Fiorina, Barrett emphasize innovation
The emphasis on innovation from these two key tech leaders appears to be a shot in the arm for the industry, considering its rather bleak state of health as described yesterday by Gartner CEO Michael Fleisher. In his keynote presentation, Fleisher asked the 5,000-plus attendees if they "could point to one truly innovative technology today that has the potential to transform how [they] transact in [their] businesses." Fleisher went on to say that real innovation has slowed because capital markets have not rewarded companies that have made R&D a priority. "Instead," said Fleisher, "tech suppliers were ramping for unending growth and are now being forced to suffer through embarrassing moments in a very public way. Most tech execs managed their companies as though the growth would never slow. Unlike the airline industry, no bailout is coming."
In light of recent events, Intel's Barrett made it clear that technology must move on. Barrett cited the company's substantial investment in optical networking. He said that converting photons to electrons requires a lot of discreet devices and suggested that to drive the technology and market, a company with high volume semiconductor expertise has to be brought into the optical networking area. Barrett also expects to see a price/performance revolution for servers similar to the one recently experienced on the desktop side.
Perhaps responding to Fleisher's question, Barrett made it clear that even powerful companies such as Intel could be swallowed by the competition if the drive to innovate doesn't prevail. The message struck a chord with Chicago-based David Rigney, a financial systems project manager for Gaylord Container, who found Barrett's remarks motivating. "I have to think the same way," said Rigney. "If I don't use the fastest, latest technology, my company will be swallowed, too." But, on this day, Rigney was most interested in hearing what HP's Fiorina had to say.
Gaylord Container is planning to move from Compaq's VMS platform to HP-UX, a transition that's required because Compaq is discontinuing the Alpha platform on which VMS runs. Rigney said, "I want to hear from [Fiorina] what HP will do to make that migration easier."
Fiorina echoed Barrett's call for innovation, adding that the word "Invent" will continue to be the HP's tagline. "We will continue to invent," said Fiorina. "We are now the number three generator of patents in the world. We generate five patents a day. A nanotechnology patent of ours was identified by MIT as one of five patents most likely to change the world." But Fiorina emphasized that success isn't about any single technology, but rather about solutions, fabrics, and end-point devices that add up to an experience.
Gaylord's Rigney got some of his migration questions answered -- but not all of them. Because of SEC regulations regarding mergers, the company is in a quiet period that prevents Fiorina from discussing specific plans. But Fiorina did say, "[HP's] clear intention is to have investment protection plans for CIOs who have invested in both HP and Compaq."
Referring to the seven operating systems involved in the HP/Compaq merger -- OpenVMS, Tru64, HP-UX, NSK, MPE, Windows, and Linux -- Gartner analyst Paul McGuckin said, "[Gartner] believes that there is a clear migration for all but one of the seven operating systems. The right thing for HP to do is to provide migration tools to move all of its existing customers to Windows XP or HP-UX running on Intel's Itanium platform. NSK (the highly fault-tolerant Himalaya technology) is one area where HP will have trouble since there is no Windows or HP-UX equivalent. The migration path there isn't as clear."
HP's chances of success in managing this migration on both the technology and sales fronts should be questioned, according to McGuckin. He agrees with Fiorina who has made it clear that success will hinge on execution, but he feels that "HP has significant hurdles to clear before they can deliver." Just three of those hurdles, according to McGuckin, are IBM, Sun, and Dell.
Video: HP CEO Carly Fiorina HP talks transition
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