Anthony McMahon, VP of HP S&S, APJ
SINGAPORE, JUNE 16, 2009—When the clock struck noon Tuesday (June 16), enterprises across the globe found themselves with access to the most comprehensive suite of software solutions and services available to help them better manage their financials. At least, that is what HP executives would have us believe, when they announced the launch of multiple products as part of and supporting its IT Financial Management (ITFM) portfolio, at this year’s edition of the company’s annual customer and partner event for its software business, HP Software Universe 2009 (held in Las Vegas, the US).
Among the offerings just launched: HP Financial Planning & Analysis (FPA); HP Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Center 8.0; HP Configuration Management System (CMS) Best Practices; and, a slew of strategy and implementation services.
In a statement echoing that (Internet) age-old turn of phrase, HP said the new solutions were meant to help “Chief Information Officers run IT like business” and that they should aid companies in their efforts to “increase transparency and optimise costs.”
The statement cited key findings from a recent survey, conducted by a firm called PSB Research presumably in the last 12 months, of more than 200 senior IT decision makers worldwide—specifically the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, Singapore, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the United Arab Emirates:
70 per cent of the senior IT decision makers who participated in the survey said that IT demand will outpace budget for the foreseeable future.
43 per cent still lack investment rigour and have no form of portfolio management in place for aligning IT investment decisions to business priorities.
66 per cent said that IT spending transparency is “very important” to their business stakeholders.
Only 44 per cent report that business stakeholders are “very satisfied” with spending transparency.
The new offerings are collectively a good response to the issues, problems and challenges encountered by senior information executives, as revealed by the survey, said HP executives who went on to cite numbers indicating the efficacy of their solutions to date in the areas of financial and cost management.
7-15 per cent of an overall IT budget was saved through improved demand and investment management by using specifically HP PPM Center, in a benchmark study done by a firm called the Gantry Group.
“US$2 million savings due to overspend on a single piece of software” was gained by a global telecommunications provider (anonymous at press time), presumably by using selected applications from the ITFM portfolio.
“US$25 million cumulative savings over two years through asset cost controls and avoidance of hardware lease penalties” was derived by a global manufacturer (also unnamed at press time).
A “35 per cent reduction in time per manager to generate a labour capitalisation report after three years” was yielded by global technology services provider Birlasoft.
Showcase Customers
Achieving IT financial management success is turning out to be a survival imperative for organisations today, given the global economic recession, which has seen too many IT organisations crumble into non-existence as their functions get progressively outsourced. Perhaps, the ITFM portfolio can help some of them make it through these rough times.
HP executives apparently think so. “Customers can achieve successful IT financial management with HP’s market-leading software products and recognised consulting expertise in business intelligence, service management and IT software implementation,” said Anthony McMahon, vice president of HP Software and Solutions, Asia Pacific and Japan. “We help CIOs manage the business of IT with the same rigour as any line of business.”
Some happy, showcase customers also chimed in about their positive experience with the ITFM portfolio. “HP is helping us enhance operational and strategic decision making by identifying ways to drive more value to our business while driving out inefficiencies,” said Allan Hackney, CIO, John Hancock Financial Services. ”Our IT organisation is better able to attract internal capital for investment by managing itself like a business in a transparent, fact-based manner.”
“With HP IT Financial Management, we’re driving the financial accountability of our technology organisation,” said Jeffrey Johnson, deputy CIO and vice president of Operations and Infrastructure at Constellation Energy, a US-based supplier of energy products. “We’ve benchmarked our IT spending in relationship to our operational expenses, and it is substantially lower than that of our peers. Our unit costs—meaning cost per desktop, per server, per gigabyte of storage—have dropped 14 per cent.”
New Additions to ITFM
The products launched Tuesday (June 16) were designed to deliver enhanced capabilities for financial governance and greater transparency.
HP FP&A—consolidates financial information from project, asset and configuration management systems, as well as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software; by doing so, it provides visibility into the end-to-end costs of each business service. With this visibility, CIOs can work on reducing variances between planned and actual spending, optimising underutilised assets, and allocating IT costs to the consumers of IT services with greater accuracy. It also automates the process of consolidating financial information across labour and technology assets for improved financial analysis.
The newly enhanced version of HP Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Center 8.0—helps customers manage their IT projects and resources more effectively, and thereby deliver improved financial and resource management capabilities.
Alongside these, the following services were announced at HP Software Universe 2009.
Strategy and Advisory Services—designed to help synthesise organisational requirements, data, process and technical gaps for the purpose of developing detailed implementation roadmaps.
Implementation Services—packaged to help customers gain new business insights for strategic decision making. They include business intelligence services, which help customers forecast their budgetary needs, quantify the value of the IT services they deliver to their businesses, improve the cost efficiency of their IT organisation and better align their IT resources with business needs.
Process Consulting and Solution Implementation Services—put together to help customers deliver improved business outcomes more quickly by rapidly deploying HP ITFM and HP PPM solutions.
Best practices for Configuration Management Systems—assembled to give customers the wherewithal to accelerate deployment, automatically discover the IT assets they have and relate them to the costs of the services they are delivering.
