HP’s Mobile Ambitions

The vendor is eying the enterprise mobility space. Whether it can make an impact in a crowded marketplace remains to be seen. By Mehak Chawla

HP recently announced some enhancements to its Application Transformation solutions, a part of the vendor’s Software and Solutions group. While the focal point of the group’s existing portfolio is the IT Performance Suite, the new offerings have been positioned in a different direction.

The additions include four software products and three service offerings that have one thing in common—they are all mobility solutions. Enterprise mobility has become a big focus area for IT majors in the application space, including the likes of SAP (it acquired Sybase for a mobility push), Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. HP, through this horizontal expansion into the mobility space, is attempting to tap into the need for enterprise mobility.

The company also announced an ongoing partnership with SAP.  

HP’s Software and Services group is positioned across the software product lifecycle, with pre launch testing and management being a part of the offering and the mobility basket is no different. What HP has brought to the table are four new mobility software additions to its testing suite and sister services to go with them.

The products

In layman’s terms, HP intends to make the integration of mobile apps into a company’s IT layer simpler and seamless with its enhanced Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI) portfolio. Amit Chatterjee, Director, HP Software and Solutions, HP India, emphasized that the vendor was not making only design and testing apps but rather composite apps for an era where mobility is a given for enterprises.

The ALI 2.5 is aimed at ensuring seamless collaboration between developers and testers. According to Chatterjee, ALI 2.5 is expected to bring in substantial time savings, greater synchronization and agility and real time collaboration between all the players of the application development lifecycle.

“Faster impact analysis and real time collaboration between developer and tester is going to be the key derivative of ALI 2.5,” said Chatterjee.

In partnership with Perfecto Mobile and banking on its acquisition of Mercury in the application testing space, HP also introduced its Unified Functional Testing for testing mobile apps across networks and devices.

The other new products revolve around social collaboration. HP Anywhere is basically a dashboard type app that can be accessed on the move. “It is already available for iOS and Android and can be used by managers to see the progress of their application lifecycle. HP Anywhere comes with features like defect tracking, portfolio request management and an executive scorecard,” said Chatterjee.

HP Enterprise Collaboration is also centered on the social media principle and allows Facebook style collaboration, in real time between the application stakeholders.

These products signify HP’s mobility push as well as the collaborative, end-to-end approach that the vendor seeks to follow for its mobility solutions. Services too, are added to the box.  

Services push

The new software announcements are complemented by augmented service offerings as well. Though services, has not been a focus area for the Software and Service Group, HP has been putting some effort towards changing that equation.

The HP Mobile Application Services have expanded to include Testing for Mobility Services and Enterprise Mobility Services for SAP Applications. Explained Sudhir Rao, CTO, Enterprise Services, HP India, “Mobility services need to be context aware and should also cater to new channels of business and the multiplicity of devices.” The focus of mobility is now around financial services and HP intends to be a part of that process. The vendor is working with Government of Karnataka on an e-procurement project.

As far as the partnership with SAP goes, Rao said that though HP has always had a strong relationship with SAP, the partnership for mobility is around integrating and managing Sybase and NetWeaver platforms. “We shall be provisioning SAP apps on mobile phones for enterprises,” said Rao.

Market approach

“The worldwide market for automated testing is around $30 billion. However, it is only about $3.2 Billion in India. Therefore, there is tremendous scope for growth in this area,” opined Chatterjee. The vendor is employing its traditional go-to-market route for the mobility portfolio as well. “The first target segment would be the big companies with independent testing units and the second would be independent and significantly evolved testing companies,” he added.

As far as SAP clients go, Rao said that they have kept both the channels of combined and direct approach open. “We have a joint program with SAP but we also practice the individual approach as and when we see an opportunity,” he said.

Even though the computing giant has launched what looks like a comprehensive portfolio around mobility, it is to be seen that how much of market share can HP garner in an already crowded marketplace.

mehak.chawla@expressindia.com