HP overhauls enterprise business. (Infrastructure News Review).

Hewlett-Packard Co has performed a sweeping realignment of its enterprise business division, consolidating its three existing hardware operations into a single unit and tightening links with its services arm. The company has also created a business management and operations group within the enterprise business, which will manage strategy, business planning and operations.

The moves come as Hewlett-Packard works to push the loss-making enterprise business back into profitability in the second half of its current fiscal year, which ends in November. The enterprise systems group lost $83m on sales of $3.7bn in its last fiscal quarter.

However, enterprise systems group executive vice president Peter Blackmore said the changes are designed to drive sales rather than help it meet its profitability target by cutting costs

And while the changes mean different reporting lines within the group, Blackmore said its enterprise product roadmaps will be unaffected.

Blackmore told ComputerWire that the changes were confined to the enterprise group, and did not herald major upheaval at HP's other business units.

HP previously had three hardware businesses in the enterprise group: business critical servers, industry standard servers and network storage. These will now form one streamlined group headed by senior vice president Scott Stallard, who will report to Blackmore. The business management and operations group will be headed up by Howard Elias, previously head of network storage solutions, who will also report to Blackmore.

At the same time, a global accounts role has been created within the enterprise unit, which will tighten links with HP's services business. This will be filled by Airton Gimenes, who will be a senior vice president. Gimenes was previously senior vice president of HP services sales. In his new role, Gimense will report to both Blackmore, in the enterprise group, and Ann Livermore, HP Services executive vice president.

The company had always planned to unify its enterprise hardware divisions, Blackmore said. This had originally been planned for 2004. The previous structure, put in place when HP achieved its takeover of Compaq almost a year ago to the day, had been designed to provide a base on which to begin the integration of the company's enterprise businesses, he said. "There was no question the enterprise group had the most complexity." Blackmore said it was "a credit to the team that we could bring it forward."

While the changes have been implemented just as the unit approaches its deadline to achieve profitability, Blackmore said they had been designed to drive future growth, rather than cutting costs so it can achieve its profit goals.

As far as reaching profitability within its selfimposed deadline, Blackmore said, "We will absolutely achieve that."

Blackmore said the revamped structure would enable HP's enterprise business to be more aggressive as it faces off against its main competition in the enterprise market: Dell; Sun; and IBM. The simplified structure means the unit can avoid duplication and leverage R&D, manufacturing, logistics and other functions. "We can be aggressive," said Blackmore. However, this did not necessarily equate to simply cutting prices, he said. The company could compete on coverage or product breadth.