June 22nd, 2009

HP connects IT investment, value, and transparency

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 3:39 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Governance, Hewlett Packard, IT issues, Project portfolio management

Tags: Hewlett-Packard Co., Information Technology, IT Investment, Project Portfolio Management, ROI Analysis, Brian, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, It Operations, It service Management

Last week, I attended HP’s Software Universe 2009 conference to participate on a panel discussion around success strategies for deploying project portfolio management (PPM). I used the opportunity to speak with HP executives about their vision for the future of PPM and its relationship to enterprise value creation.

To understand the company’s PPM product direction, I spoke with four folks representing HP’s views on features, strategy, and customer implementation:

• Paul Muller, VP for Strategic Marketing
• Ken Cheney, Director of Products, IT Financial Management
• Bruce Randall, Manager of Product Marketing, PPM
• John Wills, Practice Principal for HP’s Business Intelligence Solutions group

HP’s primary strategic message about the future direction of PPM involves helping IT departments improve their ability to quantify project costs, benefits, and derived value, which Paul described this way:

We automate the spreadsheet Kung Fu that IT often uses to analyze financial data. Our goal is reducing decision-making cycle times and creating transparency that quantifies the business value of IT operations.

Ken Cheney elaborated on this message:

Many organizations find it difficult to get an accurate handle on IT costs. We link IT with the business services it delivers and assign value to help IT appropriately price these services. The future of PPM is helping organizations clearly see the total cost of ownership of all IT services.

HP’s strategy positions PPM as a building block in a broader IT financial management offering, as the following diagram illustrates:

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