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SharePaul Muller, vice-president, strategic marketing, HP Software, spoke to DNA at a conference organised recently by Hewlett-Packard in Las Vegas on issues like the economic slowdown, India's upcoming 3G opportunity, the country's position vis-a-vis the China market and on the company's proposed financial management offerings. Excerpts from the interview:
On the broad focus of HP Software:
We believe that there are a couple of key challenges and opportunities that exist in the marketplace today. We are helping our customers extract value from business technology investments. To do that, we are focused on tackling three distinct opportunities that exist in the environment.
The first is about exporting information assets and data that exist in the companies today. The second is about managing that information through large circles. Businesses, after all, are retaining much more data now than what they used to, while they need to keep only what is necessary.
The third area is full planning of business services to ensure that you got what you planned for-- we call that 'business technology optimisation'. All these solutions are horizontally-applicable to every industry--mid-size to large enterprises. Plus, we have industry-specific vertical offerings in the communications and media segments. That's an area of specialty that HP has been involved in for several decades.
On the significance of the software services segment within the HP group
We are helping our customers to drive topline and bottomline results. That's an incredible value proposition to the customers. Also, we are a heterogeneous software management company.
The other relevance is the recognition that we are able to help our customers deal with pragmatic problems. That's from the customer perspective. From the business perspective, software is a very sticky offering. When software is embedded into customers' processes and systems, it's not commoditised.
People who make software decisions within a company are more senior in the organisation. Software segment is the largest contributor of profit to the HP group among all its divisions.
On the importance of the India market to HP Software
It's hugely important. First, we have a large talent base in India. Second, as an adopter of technology, India has leapfrogged in the last 10 years. Third, infrastructure of the country needs development. So, it's a great place to incubate new ideas.
On any new plan for India
I can't comment on investments being planned for software development or on people. We are doing work to simplify the experience and packaging for the mid-market. That's where we are doing some innovative work.
On the difference between India and China markets
They are different and similar at the same time. In the Indian market, the demand is generally for adoption of best practices and governance. But in the China market, there's a great demand for driving automation to help with consistency. Quality control and management in the China market has got high level of interest, whereas in the India market the focus seems to be on the best practice and governance approach.
Also the China market is concentrating on development of a lot of local software, unlike in India.
On the telecom and media segment of the HP software business
India is a huge market for that.
On 3G (third generation) telecom services as an opportunity for the company:
India's telecom subscriber growth is legendary. You add more customers in one month than most countries around the world. So, definitely 3G would be a great opportunity for us. But, we would have to look at the uptake first. It's important to find out what India would do with the 3G capability.
On talks with telcos over 3G services in India
We talk over a range of issues.
On the economic slowdown and impact on the software business
Our customers have been almost universally cautious, and decided to reduce spending across the board. They have been particular on how they were spending their money on their core businesses and IT. What that meant to us was that we had to the same or more at less. In terms of addressing the situation, critical things are automation, consolidation (of infrastructure and services) and software asset management.
On financial management offerings
We are planning a series of activities around the financial management areas in the coming six months. We will continue to target the CEO-CIO combination even in the case of the new financial management offerings.
