Can HP successfully turn IT on its head?

Mary Johnston Turner, Vice President, Ovum Summit

With the close of the Mercury acquisition, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has launched a major new marketing campaign designed to convince customers and partners that it can reinvent IT and business governance, portfolio management and runtime operational efficiency. Leading with an emphasis on 'business outcomes', HP aims to convince the market that the HP Software group can compete with the likes of IBM, Microsoft and the open source community when it comes to defining, developing, testing, launching and operating business applications and end-to-end composite services.

The market is used to hearing about Mercury's Business Technology Optimisation (BTO) solutions, which emphasise IT governance, portfolio management and workflow management capabilities. Because HP's business outcomes message goes beyond Mercury's BTO message, it requires a second look to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of HP Software's aspirations. The vendor hopes to push beyond BTO to help IT organisations become more efficient and better able to add value to the business. Interestingly, HP's Adaptive Enterprise and Adaptive Infrastructure terminology is nowhere in sight. Rather than emphasise its product's ability to monitor and manage infrastructure, HP Software is now trying to get customers and partners to think of the combined OpenView, Peregrine and Mercury toolkit as a strategic resource for producing positive business results.

Despite this lofty goal, on day one of its 'Turn IT on its Head' campaign, HP emphasised two sets of near-term proof points: Mercury's application testing and portfolio management credentials, and OpenView's long-term leadership in the operational infrastructure management arena. Transforming the market's perception of HP Software from a manager of bits and bytes to an influencer of business outcomes will require work and demonstrable business benefits. The company intends to begin delivering on these in very short order. Specifically, HP states that it is undertaking an aggressive product and architectural rationalisation programme that will result in the introduction of a set of important new 'lifecycle' solutions by the end of this year.

In concept, these lifecycle solutions will rely on common governance and end-to-end service-level reporting frameworks that link together a number of the capabilities and products HP Software now has in its portfolio. These include the application visibility provided by Mercury's Systinet tool, software distribution and management powered by Radia technology, infrastructure operational control enabled by HP's OpenView suite, and service desk and asset management capabilities provided by Peregrine products.

Within the lifecycle solutions model HP promises to tightly integrate and automate service-level and performance reporting, capacity planning, problem resolution management and related end-to-end service delivery workflows. To get there, the company will need to federate the HP Active configuration management database (CMDB) with the Mercury Universal CMDB, unify user interfaces and dashboards, and integrate two very different research, development and marketing cultures.

In a telling move, the HP Software executive team has tapped a number of Mercury executives to take on vital roles. These include Onagh Ash, Professional Services; Boaz Chalamish, Research & Development; Yuval Scarlat, Product Strategy - Application Delivery Products; and Sue Barsamian, Global Operations. HP's David Gee continues to drive marketing and Deb Traub heads Product Strategy - Management Products. Together, these executives bring HP significant depth and understanding in application and portfolio management markets.

Certainly, the Mercury acquisition has turned the HP Software mission, vision, value proposition and leadership team on its head. The real question is whether salesforces, channel partners and customers also want to be upturned!

Mary Johnston Turner leads Ovum Summit's ongoing analysis of enterprise customer dynamic computing priorities, buying behaviours, investment timelines and management strategies. During her 20-year career, Mary has assisted a wide range of IT vendors and enterprise IT leaders in developing strategic plans to help them navigate and prosper during times of uncertainty and change.