Stefano Venturi, CEO Group Hewlett-Packard in Italy and Corporate Vice President of Hewlett-Packard Inc. To really grasp all the opportunities for innovation that the digital transformation of the business puts on the plate, it takes courage to unhinge the mind stereotypes. It is scientific: always the brain creates ‘boxes’, categories to organize reality. But such thought patterns, which usually are used to define a ‘comfort zone’ in our head, instilling security and lowering stress, today, in a world of technology changing so quickly, are likely to become dangerous cages of thought and ideas, because our ability to categorize is slower than innovation. Riccarda Zezza , Researcher and Lecturer, and Founder and CEO of PianoC.it , does this reasoning introductory talking to ‘ HP Performance Tour 2015 in Stresa , to try to convince the managers present in the audience to interpret the net changes that digital technology is producing at every level as an opportunity for improvement, and not only as a new, worrying problems to solve. His speech introduces the words of Stefano Venturi (photo), Group CEO Hewlett-Packard in Italy and corporate vice president of Hewlett-Packard Inc.
IT ‘liquid’ to everyone: “Beauty and danger”
L ‘ information technology becomes more and more’ liquid ‘, is no longer just the stuff of professionals, has impact on the lives of everyone. Venturi exemplifies: in 2017, 50% of digital commerce will become Mobile , in 2018 intelligent machines will reduce the operating costs of the business by 30%; for 2020 there will be a trillion App . After the first two stages ‘disruptive’, that is the World Wide Web (WWW) and the next Web 2.0 (social networking), in the twenty-first century digital revolution enabled by the Internet continues to disintermediation rings traditional value chain. And now, with the third phase, that is, the progressive spread of Cloud Computing and techniques for analyzing Big Data , not only large companies with sufficient critical mass in terms of financial capacity, but also startups can access levels of technology and computing power until recently unimaginable.
Taking the concept of ‘Idea Economy’ expressed by HP CEO Meg Whitman , Venturi points out: the economy of ideas enabled by IT liquid, what makes the difference, marks the boundary between a real ‘ and another company and leads to success, not the size, but the ability to find and realize value in an innovative idea before the competition. Startups, new entrants, whether fast and capable of making network knowledge and ideas, can launch decisive challenges even large companies with established business. In fact, he says, if the beauty of digital is ‘democratize’ access to technology, the downside is that the first who knows how to use Cloud Computing and Big Data will acquire the ‘superpowers’ to get a competitive advantage.
The message is aimed primarily at companies Venturi classic, with business already underway: it is no longer the time to play defense. “This is the last call.” It’s time to open, or even break, the ‘boxes’, the old mental categories within organizations, for embrace new opportunities that digital offers to put on track its organization . “If you will not be able to do this, some other competitor will do it in our place,” warns Venturi, who in the end, however, does not want to alarm the audience, but encourage them: the opportunities of digital technology are enormous, in all areas.
The examples taken from Mike Shaw, Director of Solutions Marketing for HP software , ranging from new models of transport and car sharing (Uber, Enjoy) to digitization of retail banking (Bitcoin), to that of the audio content and video (Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music), home automation (Google Nest), the tourism sector (Airbnb, TripAdvisor), fitness (Fitbit), the medical world, the transformation of the data center (SDDC – software-defined data center ). And in all cases the software can become the innovation engine, the element able to create differentiation in products and services.
Faced with the rigidity of traditional IT systems ‘core’ present in organizations, leading to the formation of so-called ‘shadow IT’ – devices, software and services that are beyond the control of those responsible for information systems – the answer, says Shaw, IT bimodal model proposed by the research company Gartner : that is, the ability to develop, in parallel to the classic IT function (IT Core) privileging criteria of scalability, efficiency and safety, another IT function focused on agility and speed of processes (Fluid IT). In particular, Gartner, IT and IT core fluid must be able to cooperate in five key areas: service brokering and hybrid cloud strategies DevOps of continuous innovation in software development, creating a ‘customer experience’ of increasing level on mobile devices, collection and analysis of Big Data and, finally, protection of all information managed.
Optimization across the board
In the scenario described, the commitment of Hewlett-Packard is primarily working with customers to optimize the existing Venturi precise, because, continuing with the metaphor, it is best to open them boxes that break them. “We have something that’s already working today? We try to optimize it to make it work better, and to do so by lowering costs. ” HP says, has invested heavily, both in terms of software features sophisticated, both in existing systems, to make them more flexible, and take them to the new, to what will be the new style of IT, more agile and founded on the Cloud.
An example is the strategy to quickly migrate companies to the open source model of the software OpenStack , the target platform through HP Helion OpenStack. The latter provides acceleration in the development and application delivery, portability, and eliminates the constraints of dependence on specific suppliers. Venturi hopes that thanks to OpenStack can open up a market for standard applications in the enterprise, “because the offer of the App not only be limited to smartphones.” HP’s vision is that the market for App will be very soon, thanks to OpenStack, even in data center , with the possibility for everyone to choose from a much wider range of applications, lower costs and increase the slenderness of these infrastructures, with the ability to federate data center software-defined and to share power on a normal basis, and not only when you have to handle peak workloads.
Constant focus on security
Throughout this transformation, a piece that HP does not forget is the company’s digital protection. Frank Mong, Vice President and General Manager Security Solutions Enterprise Security Products at HP Software , makes it clear: the challenge of cyber-security today become proactively protect, and the whole ecosystem, interactions between users , applications and data anywhere and on any device.
And, from this point of view, certainly trends such as Cloud and BYOD (bring your own device) introduce new challenges to security in terms of visibility and control, and difficulties, complexity and costs. That’s why it becomes important, explains Mong, develop mechanisms of security and threat intelligence integrated directly within applications , and able to follow them wherever they go to their world, through infrastructure on-premise and Cloud Services hybrids. The foundation is provided by the CAS platform (Cloud Access Security), which HP does help organizations and solve the complex problem of achieving greater visibility, governance and security for cloud applications and the IT liquid. But other essential building blocks are, for example, the technology of data encryption and sensitive security borrowed by companies like Atalla and Voltage Security. The first provides solutions for protection and encryption of sensitive data stored, in transit and in use throughout their life cycle, in cloud, on-premise and on the move. Voltage Security applies an approach ‘data-centric’ to protect data at the end-to-end, according to the most stringent requirements of compliance with standards (PCI-DSS, NIST, ANSI) and various industry regulations.
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