HP Corporate AR

What’s in your closet???

Bob Sakakeeny — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:39:00 GMT

Five analyst firms in the Boston area agreed to participate in an HP recycling event. Three of the firms are brand names and have “serious” green IT practices; the other two are smallish but respected specialty firms. We wanted to see what and how much of what the firms had of unused equipment buried in the buildings. 9.5 tonnes of junk, that’s what. From five companies we all would classify as SMBs. 24 very full palettes like these. 60% of the cost was the actual recycling – which averaged $480 per tonne. Shouldn’t be a surprise that another 25% of the cost went for transportation – a major and growing problem when considering “free” recycling demands. Also typical of the times -- only10% of the cost was for labor. The one question this exercise did not answer, but needs to be by these environmentally aware “SMBs” and you as well: what was the cost of having this 9.5 tonnes in the building? Why don’t your firms just have an annual house-cleaning for IT and employees?

When do we get any work done?

Bob Sakakeeny — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:02:00 GMT

Or, is this the new way work is supposed to be done? Hop on Twitter and see postings by Monkchips, which leads to a video posting by Michael Coté here of a conversation with IBM’s John Simonds talking about Twitter, blogs and tags as a means of keeping in touch with analysts. Then to Bloglines to check on the 22 blogs we’re supposed to track – apologies to the other 78 in the top 100 that are never seen. In between are bongs announcing Twitter postings from the few folks being tracked or tracking, some of whom have cute names but no identities. NaomiHi, you have a lovely face on twitter, but who are you? After sharing some of the key postings with the Corporate AR team, and responding to related queries from those Twitting or blogging, three hours have passed – that’s $30 of HP’s revenue at the hourly rate for AR Managers. Was anything accomplished? Did the reading posted by analysts further knowledge of the topics we’re interested in? Did anyone get “influenced” by these new communications methods?

Analyst Firm Penetration of Market

warrensander — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:39:00 GMT

Our annual survey of what influences our customers’ decisions to place a vendor on the short-list when purchasing products and services found that not much has changed. (see our November blog here). While about 40% of our customers have subscriptions to analysts and their published research, about 55% say analysts do influence the decision -- the mean size of the deals they influence grew slightly to US$2.5m.

For the first time we measured the influence “independent sites” (social web sites and bloggers) and found that, for now, they have a modest influence on decision making. That category ranks 11^th of 14 factors.

The net-net is that analysts’ written and oral advice on a end-user’s decision to put a vendor on the short-list is “statistically significant” and is a clear rational for our group’s existence.

Two youngsters join HP Corporate AR

warrensander — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:18:00 GMT

Our Corporate Analyst Relations team will soon be brought back to full strength with two terrific hires. Both will be based in Palo Alto and are expected to be on board in the weeks ahead.

Evan Quinn, who starts May 1st, has been appointed Director, Analyst Relations. Evan has more than 30 years of experience in the technology field -- as an AR executive, an industry analyst at both Gartner and IDC, and, earlier in his career, as a programmer and marketer. Currently, Evan serves as director of analyst and consulting relations for Avaya, a telecoms company. He previously served as vice president of AR and market intelligence at Ingres, a provider of open source information management services, and as a director and senior director of AR at Oracle. Evan will be relocating from Boston to the Bay Area.

As part of Evan’s team, Corey Manley will join us as Manager, Analyst Relations, effective April 14th. Corey has spent 10 years in the marketing and AR fields, currently working as an independent consultant. Previously, he spent four years as acting director of analyst relations at TIBCO Software and two years as director of media and analyst relations at BroadVision, an e-commerce software company.

Is this Kosher?…. Revisited

warrensander — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:58:00 GMT

David Rossiter of the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations has a discussion about ethics and independence among industry analysts at IIAR. David gives several other examples of questionable ethics by firms and individuals. That blog triggered one by Steven Ellis about transparency which asked the reasonable question: “However, the huge, gaping, unspoken question here is why HP didn't simply name names and use reputational damage as their weapon of choice?”

Not naming names was instinctual, not a conscious decision, so we can’t explain what happened at the time of creation that led us to not name either the competitor who allowed the unattributed document to be used (a more egregious error of omission from our point of view) or the analyst firm that published the piece. Maybe it’s too heavy a hammer for what could have been a one-time mistake. However, at least one of us believes that all vendors should stop hiring analysts to write white-papers all together.

Equally interesting, some bloggers are calling for an analyst code of conduct (Sam Higgins for example). HP uses such a code internally, and it has been used effectively on several occasions, but only as a punishment for those employees who misbehave with the press and analysts. As you can tell from the pictures of us, we are a couple of old – timers who grew up believing that most people in most situations will behave in a common-sense way. If any ethical code is not internalized, then it won’t stop anyone from behaving badly.

It is gratifying to see that proper behavior and ethics are being discussed and debated. Maybe the competitor could weigh in with a defense (“you know who you are”) and explain what happened – eh?

Non-AR Comments

warrensander — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:56:00 GMT

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For those having problems with Photosmart Premier software, don't call customer support. At the end of the day, they'll just tell you to reformat your drive. We'll post a fix if and when there is one.

Numb3rs

warrensander — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:02:00 GMT

Each quarter, groups of HPers in various business units perform a variation of a Kabuki play called “guidance.” It is a complex, multi-act performance with an audience of analysts from the data collection firms IDC, Gartner and others. The HPers have to follow an 8-page policy statement created and enforced by the Comptroller and members of a Disclosure Committee appointed by the HP Board.

The policy spells out who can provide guidance to the firms, when they can do it, and what they can and cannot say. For instance, aside from very senior management, no one can “give” data to the analysts. They can only do a “high-low, warm-cold” reaction to the analysts’ estimates. Giving actual data can be considered a breach of the HP Standard Code of Business Ethics.

Problems occur on the HP side when a “rogue” manager decides to work directly with the analyst firm, and outside of the guidance process. Irrespective of the intent or motivation of the manager, we can guarantee one outcome – the data given will be wrong. By the time the error is unraveled, hard feelings grow on both sides, and the culprit claims he was misquoted.

A major mental meltdown occurs on our side when an analyst sends a long questionnaire asking for detailed unit or revenue data, and none of the data fields are populated by the analyst. We pay a gazillion dollars a year for market sizing data and reports, and we are expected to do the analysts job giving him data he will feed back to us in his report. ¡Ya basta!

What other “high crimes and misdemeanors” have you seen during the quarterly numb3rs dance?

Is this Kosher?

warrensander — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:41:00 GMT

An analyst firm approached both HP and a competitor offering to compare and contrast both companies blade servers to see which one used power more efficiently. HP declined, so the competitor picked up the tab for the study. We were “shocked, shocked, I tell you” to learn that the competitor’s system was 10% more efficient than HP’s. We learned this by reading the white paper on the analyst firm’s web site.

Our engineers and marketing staff are still blue in the face showing the 7,328 reasons why the study is flawed. But, fair enough, the competitor paid for the results it wanted and the outcome is that HP is now in a defensive posture. So it goes.

The big gotcha is not the predicted results nor the predicted complaints about the results. What caught our attention was the omission. No where in the paper or on the web site does the analyst firm fess up to the fact that the competitor paid for the study, the white paper and the web posting of the results. On the competitors web site, there is a companion video interview with the head of the analyst firm, and in the video it is stated that the competitor funded the work. So, the only indication of who paid comes if you take the time to view the video.

So, to the two analysts who might read this blog, is the omission of the sponsorship fair and ethical? Inquiring minds need to know.

Keep those calls and emails coming…

warrensander — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Most calls or emails we get from analysts fall into two categories. First, most contact us to get information about something specific going on within HP. Second, a smaller group of communications are from folks trying to sell a report or service to HP. The communication we miss and would like to see is a note saying “I’ve been thinking about…”

The bulk of the interactions between HP and the analyst community revolve around data and opinions about what happened, what is now happening, or a short-term forecast of what might happen. To paraphrase a much maligned quote, these interactions are about what we know and what we know we don’t know.

For instance, if HP is working on a new Power and Cooling data center offering, staff within TSG generally know which analysts to contact to get information about what customers want, what the market looks like, and for opinions about market take-up. If we don’t know which analysts are covering this topic, we can search the firms’ web sites, talk to account reps, and look at other sources to find out who among you are writing about P & C.

But, a good number of people within HP Labs and various incubation programs are working on projects which are beyond what exists now, and may not have a direct link to what exists now. Others within the Office of Strategy might be blue skying what might be new markets in 2013, or the M & A group might be looking for a company similar to the one you just stumbled across.

In these and other instances, we have little insight into which analysts we should be talking to. More importantly, since we flunked mind-reading courses given by our children, if you have ideas or information that may be useful, we have no way of knowing that. We don’t know what we don’t know.

So, communicating with us may not always be productive J, but not pro-actively contacting is guaranteed to be non-productive. We’re listening.

Industry Analyst Speak, Do Customers Listen?

warrensander — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:08:00 GMT

Last year we started to survey HP customers to find out what influenced their decision to put an IT vendor on the shortlist for products or services. We felt that, even with smaller businesses, the decision about the short list was different from the final decision to go with one vendor – and the obvious is that if you don’t make the short list, you won’t make the final cut.

Since this blog is for the industry analyst community, here is what is important to you. Analyst conversations and analyst reports each played a statistically significant, but different, role in helping IT managers decide which vendors to include on their shortlist.

More of our customers read analyst reports than had subscriptions to analyst services, so it appears that the move toward opening access to the reports is paying off. It also appears that talking to analysts at “events,” and not just formal inquiries, also played a large role.

Few customers were involved with mega-deals – the majority were involved with purchases up to $250k – but the smaller buys happened several times a year. All told, the average sized deal that analysts had a role in was $2.3 million.

Interestingly, when asked how analysts influenced the decision, 45% said they provided new or additional information, while 35% used analysts to justify or validate the choice already made.

Finally, there was little difference between customer behavior in EMEA versus the US, for either SMB or Enterprise customers, but all favored “local” analysts. For us, this validates analyst firms’ decisions to place analysts outside of the firms’ home countries.

The future? We’re not about to give away state secrets, but a hint of which additional influence factor we’re looking at this year is the forum we’re using for talking about this.

HP bloggers Patrick Scaglia and Susie Wee

warrensander — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:16:00 GMT

This entry is the next in the series about blogs that I like to read.

Print 2.0 Blog by Patrick Scaglia – Patrick is the CTO for IPG (Imaging and Printing Group) reporting to Shane Robison. Patrick oversees long-range technical strategy and research and development for IPG. His blog is about the Print 2.0 revolution and the shift from a PC-centric world of printers toward a more open Internet-enabled one, for all forms of personal and professional content. I for one find this whole Print 2.0 strategy quite interesting because there is so much cool content on the Web that I want to easily collect, combine and move from “bits” to “atoms.” I’ll personally be playing with the more user oriented tech on my personal blog and will report back here with what I learn.

Research, Technology, & Teamwork blog by Susie Wee – Susie is the director of the HP Labs Mobile and Media Systems Lab reporting to Prith Banerjee. While her blog does include discussion about advanced technology; she tends to focus on how people work and how teams can maximize their efforts.

_ _ _ _ _

For those of you analysts that follow the PC industry, Rahul Sood has an interesting post Three-Way Chess, Or All-Out FPS Deathmatch? that has observations about the tight love/hate three-way competition between AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. (Posted by Carter Lusher)

Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Analysts better make sure they are in the AR directories.

carter_lusher_at_hp_com — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:38:00 GMT

One of the important AR tools we have at HP is ARchitect3 from ARinsights. It’s an ARM tool (think CRM specifically for AR) with many application functions for tracking analyst interactions and managing an AR team. One of its most valuable features the database of analysts with over 500 firms and 6,000 analysts. Best of all, the database is maintained by ARinsights, saving us the grunt work of tracking an ever changing universe of analysts. A similar database is Analyst Profiles by Tekrati.

My team uses the electronic directory all the time to create new or refresh existing analyst lists. Just go into Architect3’s analyst search function, put use filters like coverage or geography and, bingo!, a list of analysts is generated. If the AR manager has bandwidth and are so inclined, they will do some additional research. However, if they are pressed for time, then they simply go with the list from Architect3. A consequence of this is that if an analyst is not in the analyst database or the info is not up-to-date, then a relevant analyst might be left off of a list. Sorry about that.

Tekrati’s Barbara French made an interesting point in an e-mail exchange “Another example of the importance of editorial relations with the main industry analyst directory publishers: Tekrati's blogs directory has been the primary resource behind Technobabble's "top" analyst blogger rankings.”

Another way we generate or refresh analyst lists is by using services from dedicated AR firms or major PR firms with dedicated AR practices. My team uses the Analyst Strategy Group (ASG). Why should I use an outside service seeing how I clearly have the skills and access to Architect3? Well, it’s because I want a fresh set of eyes looking at a list or I want additional research done and I don’t have the time. Another example is Tekrati, where Barbara will assist non-AR folks with identifying appropriate analysts as well as help AR/PR subscribers of Analyst Profiles with their lists.

BTW, I use ARchitect3 when I get e-mails or calls from folks I don’t know claiming to be analysts asking for sensitive data. If the firm and the individual are not in Architect3, I will likely politely tell them that I cannot respond to their request.

Barbara French made another interesting point in her e-mail: “Your post touches on an important topic: Analysts need to manage their own reputation. Many research companies are unwilling to invest in promoting their research bench beyond their own client/partner base. I understand what's driving this trend, but on the other hand, I can only recommend analysts I know about.”

Databases

Analyst Profiles (a division of Tekrati)

Architect3 (by ARinsights)

AR Intranet (by Lighthouse AR)

AR service providers that do analyst list creation

Analyst Strategy Group

Hill & Knowlton

Knowledge Capital Group

Tekrati

Weber Shandwick

Bottom Line: My advice to analysts, especially at boutiques and single practitioners, is to make sure your firm and your professional data are in the AR databases.

The need for speed - Cisco's Skip MacAskill on the changing influence landscape

warrensander — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:32:00 GMT

In his Cisco Analyst Relations blog, Skip MacAskill – a former Gartnerian – takes a swing at the issue of the major firms versus the new media in The Changing Rules of Influence. A big part of his analysis is that the traditional firms are slow moving. In an age when information flows fast on the Internet, this could be a killer disadvantage. Key quote:

“I believe that the number of users that buy a product or invest in a technology off the back of a traditional Gartner, Forrester or Yankee report will significantly decrease over the next five years.”

If this turns out to be the case, then it has huge implications for the vendor and analyst communities. If the traditional analysts become less influential, then vendors will not devote as much effort on briefing them leading to less insightful research. Also, a key – but unspoken – selling tool the major firms use on the vendors “Buy our research to see why our analysts are telling your customers and prospects” starts to whither. This could have a major impact on the flow of money in the industry with the traditional firms getting less cash from the vendors and thus having fewer resources to do research, client service and so on.

For a related look at this topic check out my Will established analyst firms become dinosaurs to the new media-oriented analysts?

Bottom Line: Skip uses lyrics from Dylan’s The times the are a changin’ to drive home the point that all in the tech industry need to keep our fingers on the pulse of change in how the buyers of technology get their information. (Posted by Carter Lusher)

How serious is HP about software?

warrensander — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:56:00 GMT

I frequently am called to present the HP Today overview to HP customers and prospects. In a recent meeting, while discussing HP’s financial strength with a major customer’s IT executives, I got a question/comment from the CIO. He stopped me, pointed to the thin slice of the earnings pie that is HP Software and asked “How serious is HP about software? That seems like an awfully small piece of your business.” Yep, the slice that is HP Software (capital S) in our Q3 earnings is relatively tiny, 2%, but it only reflects the tip of the HP software (lowercase s) efforts.

First off, let’s start with a high level definition of what HP Software is… In the Q3 “Hewlett-Packard Company and Subsidiaries Segment Information,” in our financial statements, HP Software consists of OpenView and OpenCall revenues. That’s it. Nothing more. As a consequence of this narrow definition, only a small slice of our software revenues are reported to Wall Street. Because the definition of line items in the financial reports can be changed with appropriate notifications, HP Software’s revenues could potentially go up or down if the definition is changed to add or deduct various software products to that line item.

The label “HP Software” also applies to the HP Software Global Business Unit (GBU), led by SVP Tom Hogan, in the Technology Solutions Group (TSG). This HP Software is structured around three businesses: Business Information Optimization (BIO), Business Technology Optimization (BTO) and OpenCall.

However, it is important to understand that both of those definitions of HP Software are only a subset of HP’s overall software strategy. BTW, that strategy starts at the top. During my initial meeting with Mark Hurd on his first day at HP, along with the rest of the Corp Comms team, he pointed out that software is strategic to HP’s future success. Since then, actions are backing up his words. Some examples:

· Technology leaders – The CTO community reporting to Shane has recently gotten a greater emphasis on software. Russ Daniels moved from CTO of HP Software to a new position as CTO of Web Computing Services, a group which will have significant focus on software. Tim Howes took over as CTO HP Software so this position did not disappear. Another new CTO position is the IPG Software Business CTO spot, filled by Sam Greenblatt. In addition, there are business unit CTOs focused on software.

· R&D spend – A few years ago, HP spent more than two-thirds of its now $3.6bn R&D budget on hardware. Now it is over 50% of that budget is spent specifically on software. Something to note is that software R&D is less expensive to carry out than hardware R&D, which means we are getting a proportionally greater bang for the buck by the move to more software R&D.

· M&A – HP has a very active mergers and acquisitions strategy that complements R&D. In the last few years, at least 18 acquisitions costing billions of dollars were for software, with every business group participating.

· All hands on deck – Every business group, ProCurve and HP Labs are working on software. Some of the business group efforts are on software that will sold as a standalone products with a price tags, while some software is meant to be embedded within services or hardware to enrich functionality and add differentiation. For instance, the Enterprise Servers and Storage GBU announced in January of this year a new unit, ESS Software, with its own CTO.

Whew!

Bottom Line: To answer that CIO’s question, I think it is safe to say that HP is very, very serious about software. Every part of HP is working on software, often as a means to enhance or differentiate our hardware or services. Analysts, especially hardware-centric and services-centric ones, that ignored looking at HP Software (capital S) might want to reconsider that position and discover how HP’s investments in software (lowercase s) make this a relevant subject for research. (Posted by Carter Lusher)

Kudos to Forrester for permitting clients to comment on research notes

warrensander — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:22:00 GMT

Having the ability to comment on content is quite common in the Web 2.0 world, but probably very scary for the analysts at firms like Gartner, IDC and Forrester. “Whoa, have clients – especially vendors with an axe to grind – comment on my perfect research? We can’t be doing that!”

Forrester lets clients both rate and leave comments on research. Comments appear without moderation so they don’t hide critical comments. The rating bar and comment box is in the right nav bar and clearly marked os it’s easy to do. Forrester analysts have been polite and respectful of all comments, even critical ones. All around good approach.

So a tip o’ the hat to the girls and boys in Cambridge for sucking up their courage and letting clients rate and comment on research notes. (Posted by Carter Lusher)