Smart SaaS

Company:            Hewlett-Packard

Started:               1939

Located:              Palo Alto, California

Geography:         Global

Products:             Offers a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure solutions

Website:              HP Website, HP SaaS Website

Blog:                   Grounded in the Cloud

Twitter:              @HPSoftware

Recent News:

HP’s Bill Veghte to Deliver Keynote Address at RSA 2011 Security Conference

HP Joins the White House in Fueling Innovation and Entrepreneurship

HP Drives New Era for Cloud Computing

I asked Kevin Bury, general manager of HP Software-as-a-Service solutions a few questions about his SaaS business and his view on the market as we start into 2011.

Why did you launch a Software-as-a-Service business?

We are saw a lot of interest in SaaS and the Cloud as our customers were looking for ways to get the most out of their IT budgets.  When we looked at what companies were doing with SaaS, it gave them the ability to outsource non-core applications, operate more efficiently, all while taking advantage of Cloud-based technologies.  Our customers kept asking us what HP was offering as-a-service?  That was a big driver.

Actually HP has a lot of experience with SaaS as result of purchasing several subscription-based software companies including Mercury Interactive, Peregrine Software and Opsware.  HP is the sixth largest software company and our percentage of pure SaaS software revenues is large. Our goals over the next few years is to increase our SaaS revenues by 4x and our subscription bookings by 100%.

Everyone from the CEO down believes in the importance of SaaS and Cloud Computing on the future of HP’s business.  Our movement to SaaS and our organizational transformation is starting inside of HP’s Software division but we don’t want to leave SaaS out on an organizational island.  We experimented with a couple of concepts but ultimately we decided on a broader approach that has us transforming our entire software business.  We plan to make significant headway with our SaaS transformation over the next three years.

What lessons have you learned in building your SaaS business?

Our approach to SaaS is transformational and we want to move from our current Business Technological Optimization (BTO) structure and offerings, which are mostly on-premise to more of an as-a-Service set of solutions.  We will take our existing license and services and build them into more a consumption-based model for our customers. This is really a result of trying to look at IT challenges from the customer’s perspective.  So we are now designing solutions that allow our customers to consume our software in a way that makes the most sense to them.