Hewlett-Packard Co has teamed up with Intria Corp, a subsidiary of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, to form a new company that will focus on services designed to facilitate financial processing and electronic commerce. The new venture, not-so- imaginatively called Intria-HP, says it intends to lead the market in providing services that will reduce IT processing costs, improve application availability and accelerate time-to- market for electronic commerce and financial processing initiatives. The services will be marketed directly as well as through HP, Intria and CIBC sales channels. The company is already forecasting sales of $1bn over the next four years. The venture represents a very significant investment, financially and otherwise, for both companies, according to a spokesperson and everything is split pretty much 50-50 in terms of investment and possible reward. For now the company will focus solely on the North American market and won’t speculate on if or when it might broaden its horizons. It will begin life with about 800 employees, with more than 750 of those coming from Intria. More people are expected to move over from HP as the company grows. Intria already claims to process over 4.2 billion online transactions per annum, including point-of-sale and automated teller machine business. That expertise, combined with HP’s existing services business – including outsourcing, systems integration and systems and network management tools – is expected to give the joint venture a huge opportunity for growth in the North American services market. HP also brings to the table the e-commerce capabilities of its VeriFone subsidiary. Intria-HP will be linked to HP’s network of Operations Services Centers to manage customers through the sharing of tools, processes and technologies. The venture will also have access to emerging technologies from HP Labs. It claims that one of its main strengths will be in supporting MVS, AS/400 and Tandem platforms.
