Joseph Hanania

Enterprise solutions are a worldwide initiative by HP to take a far more proactive role in company's IT, often involving the day-to-day management of some or part of IT operations.

In the Middle East this initiative is being spearheaded by HP Regional General Manager Joseph Hanania, the one-time Compaq boss who has successfully welded the HP and Compaq operations since the merger. But is does the concept of enterprise solutions really apply in this region?

'Very much so,' he says. 'Business here has to respond to the same challenges that impact on enterprises anywhere in the world. But it is true to say that in this region we have never had the overinvestment in IT.

'However, business here is still learning that IT is about more than controlling an operating expense, IT is also a significant investment opportunity with a clear payback to business. Enterprise solutions are very much a part of this process.

'One challenge for business today is IT consolidation. How can I put my resources together for better results? How can we improve our service by consolidation? How can this help us make more informed decisions?

'Another phenomenon is the tremendous growth of digital storage and the ability to do much more analysis and in-depth reporting. Then there is the availability of far more power and processing capacity.'

Mr. Hanania explains that these developments have led HP to develop a service offering to manage complex IT operations for companies through out-sourcing.

'This might just be the outsourcing of a Help Desk,' he says. 'Or it could be our engineer onsite taking over a whole IT department. Of course, the conditions have to be right for HP to takeover and it has to be cost effective. But we have examples in the region including a large oil company, banks and Pepsi Cola has outsourced its Call Centre to HP'.

A further big sector for HP is telecommunications where the group also has proprietary software for network management. One system offers an end-to-end solution for mobile phone networks with HP taking responsibility for the implementation, maintenance, software and hardware.

Mr. Hanania says that such network solutions will be valuable to assist the geographic expansion of mobile phones in countries like Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, HP is working with its partner Microsoft on e-Government solutions such as government portals. And he sees huge room for growth in this sector for complete e-Government solutions with better services for citizens as a result.

'On the enterprise side we are also working closely with Oracle on the roll-out of 10g,' he adds. 'And we also work with Linux based systems according to what the client decides and we can provide whatever support is required'.

So it seems HP clients in the Middle East are not so different after all from the rest of the world, and HP has developed its enterprise solutions concept, with a strong service as well as hardware element, to meet the challenges of the modern business world.

'The real challenge is to bring IT into the heart of business strategy and to make IT contribute to the growth of the business right from the start,' says Mr Hanania. 'About 30% of business does that now so there is some room for improvement in many cases'.