HP, Microsoft Challenge IBM With New Deal

Hewlett-Packard Co. is strengthening ties to Microsoft Corp. to provide a broadened portfolio of business software products to the enterprise market while delivering a competitive blow to rival IBM.
HP and Microsoft yesterday announced a joint $300 million, three-year investment to sell five different types of enterprise technology:

* Messaging and unified communications, including e-mail, instant messaging and videoconferencing.
* Collaboration and content management software, which allows geographically dispersed employees to collaborate on text, database, video and other files.
* Business intelligence, which is the analysis of data to help drive business decisions.
* Business process integration, which refers to the different processes enterprises use to run their businesses.
* Core infrastructure, which is the management of an enterprise's computer systems.

The collaboration will generate 30 new products and services in the next year for 20,000 shared customers of the two companies.

"Our customers, when they are looking for these solutions, are eager for what it brings to them, but they also want it at a very attractive cost," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group at HP, during a news conference.

Although HP, a maker of computers, servers and storage products, and Microsoft, a maker of operating systems and application software, have partnered for more than 20 years, the scale of this announcement makes it different, said Livermore. "It pools Microsoft's whole portfolio to the enterprise and our whole portfolio ... and that puts us in just a tremendous position."

"Customers want to hear, How can IT advance the business? How can IT drive value in the business? That's the nature of these five solutions that we have," said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

The combined market for BI, collaboration, content management and infrastructure software is estimated at $49 billion for 2007, and the market for communications hardware and services is estimated at approximately $60 billion, said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC.

The HP-Microsoft deal gives both companies leverage over their rival, IBM, which also sells hardware and software to enterprises, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, a technology consulting firm. Although IBM hardware also runs Microsoft software, Microsoft is getting closer to HP, he said.

"Microsoft now views IBM as much more of a competitor going forward than a partner, and it looks like they are shifting their attention away from IBM services and toward HP's," said Enderle.

HP is expected to surpass IBM in revenue this year. HP had revenue of $91.7 billion in its fiscal year that ended Oct. 31, while IBM is expected to end its year on Dec. 31 with $90.72 billion, according to a consensus from analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

"With HP now moving ahead of IBM, I think Microsoft feels comfortable partnering with HP more aggressively," Enderle said.

Current enterprise-level collaborations include HP support of Microsoft's new Office 2007 suite of business software and Exchange Server 2007 for data centers. HP provides technical briefings and proof-of-concept testing to customers and partners that are considering deploying Windows-based technology in their enterprises.

HP is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Learning Solutions, providing technical training on Microsoft systems at HP offices globally.

the source adress is: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

any opinions? i have found this article very interesting, im watching how develops IBM. And im also like products created by Macintosh!
Edited December 14, 2006 by Aka_Bar (see edit history)

I feel this very agresive against IBM Microsof-oriented things. It's not at all dangerous for IBM Unix line. Seems they want to fight against IBM Unix and overall against the Unix/Linux way of life. Not sure this will stop customer's trend toward Linux.

nice post aka_bar. Microsoft is synonymous with corporate politics. Not to deny, they are some of the best ones you ever get to see. Let us see where this goes, but as of today, it is just suicidal to go against Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how IBM would react.

I find this deal is just going to spread more of M$'s empire and it's not going to help anyone except Microsoft. They are going to lock-in more businesses into Microsoft's software quagmire.xboxrulz

Hi everyone, I am new on your forum http://forums.xisto.com/, I've been reading it for a while, and decided to try my luck asking a few questions

Who can tell me more in detail about the this. Please Mail Me..!!

Best Regards..!!

 

MelliFobian, before you post make sure you are in the right forum. I can see that you are new around here. Just go through forum rules once. It is very easy to go to a thread and post something relevant there.

 

Well, as far this microsoft deal is concerned, this deal doesn't help end users at all. It will just fill M$ pockets... It is one more step towards monopoly.

 

Let us waite and watch what happens. But, I guess it is a good move from M$ perspective.