CEO Meg Whitman said at a June HP conference that she envisions a hybrid cloud system allowing companies access to different data centres.
The cloud structure would involve access to both data centres hosted by public cloud providers such as Amazon as well as their internal cloud data platforms, Fortune reported. HP software Vice President and Executive Council member Robert Youngjohns said data analytics services will be key to the HP Enterprise business. He added that HP sees the growth of big data as “something that’s been radicalising the industry over the past three to five years”.
Yet today businesses have large volumes of data being generated from everything from sensors in cars to the emails that a company might receive on a daily basis, while the explosion of new data technology on the market can easily by superseded “as the latest and greatest new tech” becomes popular with engineers and operations staff. HP is looking to capitalise on this “burgeoning” market by HP Enterprise becoming a consulting business for groups who want to streamline their data and update their infrastructure with appropriate technology.
Youngjohns said HP’s data business differs from IBM’s approach to data analytics as IBM focuses on major global problems, such as positioning its Watson supercomputer to become a leader in combatting disease. In contrast, HP instead wants to work to solve the more pragmatic problems of customers, such as assisting financial customers in analysing emails to detect fraudulent activity.
He is also keen for HP to stand out for data technology that serves the business side of a company, rather than merely its data scientists, while he said companies ought to formulate a data strategy rather than rely on a certain tool, such as the Hadoop open-source big data framework.
HP is also plugging its own range of data analytics innovations and how they will be important for companies formulating a data strategy, with the OEM due to announce updates to its products offering next week, such as the Vertica database, which it purchased in 2011 for $350 million (€312 million). The database is being made compatible with open-source data technology like Apache Spark, which IBM is also investing in.
The OEM is also promoting its custom servers, which it says are “tailored to handle big data tasks”, which Fortune says indicates that “HP is trying to offer an all-in-one package to potential clients that includes software and hardware”. Youngjohns said of the changes: “We are no longer the PC/printer company. It is the services, hardware, and software.”