HPs Revolving Door

Change as they say is the rhythm of life and it looks like the senior HP
executives have taken inspiration from the saying; what else would explain the
restructuring in the senior management since the beginning of the last year.

One of HP divisions, TSG, is well known for annually re-jigging its
management structure. In fact, even senior TSG executives laugh when they
explain the structure annually to us during every DQ Top20. Now, it seems with a
number of senior management movement, both in and out at the PSG and IPG
divisions too, the overall HP management needs to explain us the structure
again.

Touted as one of the biggest management restructuring, news of Ravi
Swaminathan resigning from HP India made headlines. As a HP veteran of fifteen
years, Swaminathan who was leading HP Indias Personal Systems Group (PSG) has
been credited with building the HP brand in the Indian PC market from scratch.
Swaminathan has now moved on to head the Indian sales and marketing for AMD
India.

In order to fill the void left behind by Swaminathan, Sunil Dutt who is an
ex-Samsung honcho was roped in as the vice president of PSG. A tall order for
Dutt as a telecom industry veteran, he will have to think out-of-the-box
strategies for bringing back the lost glory to HP. HPs PC business even though
was the number one player in the overall PC market with 16.2% market share in
the Q4 of CY 09, yet lost out to Dell which managed to usurp it from the top
slot with a market share of 26.3% for the first time in the Q4 of CY 09 as per
the IDC report. The road ahead for Dutt will not be easy considering that Dell
India has been making steady inroads in the Indian notebook market, thanks to
their consistent marketing efforts and successful branding connecting with the
Gen X buyers.

Dutt, however, in an exclusive interaction with Dataquest sometime back had
clearly discounted any competition with Dell and others and had said, With the
kind of PC penetration, I believe there is a scope for growth for all. Our
strategy is not driven by competition, instead it is the customer needs which
drive us. We are constantly learning what the customer wants and improving in
terms of products and solutions, resulting in innovation and delivery.

In another development related to PSGs re-shuffling, PSGs corporate
communication manager, Alka Sharma left to join Yahoo!.

FY10 started with a bang for HP India as it appointed (and perhaps for the
first time) Rajiv Srivastava as the COO. In the new role, Srivastava who has
joined from Microsoft will oversee all the business units including PSG, IPG, ES
and EB for driving growth and business performance. As part of the central
leadership team, Srivastava will be the overall in-charge of managing the
commercial and financial impacts of all organizational decisions and activities.

Last year too, HP India roped in former Nokia Siemens Network head of network
technology, Sudhir Dixit as the director of HP India Labs for leading the
research activities for India Labs. India Labs is focused on addressing the
technology needs in the Indian market and creating technologies for making IT
affordable to customers. In his new assignment, Dixit is responsible for leading
high-impact research initiatives for human interaction with computing devices
using touch and gesture.

Taking cue from the recent management re-shuffling at HP India, there have
been some shake-ups at Sun India too post the integration with Oracle. Sun
Microsystems India, managing director, Anil Valluri; and regional marketing
director, KP Unnikrishnan have left the company. Bhaskar Pramaik, who was the
ertswhile vice president, volume business at Sun Microsystems has taken over as
the new managing director at Oracle India following the exit of Krishan Dhawan.

In a recent development, Balu Doraisamy, an HP veteran (having served in the
company for twenty-five years) is retiring as the senior vice president and
managing director, HP Asia Pacific. Doraisamys marketing acumen was recognized
early when he started his career with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the
spring of 1982, wherein he was assigned the responsibility of developing global
accounts in the APAC region. While DEC failed, Doraisamys career took off when
HP Compaq acquired DEC and he was made the MD of Compaq India. At Compaq, his
marketing acumen came to the fore when he was instrumental in making Compaq a
brand to reckon with in India. His success at Compaq India retained his position
as the managing director, HP India when HP acquired Compaq. At HP, he is
credited with managing the integration of Compaq and HP operations and their
channels, and guiding the company to market leadership in the PC and server
segments.

In his career spanning twenty-five years, Doraisamy has been a trailblazer of
sorts. Beginning his career as a senior technology consultant at DEC, he has
literally risen from the shopfloor to assume the position of the senior VP and
MD, HP Asia Pacific in February 2008. In his APAC role, he was responsible for
driving the overall revenue and profitability in this region and also lead the
APJ Technology Solutions Group (TSG) which encompasses enterprise storage and
systems, software, and services.

He steered HP APAC in a time when global markets were severely impacted by
the recession and initiated improvement programs for accelerating the growth and
ensuring HP sailed through the tough times.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in