HP is re-organizing. It was quite the behemoth: "a $110 billion company that operated in 120 countries with more than 700 legal entities, and an IT infrastructure that spanned three data centers." Meg Whitman penned a look at HP and the Idea Economy on LinkedIn.
I tend to agree with many of her points.
We live in an age of disruption. "Companies today can turn ideas into reality in a fraction of the time it took just five or 10 years ago."
"In order to thrive in this new era, enterprises must build flexible IT infrastructures, find valuable insights in data, proactively deal with cyber threats, and provide rich digital experiences anytime, anywhere and on any device."
We are caught in a world of apps that resemble the days of AOL and Prodigy, online services that were walled gardens. That evolved with the advent of Netscape and the world wide web to a richer experience that only grew when the connection speed grew. Then we simplified it back to apps. It is always a pendulum swinging.
Mainframe computing and dumb terminals gave way to smart terminals called PC's. Now the smart devices are back to talking to the mainframes (cloud computing). Pendulum swings.
The next evolution will be integration of these apps with other stuff. I don't mean bloatware. I mean like the way Uber connects all the pieces together for taxi service, but also for delivery and courier service. I am guessing that Amazon and grocery stores - andDrizley - are looking for ways to leverage UPS, Fedex, Postal Service and Uber to deliver same day and cost effectively. Scale it and stack it.
We were promised single sign-on in the 1990s. With Google/Facebook sign-on, it is getting closer, but it would be nice at work to log into one browser window and have most of your work environment and apps right there. It is coming... slowly.
Today, we are trapped in a world of desk phones pulling us one way and cloud pulling us another. This is just one hurdle.
Most businesses are living with just one foot in the cloud world. Change is a challenge for all businesses - and people. However, cloud is about change. It is about flexibility, opportunity, productivity and even some negativity, like breaches, down-time, and learning new procedures.
Master Agents talk about "being born to cloud". I wrote about Net-Head versus Bell-Head in 2011. It took the industry four years to catch on.
Seth Godin talks about the Connection Economy. "The internet is a connection machine. Virtually every single popular web project (eBay, Facebook, chat, email, forums, etc.) exists to create connections between humans that were difficult or impossible to do before the web.," writes Godin.
We sell that connection, that platform for connection.
Next, we are selling the Idea Machine. The platform for integration, for idea generation, for turning those ideas into reality.
"We're now living in an Idea Economy where success is defined by the ability to turn ideas into value faster than your competition." - Meg Whitman, Chief Executive Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
What are you selling when you are in front of a business talking about cloud? You are selling the promise of competitiveness. That the platform allows for communication with employees, customers, partners -- and it allows for collaboration. The platform should help the HR department hire; the sales teams to sell; the customer care team to service.
You can't do that having a conversation about the number of phone lines and the number of desk phones. The conversation has to get smarter for change to happen.
