DQ Top 20 :#5 HPI: Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahi

MD: Neelam Dhawan www.hp.com

Warming Up: It was not that bad year for HP in India if we compare FY13 with FY12. Moreover, FY13 was the year of settling down after waves of reorganization globally in FY12. In a way, HP was able to further hone its areas of expertise and strengthen itself with new products in India and driving home HP breadth of services and its aptness to enterprises which formed the core of its GTM strategy. Focus areas revolved around cloud, big data, mobility, and security that topped its agenda. One of the major highlights of the year being its big ticket government win for supply of 15 lakh laptops to the UP government which had earmarked an investment of about `2,858 crore. The company reported being fully on-schedule in delivering the laptops and expects to complete the project by September 15. Despite reports of issues with payment, HP confirmed that payments are not a problem.

Storage Works: Meanwhile as we look at some growth drivers, going by the company sources they say across its entire business segments HP has upped its market share with significant spike coming on its storage portfolio which rode on the 3PAR products which saw significant uptake in India.

Serving Up: On the server side, one of the biggest challenges for HP and competitors like IBM and Oracle is the fact that UNIX market is contracting significantly over the years. In HP's case, it is still tied up with Intel Itanium for its UNIX play and on the contrary to initial skepticism, HP-UX indeed has got a new lease of life with Intel announcing Paulson and Kittson line of Itanuim processors and a firmed up roadmap on Itanium. Players like HP believe that despite the shrinkage of market size, UNIX market will have its sweet spot in high-end mission critical enterprise computing customers. On the x86 side, initiatives like Moonshot and Project Odyssey gave HP ample ammunition to offer highly energy-efficient and agile servers.

Going On: On the PPS side, HP continued its dominance with its range of printers-from Inkjets to Lasers to MFDs. The company tried out innovations with its PC business by coming out with hybrid form factors like launching Notebooks. On the services side, HP managed to retain its traditional strong hold in verticals such as BFSI and manufacturing and also deepened its mandates with new wins as well.