HP Targets Mid-Market Segment

By Rozana Sani

HEWLETT-PACKARD Co expects to see more information and communications technology (ICT) spending in the global mid-market segment. Analysts project that there will be 31,000 additional mid- sized businesses worldwide by 2012.

“Global ICT spending within the segment will grow at 7.4 per cent annually to US$278 billion (RM917.4 billion) by 2012. ICT spending in the Asia-Pacific and Japan will grow at 9.7 per cent annually from 2007 to US$81.7 billion by 2012.

“Servers are the largest technology infrastructure spending category for mid-sized businesses while blades and storage are among the fastest- growing areas,” said HP’s vice president and general manager, industry standard servers, Asia-Pacific and Japan, Tony Parkinson.

He added that HP is committed to deliver technology based on the Adaptive infrastructure to the segment, as it does to the enterprise segment but on a smaller form factor. The Adaptive infrastructure is HP’s next-generation data centre strategy to help customers optimise their business outcomes.

HP defines a mid-market company as one with between 50 and 500 users.

For the first quarter of this year, HP claimed to have maintained leadership in key server segments: No. 1 in X86 server shipments for 24 successive quarters with 29 per cent market share in unit shipments, and in X86 blade server units shipped with 40.3 per cent market share in unit shipments and 35.5 per cent in revenue.

“We are also No. 1 in overall unix server revenue, capturing 31.7 per cent market share. HP grew more than five times faster than the overall unix server market growth on a year-on-year basis,” Parkinson pointed out.

(c) 2008 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.