HP exec cites open source, commercial mix

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Rather than IT shops settling on one paradigm, mixed environments of commercial and open source software will prevail, Hewlett-Packard CTO and Chief Strategy Officer Shane Robison said Wednesday during a keynote presentation at the Software 2005 conference here.

With 60 percent of companies having a mix of open source and commercial technologies, HP anticipates the persistence of this hybrid model, according to Robison.

“HP believes that open source software will continue to penetrate deeper into the enterprise. We do not believe that customers will deploy all open source or all commercial software,” Robison said at the conference, which is geared in part toward investors.

Also during his speech, Robison emphasized HP’s intentions to leverage its HP OpenView system management platform, partnerships, and acquired technologies for use in managing customers’ SOAs. Enablement of grid architectures and utility computing also factor into HP’s agenda.

Management of systems has moved beyond basic monitoring and reporting, Robison said.

“The way we see it, management software will become as important to the enterprise as the OS was to the PC,” Robison said. “What we’re creating is the equivalent of the OS for the datacenter.”

“We decided to double-down on management software because we have the foundation to solve our customers’ most important and most pressing problems,” Robison said. Citing data that says IT organizations spend 70 percent of their budgets on infrastructure and IT maintenance, and 30 percent on application and infrastructure innovation, HP seeks to flip that ratio, he said.

The company also is positioning its HP OpenCall product for communications service providers as part of its strategy for managing SOAs. Additionally, HP is working on using business analytics and optimization to improve large-scale transaction processing, Robison said. The company also has a project under way to search archived material, including archived e-mail.