Livermore: HP Is Grabbing Execs From IBM, EDS

In a question-and-answer session with analysts at HP's Analyst Day, Livermore said HP's Services organization has "cherry-picked" some of the top talent from IBM and EDS for the company's "big deals pursuit team."

Livermore boasted that so far HP has not made an offer to one executive from the competition that has been rejected. "We can rattle off a number of very impressive names that we have brought in, particularly from IBM and EDS," she said. "Dozens and dozens of these people, and to date we have not made an offer to one of them that they did not accept. Everyone we are offering we are getting because these people are excited about coming and doing it at HP a different way than it is done at IBM and EDS."

HP is recruiting both for its managed services organization and for new dedicated services principals for each of its top 150 accounts. HP has so far hired 40 of those services principals from outside HP, with another 20 to 30 set to come from outside of HP, she said.

Peter Blackmore, executive vice president of HP's Enterprise Systems Group, said the company has "integrated technology and services sales" to bring a strong solutions-led focus to customers. For example, he said, HP is now structured to bring an "operational data store and extreme CRM to a large retail company" or "a next-generation communications fabric for a telecommunications organization."