Four Ways HP Is Focusing On the Public Sector

Hewlett-Packard can't fully tap into the $57 billion public-sector IT market without the help of partners, said Mike Humke, director of public sector sales at HP's Solutions Partners Organization, who spoke to an audience of channel partners at this week's XChange Government Integrator conference.

This year in the public-sector partnering arena, HP, Palo Alto, Calif., has four primary objectives, beginning with improving its overall partner focus. The company plans to broaden its focal point within accounts, increase partner knowledge and adjust the PartnerONE program to respond more effectively to public-sector channel partners.

"How many customers do we have? We're not going to reach them all," Humke said. "I need partners."

The company is also building a new public-sector team, refining its focus and developing new growth strategies. The team started with nine or 10 members in December and has tripled in size since then.

Third, HP is designing an enhanced predictability model to make it easier for VARs to work with it.

"You'll see new rules of engagement," Humke said. "How do I take your business, understand your business, understand where you want to go and grow?"

Finally, HP plans to do a better job of recognizing performance.

"What we want to continue to do is to provide you tools to increase your profitability," Humke said. "Let's make it easy to do business together."

The key to addressing the public sector is to understand that it is increasingly taking its cue from the private sector and demanding positive business outcomes. Government and education IT managers, like their commercial-sector counterparts, want to know how they can manage costs, mitigate risk and increase speed and flexibility, Humke said.

One of the reasons for the shift in orientation is that IT risks are no longer confined to the IT department. Today, technology risks have major implications for the broader goals supported by the technology.

"If I implement a learning solution wrong...some of the students fail. I can't afford that," Humke said, adding that in the new world of public-sector IT, executives are held accountable from a business capability standpoint.

HP is focusing heavily on the education market, both K-12 and higher education, viewing today's students not just as tomorrow's leaders but also as tomorrow's IT customers. With 15,000 school districts in K-12 and more than 3,600 institutions of higher learning throughout the county, education is a more-or-less recession-proof market, Humke said.

The priorities of education CIOs are not that different from those of CIOs in corporate America: tightening security safeguards; centralizing services, resources, operations and infrastructure; improving IT enterprise management, sharing resources, services and infrastructure; collaborating across initiatives; and enhancing disaster recovery capabilities.

Students, another market altogether, have increasingly high technology expectations, including instant access, around-the-clock collaboration, learning through gaming and mobility.

HP says it's leading the shift to business technology aimed at adapting to the new public-sector orientation, focusing on information and technology optimization, and adaptive infrastructure.

"It's not just hardware. It's not just services. It's not just software," Humke said. "It's all of the above."

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