and partners.

Russell said around 50 products are being released today.

Among the products set to revamp HP's OpenView were additional tools for billing and mediation, updated storage management capabilities and services for doing on the fly data analysis.

HP's year-old acquisition of BlueStone finally bore fruit with the release of HP's application server 8.0, which is freely downloadable from the internet. Russell said he hoped it would boost interest in Netaction's web services.

"The role of the CIO has really changed over the past two years. It used to be that the CIO was a cost centre reporting to the CFO but that's not true now. CIOs also have to generate revenue streams through the services their department provides," he said.

HP's utility data centre also received a makeover with added software to enable organisations to obtain 70 per cent capacity on corporate VLANs as opposed to the traditional 35 per cent by using drag and drop features.

Russell said: "Previously you'd get a bunch of engineers who'd crawl under the floorboards to move wires so they could switch capacity. Then you'd get another bunch of engineers to fix the problems that the first lot created. But now you can just drag and drop which is a far more reliable way to manage capacity."