HP said ManageOne and CEC Europe Service Management will become part of HP Service’s customer support unit, strengthening the company’s ability to train clients on how to best manage their IT resources.
According to Robert McNeill, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc, there is rising interest in the IT Infrastructure Library, a methodology which was developed by the UK government and provides a documented set of best practices for the delivery and support of IT services. With these two acquisitions, HP is buying a deep level of expertise, in particular in the UK and US markets, to go in and train end-user organizations on ITIL,, McNeil told Infoworld magazine.
The move follows HP’s acquisition of hardware and software auditor FH Computer Services Ltd. The Upminster, UK-based company provides hardware support, audit and integration services, helpdesk, training, and project management services, partnering with HP, Compaq, IBM and Fujitsu tools. It has worked in partnership with HP for the past eight years.
The FHG deal came a week after the 340m euro ($401m) acquisition of Triaton GmbH from German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp. HP came out on top of a bidding process against Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, CSC, Deutsche Telecom’s T-Systems unit, IBM, and Tata Consultancy Services. The acquisition is thought to be HP’s largest ever pure services buy. Triaton was one of Germany’s largest independent IT service providers, with 2003 revenue of 370m euros ($437m) and 2,200 staff.
In January 2004, HP announced that it would pay INR 850 ($18.77) per share for the remaining stock of its Indian outsourcing arm Digital Globalsoft through its Hewlett-Packard Leiden BV subsidiary. HP already owned just over 50% of the firm, and the per share price set the value of the remaining stake at around $308m.
HP has also won a number of prominent services deals this year. At the end of March the company signed a $784m contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs for engineering support services and maintenance on all hardware and software used by its VistA health information systems. The project win followed major contracts HP won in 2003, including a $3bn deal with Proctor & Gamble, which involved the transfer of 1,850 P&G employees from 50 countries, of whom the majority came from P&G’s Global Business Services unit. The company also signed a billion-dollar deal with Ericsson to take over the management of the company’s IT infrastructure, mainframe, server and helpdesk services.
HP’s other so-called mega-deal in the US defense sector was a $500m five-year deal with the US Army, which it signed in October 2003 to provide hardware including commercial servers, workstations, desktops, notebooks, storage systems, networking equipment, operating systems and commercial software applications, peripherals, and related IT services.
