Hitachi to sell business PCs made by HP
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Japanese electronics maker Hitachi said Friday it will sell personal computers made by Hewlett-Packard Co. that are designed for businesses under the Hitachi brand in Japan.
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International Business Machines Corp. agreed to sell its personal computing business to China&#39;s largest computer maker, Lenovo Group Ltd.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) will begin selling managed IT and communications services next year to small and medium-size businesses in three continents, offering Internet access, servers, voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and help desk calls at fixed monthly rates, an HP official said.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is using streamlined IT management as a sales pitch for its latest line of PCs, including the first desktops to use Intel Corp.'s vPro technology bundle. A computer running the vPro bundle uses software and hardware -- including Intel's new "Conroe" Core 2 Duo processor -- to automate some aspects of IT management and network security. Intel plans to formally announce the platform Thursday, as Gateway Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. also start sellingÂ vPro-enabled desktops. HP got a jump on its competition, particularly arch-rival Dell Inc., by unveiling its new business line first. HP announced three new desktops, a workstation and six notebooks during a press conference Wednesday in New York City. Only the desktops offer the vPro option, while the other new PCs take advantage of the flurry of chips launched in recent months, including Intel's "Merom" Core 2 Duo for the notebooks and a choice of Intel's "Woodcrest" Xeon 5100 or Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD's) "Rev. F" Next-Generation Opteron for the workstation. HP promised to make life easier for the IT managers who maintain these machines by pre-loading its OpenView Configuration Management agent on all commercial notebooks, desktops and workstations. That product has been an option in the past. OpenView will bolster Intel's Active Management Technology, an ingredient of vPro, allowing IT managers to make fewer time-consuming "desk-side" visits by booting and repairing PCs remotely, said John Snaider, HP's vice president for desktop PCs. Other business-friendly enhancements on the desktops include Trusted Platform Model (TPM) 1.2 security chips, a second hard drive for real-time data backup, and a virtual partition on the hard drive for encrypting sensitive data, said Brian Schmitz, director of desktop product marketing for HP. In contrast to its concentration on Intel-powered desktops, HP is selling the new xw9400 workstation as the AMD-powered peer of its xw8400 model. AMD-based PCs account for about one-third of HP's high-end workstation sales, since they are able to run certain Nvidia graphics cards that Intel cannot handle, said Jeff Wood, HP's director of product marketing for workstations. HP is selling the dc7700 desktop for US$643, plus a premium for the vPro option. The company will launch the dc5700 and dc5750, which will be available with either Intel or AMD chips, in the fourth quarter. The xw9400 workstation will ship later in September for $1,800. The notebooks include the HP Compaq 9400 for $1,299; 8400 for $1,449; nx7400 for $849; nc6400 for $1,199; 6300 for $799; and 4400 for $1,479. DetailedÂ information about the new systems can be found at Hewlett-Packard's Web site. Â
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(InfoWorld) - In its quest to re-energize its storage business, Hewlett-Packard has recruited the former president and CEO of storage rival Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). Dave Roberson resigned from HDS Friday and will join HP on Wednesday as the company's new senior vice president and general manager in charge of its HP StorageWorks enterprise storage business. He will take over from Bob Schultz who has been juggling two jobs since January when he was appointed senior vice president and general manager of a new HP business unit, its enterprise server and storage software organization. As of Friday, Chief Operating Officer Minoru Kosuge has been promoted to HDS CEO and Jack Domme, executive vice president of global solutions strategy and development, has become COO, according to a company spokeswoman. "While we will miss Dave, we are very pleased to see Dave in his new role at HP," the spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. "HP and Hitachi have been long-standing partners for many years, collaborating in areas ranging from personal computers to storage solutions. As Hitachi and HP are always looking for ways to enhance and expand the current strategic business relationship, Dave's presence at HP will most certainly enable us to further build and strengthen an already strong partnership and take it to new heights." HP has an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal in place with the parent company of HDS, Hitachi Ltd., whereby HP rebadges Hitachi's high-end TagmaStore storage equipment. At the same time, HP and HDS are competitors in the storage market. Roberson had been at HDS for 26 years and became president and CEO of the business in April 2006. Among his achievements while at the vendor were helping to build up HDS's worldwide channel and developing key business partnerships. HDS has reseller agreements for Hitachi storage hardware with a number of vendors, notably Sun Microsystems Inc. "It's too bad for HDS; they've lost a good resource," said Greg Schulz, senior analyst and founder of StorageIO Group. "It's good news for HP." He sees Roberson as a positive addition to HP, someone who's a businessman, not a technologist or a person focused on marketing. "It'll be interesting to see if he can get the business back on track," he added. What HP needs is to get the storage hardware, software and services elements of its business "all headed in a common direction," Schulz said. HP's recruitment of Roberson is similar to EMC Corp.'s move during 2002 and 2003 when it hired away a trio of HP's top storage talent in the persons of Mark Lewis, Howard Elias and Mark Sorenson, Schulz said. HP is partway through a massive restructuring of its operations spearheaded by company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd who joined the vendor in 2005. The intention is to end up with a leaner, meaner, more focused HP that's better able to compete in the market. Those efforts have already paid off in stronger sales of the vendor's servers, but HP's storage business isn't growing as fast as Hurd would like. In February, Hurd said publicly that HP needed to do a better job in broadening its storage selling efforts and should take on more storage sales specialists. In each of the last few fiscal quarters, HP's storage business has only grown in the low single digits. HP's primary storage competitors include EMC Corp. and IBM Corp. Some key areas HP needs to work on in its storage operations are its NAS (network attached storage) products, its storage management software and beefing up its backup and recovery offerings, according to Mike Karp, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. has moved aggressively into the PC market in China by introducing a $483 machine, a price point which is in the same ballpark as other lean PCs announced earlier in the year by Lenovo Group.
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I.T. managers will appreciate the versatility of the HP (NYSE: HPQ) d530 Business Desktop, equipped with a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with hyperthreading technology. The small form-factor desktop targets business consumers seeking a reasonably priced, high-end PC. HP has produced a business machine that will fulfill any office task without draining your entire PC budget.
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Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have sealed a three-year, $300 million deal to jointly market their products to enterprise customers.
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A deal with Hewlett-Packard will place Yahoo search and other services on H.P. personal computers sold in the U.S. and Europe.
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By Jordan Robertson Associated Press  SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has begun shipping a new product that the company thinks will give it an edge over rival IBM Corp. in the market for blade servers.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard is setting up a second computer manufacturing facility in India to help it meet surging demand in the country. The facility, in Pantnagar in the north-eastern state of Uttaranchal, will be able to churn out 300,000 computers per month when it starts operations in March next year. It will manufacture HPâs desktop PCs, notebook PCs, workstations, and servers, and provide employment directly or indirectly to about 1,000 staff when it's fully operational, HP said on Wednesday. It's being set up with an investment of about $20 million. HP, of Palo Alto, California, has had a facility in Bangalore in south India since 1999, from which it produces about 1 million computers each year. âWe had run out of capacity in Bangalore and the choice was between expanding in Bangalore or setting up a facility elsewhere,â said Ravi Swaminathan, vice president of the Personal Systems Group at HP India. Having a facility in Uttaranchal will enable HP to service customers quickly and more cost-effectively in the north and north-east, where the market is booming for HP, according to Swaminathan. The company is also getting tax incentives from the local state government of Uttaranchal, he added. HP rivalÂ Dell announced last monthÂ that it had picked Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu in southern India, as the location for its first PC manufacturing plant in the country. Dellâs facility will make 400,000 units a year when it gets operational in the first half of next year, the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker said. Both the Dell and HP plants will serve primarily domestic demand. Sales of PCs in India were over 4.6 million in the year to March, according to research firm IDC India. HP leads in the Indian PC market, mainly on strong sales of its notebook computers, according to IDC. It had PC market share of 20 percent in the second quarter of this year, followed by an Indian vendor, HCL Infosystems, which had a 14 percent, and Lenovo Group with 10 percent, IDC said.
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Hitachi Ltd  said on Tuesday it  is withdrawing from the home personal-computer business amid  sluggish sales, the latest move by a Japanese electronics group  to trim struggling operations.
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Printer and PC maker Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will stop offering desktop workstations based on Intel Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. is set to announce next week that Hewlett-Packard Co. and other vendors are ready to ship the chip company's vPro technology bundle in business desktops, according to sources. Intel firstÂ announced the vPro system in April, when executives described the benefits of this combination of hardware and software. A desktop PC with vPro technologies will offer lower IT maintenance costs, higher security and better energy efficiency than the average business desktop, Intel says. The linchpin of the system is the "Conroe" Core 2 Duo desktop chip, launched in July. Intel combines that processor with a chipset and networking card, then uses Active Management Technology (AMT) and hardware-based virtualization to make it more efficient. The bundle is also expected to include network management tools from Altiris Inc. and security tools from Symantec Corp. Intel will announce Sept. 7 that PC vendors are now taking orders for vPro-enabled desktops, and that beta customers are ready to testify to the cost savings they've achieved, sources who requested anonymity said. HP may release the news a day earlier, since that company has planned a Sept. 6 press conference in New York City to unveil a new line of business desktop PCs, featuring enhancements to manage the configuration of PCs throughout a medium-sized organization. The news is important for struggling Intel, which is in the midst of layoffs and cost-cutting after missing earnings targets in recent quarters. VPro will be Intel's third technology bundle after the popular Centrino system for wireless laptops and the Viiv system for entertainment and media PCs. Together, those three products will account for 25 percent of Intel's revenue in 2006, CEO Paul Otellini said in an April meeting. To capitalize on that success, Intel plans to add three improvements to the vPro system in 2007. The company will spread it from desktops to notebooks; upgrade the processor from a dual-core to quad-core chip; and extend virtualization from the processor to the hard drive and I/O channels. Â
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By Kyodo News International, Tokyo  Dec. 12--BEIJING -- Japan's electrical machinery giant Hitachi Ltd.  announced Tuesday a plan to boost its sales in China to $12 billion in fiscal  2010, up 1.7 times from its sales target for fiscal 2006 which ends next  March.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard announced a smartphone for business users on Monday, appealing to IT administrators by offering remote software management from Bitfone. HP is aiming the iPaq 500-series Voice Messenger at corporate IT managers, allowing them to diagnose and repair a smartphone far from the office, send a software upgrade or even wipe all the data off a lost or stolen smartphone. HP gained the power to offer those abilities on Wednesday, when it completed its acquisition of the software applications firm Bitfone. In another bid for corporate users, the phone uses built-in 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi to support VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, allowing employees to use it as a node on their office phone network while they're in the building. For users, the iPaq 500 supports mobile e-mail like Research In Motion Inc.'s (RIM's) BlackBerry and Palm's Treo. But this is a voice-first, data-second platform, offering a 12-button phone keypad instead of the full alphabet keyboard. Users can operate most of its features with voice commands instead of typed words, asking the iPaq to read their e-mail aloud, or to take dictation and send an e-mail response. "Our target customers are business users at enterprise or small and medium businesses. We are not aspiring to be one of those free phones being given away by carriers," said Niraj Gandhi, a product marketing manager at HP. "Mobilizing e-mail is the killer app where all the businesses and especially enterprise users are going to work. But even there, they have preferences -- not everyone wants to carry the big device with a full QWERTY keyboard during the evening, though they'll put up with it through the day," Gandhi said. While users will compare the new smartphone to products from RIM and Palm, HP will use the iPaq 500 to gain a leg up against Dell in the enterprise space, according to one analyst. "Many enterprises like the desktops, notebooks, servers and monitors to have the same brand name. This launch gives HP an extra bullet in its gun as it tries to win profitable enterprise deals against Dell and Lenovo," said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis Inc. "In general, the PC guys -- Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba -- have lagged the market when it comes to device strategy around smartphones. But HP has done a good job over the past two years as relates to product design." HP will launch the iPaq 500 series smartphones in April or May, depending on Microsoft Corp.'s timing in releasing its new Windows Mobile 6.0 OS. HP plans to charge $299 to $349 for an unlocked version of the phone, and will announce deals with individual carriers after the initial launch.