Enterprise Computing Support organization combines systems, support

It wouldn’t be a full fiscal year for Hewlett-Packard without a major reorganization around its computer businesses, and HP worked its 1998 reorg in with less than two weeks to spare. The latest revision creates an organization larger than any existing HP unit, but smaller than the empire that former computer czar Rick Belluzzo presided over.

HP’s two leading businesses in the enterprise server segment announced they were merging into a single business unit on October 19. The Enterprise Server Group — which includes the HP 3000 Commercial Systems Division (CSY) — and the Software Services Group, which provides HP 3000 support, will now operate as one unified Group.

The new unit will be called the Enterprise Computing Solutions Organization, and it will headed by the current leader of the Software Services Group, 40-year-old Ann Livermore. The new group will have 44,000 of the 127,000 HP employees.

“A number of our competitors are behaving mostly as a services company, or as a hardware company,” Livermore said. “HP believes we can be great in both.” HP talked about bringing partners with best-in-class software solutions into the new organization. “We think we’ll very uniquely be able to work with our corporate accounts in ways that are different from what our competitors are doing today,” Livermore said.

CSY executed one of the first such partnerships just four days later when it announced it purchased Open Skies, Inc. to bring the software supplier into CSY as a new operation.

Livermore’s rise to this new peak of HP enterprise systems business has been swift. Only three years ago she was heading up sales and marketing for HP’s Customer Support Organization when HP named her to her first general manager’s spot leading the group and elected her as a vice president.

Bill Russell, the HP vice president who was heading up the old Enterprise Server Group, will report to Livermore. Both Russell and Livermore remain on HP’s Executive Committee, the leading strategic policy group inside HP.

Within ECSO, Russell now heads up a new organization that encompasses both HP’s hardware and software businesses, the Enterprise Systems and Software Group (ESSG). Russell has been asked to manage two separate businesses, hardware and software. Olivier Helleboid and Joe Beyers, general managers of the OpenView Business Unit and the Internet Software Business Unit respectively, will report to Russell.

At presstime HP was combining the Professional Services business unit with the HP Customer Support organization, but had not named a chief of that unit.

Impact on HP 3000s was difficult to determine on the day of the announcement. “I haven’t got it all figured out,” said Livermore, “and we’ll be taking a few weeks to sort it all out. Our partners tell us they want HP to take a more solutions-oriented approach, so we hope they’ll view this in a positive way.”

HP didn’t project any streamlining or job losses in the units that are part of the consolidation. The units within the new group “are all well-performing businesses within HP,” Livermore said.

“We’ve putting a lot of thought into this, and we have a few ideas,” Russell said when quizzed on how the organizational structures will change. HP said further details on reorganization will surface within a few weeks.

User-visible results will run to better integrated and clearer messages to customers, and marshalling resources more effectively. “Users will have a much clearer understanding of what HP can do for them,” Livermore said.

“The merger supports our belief that information-technology solutions must have equally strong components of hardware, software and services,” Livermore said. “This holistic approach ensures we are focused on offering the best mix of services and technology to each enterprise customer.”

“It’s exciting to build on the strong foundation we have laid for our enterprise customers,” Russell said. “This consolidation is exactly what large customers want and exactly the combination that will play to HP’s strengths in mission-critical computing for enterprise customers.”

HP’s objective in the reorganization appeared to be to gain better coordination between its software and systems business.

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