“Eating your own dog food” is the inelegant term that IT providers use to describe the use of their own products and services inside their organizations. HP sells a solution for the often monumental task of revamping data centers, but it has bellied up to its own food bowl, big-time. Since 2005, HP has been using the same principles in an ambitious effort to reduce HP’s number of data centers from 85 to six worldwide and reduce 6000 software applications down to 1500.

The version of this monumental project that HP sells to customers is called Data Center Transformation. When it began developing the solution in 2007, HP’s marketing team faced a monumental challenge: How could they package and sell something so big and complex? That’s just one of the challenges HP faced. In this ITSMA Case Study, we examine eight steps that HP took to develop its Data Center Transformation solution:

Step 1: Size the potential market.

Step 2: Research customer needs.

Step 3: Market the solution internally.

Step 4: Create an appropriate level of detail in the solution.

Step 5: Develop a list of differentiators.

Step 6: Create a go-to-market plan.

Step 7: Raise the tolerance for ambiguity inside the organization.

Step 8: Create a composite portrait of ROI.

Key Takeaways

• Use research to determine customer needs and match the solution to those needs.
• Market the solution internally as well as with potential customers.
• Create a process for the way internal units will contribute to the solution.