Friday March 7, 08:41 AM
HP focuses research on Internet era opportunities
By Glenn Chapman
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PALO ALTO, California (AFP) - The world's top computer maker Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ - news) is narrowing its research focus to Internet opportunities and its growing role as a software company.
HP's 600 researchers in China, Japan, Israel, Russia, India, Britain and the United States will go from working on about 150 small projects to concentrating on two dozen or so.
"This is a big deal to us," HP chief executive Mark Hurd said at a Thursday press conference at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
"What we are doing is placing fewer, bigger bets."
Priority areas for innovation include Earth-friendly computing; handling digitized information; and providing online services tailored to individuals.
"The digital world is converging with the physical world," said HP chief technology and strategy officer Shane Robison.
"The era of device-centric computing is over. The services you care about will come to you anywhere on any device. The content will sit in the cloud and devices are fungible."
Cloud computing is a reference to people relying on data bases or applications hosted on computers kept elsewhere and accessed via the Internet.
Today's Internet users have the tools needed to produce almost anything they want at lower costs than ever, according to Robison.
"I think Fortune 100 companies are going to research, develop and launch major products using cloud-based services," Robison said. "It's a big breakthrough, especially in terms of cost."
"Crowd sourcing" is mainstream, with firms tapping into online communities for feedback regarding everything from logo designs to software applications.
"We are embarking on the next wave of talent aggregation," Robison said.
HP Labs' mission is to come up with innovations that can quickly be turned into products that capitalize on today's Internet trends.
"We know where we are going and we think if we target that research we can not only have fun, we can help the company's bottom line," Robison said.
"This is about efficiency and time to market. Our whole goal is to move at an Internet speed."
HP researchers have been divided into 23 "small dynamic teams" coaxed to think like entrepreneurs.
"We are going to refocus our effort in 20 to 30 big bets in high-impact areas," HP Labs director Prith Banerjee said at the press conference.
"We hope to solve the most challenging problems facing our customers in the next decade, and drive HP growth."
HP Labs is intensifying its relationships with universities, partners and venture capitalists, and launched an online HP IdeaLab where outside researchers and developers can weigh in on work in progress.
"This is a total Team HP effort, not just an HP Labs effort," Hurd said. "There are a lot of mini transformations going on in HP as the whole company tries to transform."
HP has been expanding from a hardware company known for computers, printers and other devices to a seller of software and services provided via the Internet, said Robison
Aided by a series of acquisitions, HP has become the world's sixth largest software company.
"The research is aligned with where we want to take this company" Robison said. "This is definitely not a cost-cutting exercise."
HP research staffing and budget are not being trimmed, according to Banerjee.
The realignment of research priorities is due in part to the Internet becoming a "legitimate platform" for hosted applications and services, according to Robison.
"The end users are driving what happens," Robison said.
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