HP Gains 17 New Wins In BRIC Countries

Hewlett-Packard on Thursday announced it scored 17 customer wins for its Itanium-based Integrity line of servers, all of them based in BRIC countries where company officials claim they are experiencing triple-digit growth for those systems.

HP attributed its growth in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations to most IT shops building up IT infrastructures from scratch using the latest server-based technologies, instead of merely enhancing existing ones, and embracing a mix of operating environments, most notably Linux.

"Many of these IT organizations are implementing the latest technologies to create their data centers of the future with infrastructure that lasts 20 to 30 years," says Rich Marcello, HP's senior vice president and general manager in charge of business-critical servers. "And because governments play a role in all these countries, they are embracing Linux and open source. This maps well to how we have positioned Integrity in terms of investment protection and for creating open systems."

Adding justification for its competitive focus on the BRIC countries, Marcello cited a recent IDC report that expects combined IT spending in those countries to grow at a compound annual rate of 13.9 percent, reaching $100 billion by 2009. HP officials say they will appropriately expand the company's efforts in these countries as IT spending increases.

Another contributing factor working in HP's favor is IT shops in BRIC countries demanding strong regional vendor presence and local capabilities, including design and solution centers. The company recently opened new facilities, including its Linux Expertise Center, in Bangalore, India and HP Labs in Beijing, China.

Company officials noted in the press briefing on Thursday that some 65 percent of its first-quarter revenue came from outside the United States. While much of that is due to its success in BRIC countries, the growth is coming from other countries in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Two wins in India include Bharat Forge, the world's largest forging conglomerate, and Astra Motor III, an automotive manufacturing firm. Bharat bought HP's Integrity servers with SAP to run its production, planning, sales and manufacturing operations.

In Russia, HP signed a deal with Avtovaz, another auto-manufacturing company, and a second deal with The Finance Committee of St. Petersburg. The latter company bought the company's servers to improve its budgeting, asset use and securities distributions.

New customers HP gained in Brazil and China include Seara Alimentos (manufacturing/food processing), Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (public sector/elections), China Pan Steel Group (manufacturing), and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (financial services).