By Timothy Prickett Morgan
Hewlett-Packard Co will today unveil a new e-services partnering program dubbed E-Intelligence that HP hopes will give it an edge in business intelligence and how it interacts with OLTP, CRM and SCM applications in companies as they expand out onto the web to do business. HP hinted at the E-Intelligence partnering program when it inked a deal with enterprise portal pioneer Viador in September, and it looks like HP is going for a broader set of customers than it had said it would back then. HP says that it has 45 companies committed to the program already – including heavy hitters like Viador and SAS Institute as well as smaller players like ShortCycles. Among the 45 companies, HP says that 28 have ported their applications to HP 9000 servers running HP-UX, and that a number of them have opted to port to the 64-bit HP-UX 11.0 version. Back in September, we got the impression from HP that it was abandoning the Switzerland approach to partnering with E-Intelligence, but the actual announcement will see HP declare that it will partner with any number of ISVs so long as they get it and have the products and expertise that HP believes will help it eventually sell more HP 9000 or NetServer iron.
The point of E-Intelligence, says David Kelleher, manager of E- Intelligence solutions at HP, is to bring together the disparate information stored in OLTP systems, CRM and SCM data bases and data warehouses and create applications that help end users more quickly and better serve customers. The trick, says Kelleher is integrating these applications to provide near realtime, and eventually realtime, information. There’s no reason why customers calling into a call center should be bounced around to get the information they need, and there is no reason why a call center application shouldn’t provide an end user with access to not only customer orders, but profile information stored in a data warehouse and sales and supply information stored in the supply chain data bases. The idea is that if you ask for something, the end user can tell you or send it to you via email or fax, and that if you try to buy something and it isn’t available, the order entry application is not only hooked into the data warehouse to see what your preferences are, but can also communicate in realtime with suppliers to find a substitute at the right price if customers can’t get what they asked for. E- Intelligence is about answering questions you haven’t thought of yet, says Kelleher. To do this requires weaving together a lot of applications and diverse data types, ranging from flatfile databases to multimedia objects. This is a giant hassle for all computer vendors and software suppliers, but the pay-off can be big contracts like the one that HP signed with Amazon.com last week, which leads to more business from smaller internet players as well as name-brand recognition among the world’s corporations.
As part of the announcement, HP will announce a partnering agreement with the SAS Institute as it delivers a new set of data warehousing analytical programs specifically for HP-UX to help promote E-Intelligence. HP and SAS jointly developed these new algorithms, which are packaged as the eCRM Knowledge Portal. eCRM is able to analyze web log data and weave it together with other data warehousing information to help companies increase the stickiness of their web sites. Specifically, the program provides customer valuations, performs campaign analysis, segmentation and profiling and models the behavior of customers to help address realtime market fluctuations and predict customer behavior given those changing conditions.
HP says that it has signed a number of similar joint development agreements under the E-Intelligence umbrella, and that it expects to sign many more. Charter members of the E-Intelligence program include a number of rising stars as well as established players including Acta Technology, AlphaBlox, Carleton, ChannelWaveSoftware, Cognos, Computer Associates, D2K, DataFlux Corp, Digital Archaeology Corp, E.piphany, e.customers.com, Epicentric, Exchange Applications, HNC Software, Hyperion, InAlysys, Informatica, Information Architects, Information Discovery, Informix Software, InfoSeek Software, KnowledgeTrack, MicroStrategy, MultiLogic, NeoVista Software, NovuWeb, Oracle, PeopleSoft, QuestOne, Retek, SAP AG, SAS Institute, Seagate Technology, ShortCycles, Tanning, Tantau, Unica, Viador, WebCriteria, and Zimba. HP says that many of these partners are just working on getting up to speed on HP 9000s, while others are already beyond that point and are integrating their applications with each other and with HP’s ServiceGuard and WebQoS extensions to HP-UX.
The E-Intelligence program, is not restricted to HP-UX ISVs or those interested in moving to HP-UX as a means of getting in on the HP marketing push. Viador was a Windows NT-only application, but has just finished porting to HP-UX. I don’t want to shove a platform down their throat, said Jennie Grimes, director of the E-Intelligence effort. That said, she expects that a fair number of customers coming in from NT or other platforms will want a rugged environment like HP-UX and will opt for porting.