Hewlett Packard – Business Technology Podcast – Tom Hogan, Senior Vice President, HP Software
Learn about business technology optimization, the Mercury and Bristol Technology acquisitions and HP Software.
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Transcript:
Tom Field: Hi and welcome to HP’s executive podcast series, in which we’ll discuss trends in business technology. I’m your host, Tom Field of CIO magazine, and today we’re joined by Tom Hogan, Senior Vice President, HP Software. Tom thanks for joining us today.
Tom Hogan: Pleasure, Tom. Happy to be here.
TF: Tom, HP seems to be getting serious about software. What is the software strategy, and how does it fit in with the rest of HP’s portfolio?
TH:Our strategy is to help CIOs in IT organizations drive better results and better business outcomes with their investments in systems, applications, networks and information. So, kind of simply said, to help them run IT more like a business. We’ve got a point of view that IT has transformed the world that we all operate in over the past 25 years, and we all have seen examples and they started back in the day with very transaction-rich processing in banks and telcos, but today IT has transformed virtually every function in virtually every vertical and geography around the globe, yet you could argue that IT has spent little capital in technology reinventing itself in helping itself run more like a business. So where we’re focused is helping the CIO have a greater impact on the business and driving better business outcomes.
TF:Let me ask you about the business outcomes. You can talk about it sort of in terms of optimizing the business outcomes. How can your customers use this capability to really help their businesses?
TH:One is to improve the efficiency of the IT envelope or investment. By the way, it’s not always cost-based, so there are many organizations out there that are focused on reducing their spend, but there are others that are in high-growth markets where they’re happy to spend more, as long as they can deliver greater value and more efficiency. So, we like to talk about increasing the efficiency of the overall spending envelope in IT. Point two is to help deliver better information to the business. So, that could be better information for productivity for employees, it could be better information to partners in your supply chain, or it could be better information to the prospects for customers to do more business. So, get better information to the business. And then the last of the three is to help mitigate and manage corporate risk. So, things like Sarbanes, but also other corporate governance issues that are specific, say, to the life sciences or healthcare market. The list goes on. So, help me drive efficiency, help me deliver better information, and help me manage and control corporate governance and risk – [they] are the three main things we’re focused on.
TF:Now how do you get there, Tom?
TH:The main thing we’re getting from customers is, “Can you help us chart a path or a course from where we are today to this end state?” And the answer is yes, and this is one of the strengths of HP — not only have we assembled the market-leading portfolio of software to go do this; we’re now linking that with the 70,000 strong people we have in HP’s services organization as well as some very strategic partnerships with vendors like Accenture, Wipro and Deloitte to help customers both with the strategic planning dimension of understanding the business impact and cost to deploy this technology, as well as the nuts and bolts in terms of the design of and deployment of the assets. So, what we tell people is, “This is not a wave-the-wand, do it all overnight journey.” We’re smart enough to recognize that. The key is to have a vision for the future, have a plan, and then for HP to partner with these customers to prioritize and focus on the things that are of greatest need or greatest potential value first as you execute against the blueprint for the future.
TF:Let me take you back to something you mentioned. You talked about Business Information Optimization. What is HP’s focus in Business Information Optimization, and what can you tell more about the announcements that you’ve made?
TH:There are a lot of vendors that have been out there for several years, focused on, “How do I manage, capture and manage information?” And that’s critical; you’ve got to do that. But we think the evolution and maturation of this category isn’t just managing the information, it’s “How do I exploit it and leverage it, again with this theme toward driving better business outcomes?” And so we’ve launched the BIO unit within HP Software. It has two key segments. One is business intelligence, and the other is information management. We think our offering in the business intelligence space, which today its cornerstone is the Neoview product, we think is revolutionary. But not just from a speeds and feeds perspective. Our view is that no one has deployed an enterprise data warehouse. So, there’s a lot of data warehousing solutions out there, but no one has delivered a robust solution to really capture critical information across the entire organization so that there’s no limit to the correlations and analysis and intelligence that you can derive by manipulating that information. So, HP’s plan is to revolutionize or lead that business intelligence category with Neoview at its foundation. And it’s on the information management side, it’s helping to address the classic challenge of the explosion in digital content that’s doubling every 18 months, and the ability to do backup and recovery, the ability to archive for performance and retrieval and so that’s the second leg of the BIO pillar.
TF:So, clearly you’ve been out talking to customers about your software offerings, and the direction you’re going in. How are they responding? What really seems to be resonating with them?
TH:I’ve had the opportunity, in particular in the last two months, to present to and dialogue with literally hundreds of global IT leaders. One of those forums in particular was a tour we did across the United States called the Outcomes tour, where we visited five cities in five days, and hosted a very exclusive, intimate exchange with the top 15 to 20 IT leaders in San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and New York. And the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Now the good news is [they say] “We’re onboard, we get it, we could not agree more with the problem you’re trying to solve.” And their only challenge back to us is help us get there and help us with proof points in the marketplace that we can use to justify projects and kind of the ROI, if you will, for the intellectual property or the solution. But the feedback is 100% aligned with what HP’s trying to do.
TF:It really is all about business outcomes, isn’t it?
TH:You know, up until recently, a lot of the application of technology was just to take cost out, enable efficiencies in transaction processing and kind of some fundamental back office functions. And today I think there is pretty widespread recognition that technology is at the very core and fabric of everything that happens in virtually every global 2000 company. And so, it really is about how do you leverage that to drive competitive differentiation and value that the C-level executives can get their head around and appreciate?
TF:Tom, I appreciate your insight. Thank you for your time today.
TH:Tom, I enjoyed it and appreciate your time and your interest.
TF:Thank you listeners, for tuning into this podcast. To learn more about how HP is delivering technology for better business outcomes, visit www.optomizetheoutcome.com. For HP, I’m Tom Field. Thank you.
THOMAS E. HOGAN
Senior Vice President
HP Software
Technology Solutions Group
Hewlett-Packard Company
Thomas E. Hogan serves as senior vice president for HP’s Software business. Tom has responsibility for all software functions, including sales, marketing, engineering, product development, operations and technical support. HP’s Software portfolio is focused on linking business and IT and managing IT as a business.
Prior to joining to joining HP in 2006, Hogan served as the president and chief executive officer of Vignette, a publicly held software company specializing in enterprise content management. During his tenure as CEO from 2002-2006, Hogan transformed Vignette through a series of four strategic acquisitions, leading the company to sustained growth and profitability.
Hogan began his career at IBM in 1982 and held a variety of executive posts, including his last assignment as vice president of midrange servers for the Americas region in 1999. He spent two years prior to his Vignette assignment as senior vice president of global sales and operations for Siebel Systems, where he helped quadruple total revenues.
Tom holds a Masters of Management from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, graduating with distinction with concentrations in finance, international business and organizational behavior. He also holds a Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Illinois.
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