How to Develop a Complex Solution: HP’s Data Center Transformation

Before it began developing its Data Center Transformation Solution in 2007, HP had a number of separate solutions that focused on elements of the transformation, such as data center consolidation and business continuity and availability.

But dramatic increases in energy costs as well as increasing frustration with piecemeal—and often conflicting—initiatives for driving efficiency and better performance in data centers were driving CIOs to look for something bigger, according to John Bennett, worldwide director of Data Center Transformation Solutions for HP. “We discovered that many, many customers were very keenly interested in what we had done to radically change HP’s Information Technology organization,” he says. “Not just to ‘reduce cost,’ but inherently changing how IT was managed, the applications portfolio, and the data center strategy.”

Balancing Factors
But in designing the solution and developing a marketing program for it, HP had to be careful not to scare away too many potential customers. “One of the things that caused people to be nervous about HP’s IT experience was that we did it on a very aggressive schedule—three years—and we committed a fairly substantive incremental investment to make the transformation real,” says Bennett. “For example, we built out a number of new data centers, which are significant capital investments in their own right. So we had to define the solution in a way that would both resonate with customers’ interest in the topic but also make it doable from the perspectives of risk, timing, and cost.”

To balance all these factors, HP’s solutions development team took the following eight steps:

1. Size the potential market.
2. Research customer needs.
3. Market the solution internally.
4. Create an appropriate level of detail in the solution.
5. Develop a list of differentiators.
6. Create a go-to-market plan.
7. Raise the tolerance for ambiguity inside the organization.
8. Create a composite portrait of ROI.

To get the details on the eight steps to developing a successful enterprise solution, go here.

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