HP Revamps Big Data Services to Provide Improved Customization and Flexibility
by Robert Palmer | 8/28/14
On August 26, HP announced a series of services designed to assist businesses with developing big data strategies to increase competitiveness and drive business opportunities. According to HP, its new Business Intelligence Modernization Services are aimed at helping organizations understand, manage, and leverage their data to improve customer engagement, create new business opportunities and reduce costs.
Based on a combination of software, hardware, and consulting services, HP’s Business Intelligence Modernization Services are built on a fairly comprehensive suite of technologies and solutions. While designed to address a broad array of data-driven business activities, HP’s BI suite will offer services focused primarily on data discovery, assessments, hybrid data management and modernization, and overall data analytics and transformation services.
HP has offered big data services targeted at enterprise customers for quite some time. But its latest offering provides a series of bundled capabilities that will help organizations quickly identify and leverage opportunities, with increased flexibility for service deployment and consumption. The new services are available in a wide array of customized consumption models, including as-a-service, private cloud, hosted, and on-premise solutions. HP says that the added flexibility creates opportunities for clients to deliver value through lower, predictable costs and an increased ability to focus on innovation and differentiation.
HP will leverage its own software and solutions as part of the BI suite, including its HAVEn big data platform, HP Autonomy, Vertica, and HP Enterprise Security. The open architecture will also allow HP and its clients to leverage third-party solutions to gain access to existing business intelligence and analytics assets.
Our take
Organizations of all sizes are actively looking to leverage business intelligence and data analytics to drive better business outcomes. Indeed, the ability to make real-time decisions based on intelligent data mining is essential to remaining competitive in certain business sectors. The challenge for many organizations is putting the proper systems in place to access and manage the massive amounts of structured and unstructured data in order to leverage it in meaningful ways.
These trends are driving increased demand for business intelligence (BI) services such as those provided by HP and others. There are numerous challenges associated with big data and data analytics — not the least of which is simply gaining access to data that may be locked and could reside across multiple corporate silos. Assessment and data discovery services will become an increasingly important component of any big data strategy.
Meanwhile, HP is hoping to separate itself from competitors by providing BI services that are flexible, scalable, and modular, both in terms of delivery and consumption. This will be important for smaller-size businesses that lack the infrastructure and resources to invest in full-scale enterprise solutions and business intelligence services.
Robert Palmer is chief analyst and a managing partner for BPO Media, which publishes The Imaging Channel and Workflow magazines. He is an independent market analyst and industry consultant with more than 25 years experience in the printing industry covering technology and business sectors for prominent market research firms such as Lyra Research and InfoTrends. In December 2012 he formed Palmer Consulting as an independent consultancy focused on transformation, mobility, MPS, and the entire imaging market. Palmer is a popular speaker and presents regularly at industry conferences and trade events in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. He is also active in a variety of imaging industry forums and currently serves on the board of directors for the Managed Print Services Association (MPSA). Contact him at robert@bpomedia.com.
