Francesco Serafini is the senior vice president and managing director for HP Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Technology Solutions Group EMEA. He leads the enterprise storage and systems, software and services businesses, including sales and marketing to enterprise and public sector customers.
Q. HP’s Adaptive Enterprise strategy is about to celebrate its third birthday. How has it matured?
From the time that HP first announced our vision of the Adaptive Enterprise almost three years ago, our message has been very well received by customers around the world. In today’s post-dot.com environment, IT is held more accountable. Organisations are seeking to synchronise their IT with the business and become more adaptive to change.
As we have communicated this vision to customers, we have learned that every customer’s journey is different. Different organisations identify themselves at different starting points of stability, and they often have different goals of business agility. A large part of our job is to listen to and understand our customers, then work with them on the best solutions to their specific business problems.
Q. How can HP solutions make large organisational IT more dynamic?
While customers appreciate the long-term vision aspect of Adaptive Enterprise, they also have immediate business problems that require immediate solutions. Fortunately, the Adaptive Enterprise is an evolutionary journey. To address customers’ current pain points, we offer specific solutions in areas like IT consolidation, business continuity and availability, compliance, control, and collaboration. Customers who have implemented HP solutions in these areas have seen tangible, measurable business benefits that have increased their business agility.
Q. Why does HP offer several options - build, buy or outsource - to a large corporate IT user?
We offer a flexible engagement model as a matter of customer choice, because “one size” does not fit all. Some customers simply want an IT provider who can supply them with industry-leading products, so that they can implement and manage their IT services themselves.
Some customers want a partner who can help them to design and implement an IT environment, which the customer will continue to manage. And other customers want an outsourcing or strategic partner to manage their IT services for them, whether it’s a specific set of services, or the full ownership of people, assets, and the delivery of IT services for their enterprise.
In fact, with some of our largest enterprise customers, we partner using a combination of these different engagement models.
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