Meet HP IT Outsourcing

    It is unlikely that our audience needs to explain what IT outsourcing is. During the period of growth of the Russian IT market, this direction developed at a faster pace, and with the popularization of cloud services it acquired qualitatively new forms. But how much do we know about the leaders of the global IT outsourcing market and their activities in Russia, such as Hewlett-Packard?


    It is interesting that even in 2007, when HP is promoting the Russian market the book " IT Outsourcing: building mutually beneficial cooperation » (Managing Successful IT Outsourcing Relationships) famous European authors and professionals of the IT market, Peter Gottschalk and Hans Solli-Cetera. Since then, important changes have taken place in the industry. HP's business is changing. But the outsourcing direction continues to develop.

    Hewlett packard enterprise- this will be called from November 1, 2015 a new company that will offer corporate systems (servers, storage, network equipment), as well as software to ensure their functioning. The company will provide various implementation and support services (including financial services) for such systems at customers and outsourcing services, which were previously the responsibility of the HP Enterprise Group.  

    The goal of Hewlett Packard Enterprise is not only to ensure the development and updating of all product families in order to offer better solutions in the context of significant changes in the IT market: transforming applications, jobs, increasing data volumes, but also to provide customer companies with modern services, helping them reduce costs and increase profits.


    In our country, being one of the leading players in the IT market, HP (so far we will call it that familiar name) is familiar to many with its IT products - servers, storage systems, printers and PCs. She is much less known for her services, in particular IT outsourcing services, although in the last decade the Russian industry press has periodically introduced us to her success stories in this area. Indeed, HP Russia is also outsourcing, consulting and integration. We’ll talk about this in more detail. Despite the trend of “import substitution,” it is already difficult to imagine the Russian business landscape without the leading world corporations offering outsourcing services. And HP has the widest range of offers - from print outsourcing (HP MPS) to business process outsourcing (BPO).

    Trending again


    Characteristically, IT outsourcing is "coming into fashion" along with another recession in the economy, forcing companies to think about turning fixed costs into variables - shifting CAPEX to OPEX. The desire to reduce costs and increase business efficiency, increasing with each crisis, spurs demand for outsourcing. Moreover, IT companies often position this type of service as a way to reduce costs and the ability to concentrate on their core business. Amid widespread IT budget cuts, outsourcing has the potential to become one of the few growing types of services. However, according to analysts, in the world about half of IT outsourcing projects are unsuccessful, since their implementation does not bring the planned results.


    Priorities in IT strategies of Russian companies,according to IDC . This survey was conducted before the crisis, when the task of optimizing costs was not yet as relevant as it is today.

    In fact, the crisis plays a plus and a minus. On the one hand, contracts are being reduced. On the other hand, companies are trying to solve their problems by shifting them to a service provider. And this opens up a potentially new market, gives a chance to strong outsourcers.

    In the first positions


    HP has long been one of the recognized world leaders in the IT outsourcing market. It offers its customers a wide range of services, from outsourcing of user workplace support to a global strategic partnership to support information systems. Outsourcing core IT services allows customers to free up additional resources and focus on a key business. The results are sometimes really impressive.
    Thanks to outsourcing, customers get competitive advantages - HP has gained considerable experience in the global outsourcing market as a provider of solutions and services for various types of enterprises and their tasks. The global outsourcing resources of the company allow attracting specialists from various countries along with consultants from HP centers of competence. Moreover, HP is able to provide remote management based on its own data centers and remote support centers. These services allow you to quickly assess risks and prevent their occurrence.

    According to Gartner ( 2015 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing in North America), HP is one of the leaders in the outsourcing market for data centers in North America. Analysts refer infrastructure scale to its strong qualities - about 80 thousand physical servers in 30 data centers allow providing a wide variety of outsourcing services.

    The volume of cloud services based on HP Helion in the global market is showing double-digit growth.

    In Russia, HP is active in outsourcing with manufacturing enterprises, retail chains, and the energy industry.

    Russian data center - from the "classics" to the clouds


    The HP outsourcing division is now focusing on two main areas - classical outsourcing, when the customer company outsource a certain amount of IT operations, and the provision of cloud services from Russia's partner data center - DataPro data center. The data center in Russia was selected by HP on a global level in accordance with strict criteria.


    DataPro Moscow One is the largest data center in Eastern Europe. It is designed for 3000 racks and a power of 25 mW. The data center is certified by the Uptime Institute in terms of the TIER III reliability level - “Design” and “Facility”, and in 2016 Operational Sustainability certification is expected.

    Currently, the cloud direction is developing rapidly and has already become a fairly large business.


    From private to public. The concept of HP involves various options for implementing the cloud model , depending on customer needs.

    The data center houses both IT infrastructure and client applications. Moreover, customers are provided with dedicated infrastructure for certain tasks. Servers - virtual or physical - are allocated to a specific customer, and are not shared between clients, as in "multi-tenant" environments, which guarantees a higher quality of service.

    The IT infrastructure in the data center is built according to a certain methodology, but this can be any equipment - both HP and other vendors. That is, the basic proposals and configurations can be expanded if necessary. Optional equipment HP can be purchased in agreement with the customer and provided to him under a leasing scheme (with payment within a certain period of time - from one to five years), or the customer himself acquires the required equipment, which is located in the data center and is serviced by HP. Of course, HP hardware remains a priority, especially since the outsourcing division of HP can get good discounts when buying equipment in HP ESG. Additional flexibility is provided by the ability to use the resources of European HP data centers - applications and IT infrastructure.

    As for leasing, then it allows organizations to focus their attention and funds on the main business, eliminates the need to solve the issues of disposal of obsolete equipment, and therefore it is beneficial not only to companies experiencing a shortage of working capital. Leasing significantly reduces the cost of equipment upgrades and in many cases becomes the only possible way to expand the business. However, during leasing, the customer assumes certain risks and may incur financial losses stipulated in the contract upon early termination of the agreement.

    The desire of customers to reduce IT costs, cut budgets for the purchase of equipment makes them pay attention to cloud services. In many cases, monthly payments are more profitable than one-time large investments.

    In the process of evaluating and designing IT infrastructure for the customer, he is offered various options. The customer receives transparent information on the formation of his service payments - the cost of equipment and the cost of the service for the duration of the contract.

    Definitely, the service is not the cheapest on the Russian market, although it competes in prices with the offers of local outsourcers. However, the HP service focuses on quality and long-term cooperation, rather than price. Nevertheless, HP prices are quite comparable with Russian companies, and for international companies they may even be lower.

    What is the benefit?


    List briefly the main benefits for customers who decide to use HP IT outsourcing:

    • The possibility of leasing equipment, both in rubles and dollars. HP Financial Services fixes the price in rubles or dollars at the time of the transaction, there are no financial risks.

    • Company stability. Even in a turbulent market, HP "plays long games," and this is especially important for large international companies. In any case, it is important for the customer to know that there is a certain guarantee, and tomorrow the outsourcer will not go anywhere.

    • Access to all European HP centers. They can solve problems that arise in the customer’s cloud infrastructure. It is possible to use HP's “knowledge base” to solve complex technical issues.

    • Strict adherence to SLA parameters, such as service availability, incident response time, according to Help Desk - the number of lost calls. Note that HP SLAs are more stringent than typical for the local market.

    Finally, placing equipment is only part of the solution. Need software. HP has agreements with software vendors that allow them to buy software at prices well below market prices, which, in turn, affects the cost of services provided to customers.

    During its activities in the Russian market, HP has gained solid experience working with customers from various industries. Here are just a few of the most iconic projects. Although not as large as the sensational once global HP contract with Procter & Gamble for outsourcing in the field of information systems for a total of $ 3 billion, or a contract with the Finnish energy giant Fortum.

    The best examples of the opportunities and benefits of HP IT outsourcing are concrete examples.

    A bit of history


    In 2005, RUSAL outsourced its main applications to HP. HP has taken on the task of managing their service using best practices, technologies and experience. Design work included data migration to the HP platform, as well as operational and service support for five years. The objectives of the project were to increase operational security and cost-effectiveness of the customer, improve service support for business units and introduce modern proven technologies.

    In 2008, HP, in partnership with CROC, won a tender for the provision of IT infrastructure support services, British American Tobacco Russia"(" BAT Russia "). This is one of the largest contracts in the Russian IT outsourcing market. The task of the CROC-HP tandem was to ensure the functioning of a single support service for all departments of the company.

    Under the contract, HP provided the customer with the services of a contact center, lifecycle management of equipment and software, including procurement in the field of IT, IT warehouse management, technological support for mobile services, from the process of negotiating agreements to the processing of accounts of mobile operators and equipment replacement as well as support for the SAP system. The presence of highly qualified specialists and significant HP expertise in SAP support was one of the important factors in winning the tender.
    Since mid-2010, HP began supporting Fortum in Russia, and then a large project began to integrate the Russian Division into Fortum's global IT infrastructure. The project affected more than 2000 users at 20 addresses in 5 cities of Russia.

    Over 9 years of close cooperation, vast experience in the field of IT outsourcing with one of the leaders in the energy sector has been accumulated. In 2013, the contract between Fortum and HP was extended for another 3 years, during which the main goals of HP will be to provide services to one of the key Customers within the framework of agreed SLAs and to maintain the level of user satisfaction at a high level, as well as creating the most profitable and comfortable conditions for business development Fortum Russia.

    This is not the only HP outsourcing contract in the tobacco industry. Together with CROC, a project was launched for another major tobacco company - the companies won the tender for the provision of Help Desk and Workplace Support services throughout Russia for this customer.

    In 2011, ROLF moved business-critical infrastructure and applications to the HP cloud. The project was successful, and the customer decided to outsource HP, including local server and network IT infrastructure. The transfer of HP to the management of network and server infrastructures made it possible to improve the efficiency of all ROLF divisions, and the IT department to focus on important strategic tasks and new services for business.

    HP was able to guarantee the integrated supply of the necessary servers, network systems, software products and services as a single manufacturer. The HP Enterprise Services team took on the task of updating, transforming, and then supporting the customer’s server and network infrastructure. The processes and technologies of system administration were automated and standardized.

    The project, which started four years ago, has now passed all stages of the HP service. It started on the basis of Utility Services in Germany, then it was transferred to Cloud VPS, and a year and a half ago it moved to the Russian data center. Now this project continues to develop.

    In early 2003, the HP Outsourcing Division, together with its C&I departments, separated from HP Technology Services (TS), which is dedicated to supporting customer-supplied equipment. Then came the EDS .

    Currently, about 250 people work at HP Enterprise Services in Russia, all of them are involved in the service to one degree or another. There is a unit that specializes in CMS services for the telecommunications sector. Its specialists implement software developed for the telecommunications industry. This is a significant part of the HP outsourcing business in Russia. Customers are the “Big Three” operators, plus such large operators as Tele2 and Rostelecom.

    The main objective of HP is to create conditions for the development and successful functioning of the core business of the company. This allows you to maximally free the customer from solving operational problems related to IT and infrastructure, allowing him to concentrate on truly strategic tasks. To do this, HP has all the necessary competencies and tools and services.

    Also popular now: