HP's New Face

HP bolstered its enterprise imaging and printing product
portfolio, and strategy-including plans to increase the size and expertise of
its sales force. Making the announcement, Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP (Imaging
and Printing Group), HP, said, "By leveraging our strengths in IT and our
expertise in imaging and printing, HP is best-positioned to capture, manage and
deliver the intelligence that enterprise customers need to improve their
business processes. This is not only about cutting costs. It's about using HP's
services and solutions to help customers manage business information more
efficiently, and to gain productivity and a competitive advantage."

As part of the announcement, the company shared its plans to
make new investments in enterprise services and solutions, and unveiled a new
ink-based printing technology-HP Edgeline-specially designed to handle the
high-volume workloads of businesses.

HP additionally announced its largest-ever rollout of
multifunction printers, which are aimed at replacing copiers in businesses of
all sizes. The company also announced the launch of the HP Halo Collaboration
Studio in Asia Pacific and Japan, which enables customers to do business in a
life-like, face-to-face environment regardless of the geographic distances
separating them from their colleagues.

As part of a revitalized approach to make it easier to do
business with HP, the company plans to hire hundreds of highly skilled sales
consultants who will be dedicated to the company's top 2,300 accounts. These
experts will engage customers in conversations that go beyond simple cost
cutting to understanding how to apply the information enabled by the imaging and
printing devices on the network to build competitive advantage. HP's strategy
includes establishing teams of specialists that can address customers' broad
business environments as well as their specific IT and end-user challenges.

Finally, HP plans to tailor some of the more than 30 imaging and
printing solutions within its portfolio to build industry-specific offerings for
major vertical markets in the public and commercial sectors. Delivering proven
expertise to new customers, the vertical solutions will address critical
business needs such as improving processes, operational efficiencies, cost
savings and revenue.

The first-of-its-kind design architecture of HP Edgeline
Technology uses page-wide printheads to distribute ink rapidly and precisely in
one pass. With the versatility and scalability to meet many customer needs, the
technology will allow HP to expand its printer business into markets such as
high-volume office printing, industrial printing and retail printing solutions,
which together will represent an estimated $30 bn-plus market opportunity by
2009.

Early next year, HP plans to unveil this patented technology in
the first device that combines the benefits of ink and laser. The company
expects the products using this technology to redefine business printing with
some of the best printing speeds, operating costs and reliability in its class
while providing excellent text and graphics print quality using specially
formulated HP Vivera inks.

Asim Raina

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

(The author was hosted by HP)