Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

The IT departments of enterprises are eager to get rid of the awkward situation of spending money without making money. But where should the IT department change from a cost center to a profit center?

The successful practice of HP's IT transformation will tell you the answer.

The proportion of funds used by enterprises for IT innovation and operation and maintenance is usually regarded as a standard to measure whether the enterprise has successfully realized the transformation of IT functions. In the past, HP spent 5 ∶ 5% on innovation and operation and maintenance of IT. However, the reporter learned from the HP Software user Forum held recently that after years of IT transformation, HP now spends 8 ∶ 2 on IT innovation and operation and maintenance. This is the golden ratio widely recognized in the industry.

IT integration bears the brunt

HP's IT transformation began at the end of 2005. As the saying goes, it is difficult for a ship to turn around. For Hewlett-Packard, which has operations in 170 countries, hundreds of thousands of employees and more than 40, 000 servers alone, IT transformation is not easy. Yu Zhiwei, vice president of Hewlett-Packard China and general manager of Software Group Greater China, said that HP's IT transformation adopts a phased implementation strategy, which is divided into three stages: integrating data centers and rebuilding infrastructure; application and business process standardization: building a service-oriented architecture to achieve sustainable development. Hewlett-Packard software has played an important role in the transformation of IT. Through the automation of the lifecycle management of IT services, HP's comprehensive and integrated software and services combine to minimize the complexity of Hewlett-Packard's internal heterogeneous IT environment, so that the IT department can focus on development and innovation.

In the process of transformation, which part of the corporate executives most want to completely rebuild? It is not the market, nor the human resources, nor the finance, but the IT. Accenture's findings strongly prove that HP's decision to transform itself from IT is correct. In the face of fierce business competition and an endless stream of new technologies and applications, enterprises need to make a profound and thorough reflection on their IT strategy.

Before 2005, Hewlett-Packard's IT system was built on the basis of countries and business departments, with a wide range of IT equipment, heavy pressure on operation and maintenance, and system security could not be effectively guaranteed. "data center integration is imperative. IT must be managed as a strategic asset at the enterprise level." Li Shi, senior global director of Hewlett-Packard and general manager of China Development Center of Hewlett-Packard Global Information Technology. Since the end of 2005, a vigorous data center consolidation movement has been carried out within HP. After three years of efforts, Hewlett-Packard's 85 data centers around the world have been consolidated into six, with annual data center energy consumption reduced by 60%, the number of servers reduced by 40%, and the number of applications reduced to 2000.

The results of the first phase of HP's IT transformation have been remarkable, with the data center and IT infrastructure effectively integrated and optimized. However, the presentation of IT value is not the ultimate goal of HP's IT transformation, and how to achieve the transition from IT value to business value is the next issue for HP to consider.

The cost center becomes the profit center.

Since 2008, Hewlett-Packard has focused on the application level of IT transformation, with the core goal of standardizing the application development process. "We have improved and optimized the IT infrastructure in the process of business transformation, which has laid the foundation for our application development." Yu Zhiwei recalled, "in the past, some of our code had defects, and these defects were caused by our lack of effective management." due to the lack of understanding of the number of problematic code and the level of defects, we finally decided to use our own software to achieve defect management and requirements management, unifying process and design, thus greatly improving the efficiency of software development. "

The automation of data center management has become the direction of many users' efforts. Learn to use tools to achieve centralized and automated management in order to more effectively reduce the cost of data center operation and maintenance, and transfer more funds for data center operation and maintenance to application innovation. Li Shi said that HP's IT department uses HP's automated management products and integrates HP's financial software, personnel system, service management software, hardware inspection system and enterprise reports to manage the entire life cycle of IT assets. Currently, there are 9 million configuration items running in HP's IT system, and 5700 events need to be handled every day. The automation of IT operation and maintenance realizes active diagnosis and maintenance, and can update patches quickly and easily, thus completely liberating IT managers.

Changing IT from a cost center to a profit center is a clich é topic and a criterion for evaluating the success of HP's IT transformation. For example, Hewlett-Packard has been testing new features of the product since 1996, followed by automated testing, performance testing and security testing. After years of experience and practice, Hewlett-Packard now has the ability to provide services in application, development and testing. This has also transformed HP IT from a cost center to a profit center. Li Shi said that HP's IT department is not only responsible for the operation and maintenance of its own data center and IT system, but also provides ITIL-based IT management services to more than 1000 large and medium-sized enterprises in more than 90 countries around the world. From spending money to making money, the gorgeous turn of HP IT also marks the phased success of HP IT transformation.

Would rather bleed than let the user cry

Hewlett-Packard is not only a successful practitioner of IT transformation, but also a pathfinder to solve its own business problems with big data technology. Now, Hewlett-Packard is beginning to transform its frustrations, lessons learned, and technological achievements in the transformation process into a methodology for transforming enterprise IT systems, and solidifying them into products, solutions and services, so as to provide reference for the IT transformation of other enterprises. " We have been constantly summing up experiences and lessons, including the problems encountered in the transformation of IT and the successful experience of solving problems with big data. HP's IT division works with product and service departments to document these experiences and then package them into customer-oriented solutions and services. " Li Shi said, "We would rather bleed ourselves than let users cry. Even tears should be tears of happiness."

Yu Zhiwei joked: "Hewlett-Packard's IT department is like a guinea pig for experiments. Any mature product or software launched by Hewlett-Packard must be applied by HP's IT department and will not be introduced to the market until it is sure that there are no problems and can bring business benefits to customers." Ninety-five per cent of the software being used by HP's IT division is developed by HP itself, and the other 5 per cent is provided by other software vendors. The software provided by other vendors must be rigorously tested by HP itself and proved to be suitable for HP's IT and business before it can be selected by HP.

Many people will be interested in the question: what is the basis of product development for IT vendors? Is it really after a large-scale user demand survey, as the manufacturer said? Instead of answering the reporter's question directly, Yu Zhiwei said, "in addition to being a supplier of IT products, HP is also a typical IT user. The problems we encounter in IT applications are similar to those encountered by other enterprises. The technicians in HP's software development department often communicate with their colleagues in the IT department to understand their needs and confusion. This is actually user demand research." The reporter learned that HP's big data platform HAVEn is developed in this way. More than 100,000 employees within Hewlett-Packard have actually used software from the HAVEn platform. After constantly finding problems and repeatedly modifying and optimizing, HAVEn is introduced to the market as a commercial product.

Now, Hewlett-Packard IT transformation has entered a new stage, that is, oriented to the new state of IT, service-oriented architecture construction. Li Shi said that the main task of HP's IT department at this stage is to achieve the transition from IT value to business value. The biggest benefit of a service-oriented architecture is speed. The speed mentioned here has many meanings, such as the response speed of the IT system, the speed of the product to market, and so on. " When developing a laptop, we may not be able to accurately grasp the preferences of users. However, if we have a fast-response IT system, we can speed up the time to market. We can develop 20 different models of laptops at the same time, and in the end, only the best-selling product will be retained. This is the so-called trial and error, which is based on the fast response IT system and the supply chain. " Li Shi said, for example, "We hope to better link IT costs with business costs and convert more fixed costs into flexible costs. This goal can be achieved through the new model of IT."

The role of IT is changing. We have seen this shift in Hewlett-Packard. Technicians like Li should be remembered as IT nerds who wear shorts and write software code day and night. In the past, Li and his colleagues did, focusing on HP's internal IT management, with little contact with users or the media. In the absence of complete optimization of IT infrastructure, HP IT personnel have limited capacity and can only focus on internal skills, including optimizing IT architecture, improving efficiency and reducing labor costs through the concentration and integration of IT systems. "but now, IT personnel pay more attention to the business, take the initiative to understand the needs of the business, the market and customers, and combine technology with market opportunities and the needs of business units to achieve innovation." Li Shi said.

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