HP unleashes tech to ride upturn
JAKARTA--With a slew of new products and management and productivity tools, Hewlett-Packard is aiming to win the hearts and minds of CIOs gearing their businesses toward post-recession recovery this year.
This calls for the Palo Alto company to produce offerings that customers would value, shared regional executives during the third stop of a five-city HP 2010: Elevate roadshow in the Asia-Pacific region.
To be able to deliver on the "value" premise, HP's personal systems group vice president for Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Korea Ng Tian Chong said the company is focused on three aspects: green IT, leveraging IT for business growth, and immersive customer experiences that rely on IT to extract valuable information.
At the same time, there have been several shifts in expectations when it comes to IT adoption and implementation, he noted. Businesses are not just looking for one-time technology acquisitions, but modularity in deployment. Their focus has also shifted from consolidation to enterprise manageability. CIOs now tend to be less fixated on managing cost and more on driving business growth. They are also more likely to look beyond technical specifications to productivity features instead.
The new HP products, added Ng, may not be considered big leaps in innovation or technology shifts, but have been created with the aim to provide a better experience for customers by addressing their pain points.
For example, one of the challenges schools in emerging markets face is the affordability of computers for student learning. With the new HP MultiSeat Computing Solution based on Microsoft's MultiPoint Server 2010, educational institutions can now cater to more users without the need to increase spending.
"This is solving a real-life problem--with the same budget, a school could have more students accessing a terminal and doing computing," he explained.
Among the added capabilities in new HP commercial computing equipment, such as notebooks, workstations and thin clients, is the HP Client Automation free hardware management tool. Businesses are able to upgrade to the Standard version for added software management or an Enterprise edition for management beyond 10,000 machines.
In terms of security, HP ProtectTools 2010 offers a Web-based console that incorporates features such as notebook tracking, secure printing and enforcing authentication modes.
HP Power Assistant is another new feature which allows IT administrators to remotely control power settings of user systems.
HP QuickWeb and HP Daystarter offer workers a productivity boost by saving up to 30 minutes per user per day. With QuickWeb, users can access the Internet with one button without having to wait for their system to boot up, while Daystarter displays a user's calendar and tasks during system startup.
Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia reported from the HP 2010: Elevate event in Jakarta, Indonesia.