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HP Labs Tackles Workforce Optimization, Services Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox
Posted on Friday, June 06, 2008 1:50:02 PM |
BRISTOL, ENGLAND — The new head of HP Labs told Managing Automation this week that Hewlett-Packard’s pending $13.9 billion acquisition of IT services giant EDS could lead to more service-focused development projects, as the famed lab that gave the world inkjet printers, scientific calculators, and LEDs looks increasingly into how companies can use technology to automate processes.
Prith Banerjee, who left a 25-year academic career to take over as head of the Palo Alto, CA-based labs in August 2007, said he would like to develop “workforce optimization” technology that would help companies intelligently allocate geographically dispersed employees to the right projects.
“Those decisions are currently made manually,” Banerjee said. “We’re cooking up an idea where we could automate that.”
Automating the process would minimize the mistakes that companies often make of assigning individuals to a task when they could better utilize the same person’s expertise on another project.
Banerjee was in Bristol visiting HP’s lab here, one of six HP lab locations outside of the central Palo Alto facility. He stressed that he could not discuss the pending EDS acquisition, which HP announced last month, saying it would more than double the company’s services business to $38 billion from $16 billion.
Asked whether HP would take on more service development projects if the deal goes through, Banerjee replied, “Absolutely.” Workforce optimization is high on his list, regardless of the EDS acquisition, he said.
Increasing the lab’s services efforts after closing the EDS deal would square with HP’s recently stated intention to better tie HP Labs into the company’s commercial activities, while also maintaining its ability to conduct pure research. Banerjee articulated that goal in March, when he said Labs would pursue 20 to 30 large projects instead of 150 smaller ones as it has previously. The research unit also formed a board of directors that takes a third of its members from frontline HP business units. In the past, only Labs personnel made Labs decisions.
Many of HP Labs’ projects are already service-oriented, as HP recognizes that companies want to get better at using the massive amounts of information they are collecting in databases, blogs, and other formal and informal structures. “In the next five years, we will create more information than has existed in the history of the world,” Banerjee said in a general reference to business and society. He described a world moving away from device supremacy and toward connectivity, and said HP is emphasizing service areas such as “cloud computing” that push applications, information, and other content via the Web to users when and where they need them.
“We’re entering an era we call ‘everything as a service,’ “ said Shane Robison, HP executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer, who appeared via video connection. Robison, who is Banerjee’s boss, added that whereas in the past IT has emphasized productivity tools, such as PCs, spreadsheets, and documents, “today, IT is more about communication and collaboration.”
Also this week, HP Labs announced three research initiatives to help reduce IT’s carbon footprint. One aims to reduce data centers’ energy consumption by 75%, and another hopes to establish a common metric by which companies can measure their IT-based carbon footprint. In what would mark a huge scientific advancement, the third is looking into replacing a server’s internal copper wiring with laser beams.
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