Hewlett Packard, a conflicted giant of the technology industry has at last decided to do the decent thing. Its enterprise division will be separated from the consumer business. This is potentially very good news, since the business culture, management skills and goals of each activity is different, and poor HP has effectively gone nowhere trying to tie the two together.
The enterprise division needs people who understand enterprise customers and has a finger on the pulse of the enterprise IT market. It needs imagination and a broad set of skills to support the deployment of systems and infrastructure. The consumer division on the other hand is a volume business, where customers are simply looking for the best products at the lowest price.
It’s a manufacturing/assembly/branding exercise and requires few skills apart from buying low and selling high – with some good marketing thrown into the mix. At last the enterprise products and services division gets an identity.
Here is the spiel from Hewlett Packard:
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will have a unique portfolio and strong multi-year innovation roadmap across technology infrastructure, software and services to allow customers to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by cloud, big data, security and mobility in the New Style of IT. By leveraging its HP Financial Services capability, the company will be well positioned to create unique technology deployment models for customers and partners based on their specific business needs. Additionally, the company intends for HP Financial Services to continue to provide financing and business model innovation for customers and partners of HP Inc.
Customers will have the same unmatched choice of how to deploy and consume technology, and with a simpler, more nimble partner. The separation will provide additional resources, and a reduction of debt at the operating company level, to support investments across key areas of the portfolio. The separation will also allow for greater flexibility in completing the turnaround of Enterprise Services and strengthening the company’s go-to-market capabilities.
“Over the past three years, we have reignited our innovation engine with breakthrough offerings for the enterprise like Apollo, Gen 9 and Moonshot servers, our 3PAR storage platform, our HP OneView management platform, our HP Helion Cloud and a host of software and services offerings in security, analytics and application transformation,” continued Whitman. “Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will accelerate innovation across key next-generation areas of the portfolio.”
HP Inc.
HP Inc. will be a proven leader in the personal systems and printing markets with exciting new technologies on the horizon. The new company’s strong profitability and free cash flow will enable investments in growth markets such as 3-D printing and new computing experiences. At the same time, HP Inc. will continue to execute against a well-defined and established strategic plan, ensuring continuity for customers and consistent value to shareholders.
“Since assuming responsibility for the Printing and Personal Systems Group, Dion and his leadership team have done an excellent job of building our relationships with customers and channel partners, segmenting the market and driving product innovation,” added Whitman. “The creation of HP Inc. will only accelerate the progress the team has made.”
“This is a defining moment in our industry as customers are looking for innovation to enable workforces that are more mobile, connected and productive while at the same time allowing a seamless experience across work and play,”said Weisler. “As the market leader in printing and personal systems, an independent HP Inc. will be extremely well positioned to deliver that innovation across our traditional markets as well as extend our leadership into new markets like 3-D printing and new computing experiences – inventing technology that empowers people to create, interact and inspire like never before.