Speeches

© Copyright 1999 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P
All rights reserved. Do not use without written permission from HP.

Thank you, Monsieur Cornu. I'm glad to be here this afternoon.

As I look around the room, I feel right at home. In fact, I see some of my former colleagues. You know, while I'm now CEO of a great company that comes from the IT side, I spent more than 20 years with two great companies in telephony.

And it's more than coincidence that in heading a computing and imaging company ... I'm now in the room with the world's leading telecom companies.

My new job is simply evidence of how we're all coming together. The strict old disciplines many of us grew up on ... are going away. Voice vs. data, wireline vs. wireless, circuit switched vs. packet switched ... they aren't different universes anymore.

We at HP know telecom issues and concerns. I know, because I trained with you. We at HP know because we're your partners in every piece of the telecom market.

Today, I'm going to talk to you about the common communications universe we now share. Specifically about:

• seeing the future;
• bullet-proofing the infrastructure for the e-services world; and
• and putting HP's e-services vision to work for the communications industry.

But before I do that, let me take a few minutes to reintroduce you to Hewlett-Packard. HP's spirit of innovation drew me to this company. Here was a company that 20 years ago was talking about pervasive computing ... before anyone else really knew what that meant. It took 15 years for the rest of the world to catch up.

Here was a company that used the best quality of future-vision ... while standing around and watching the vapor in an office coffeepot ... and turned that insight into an inkjet printer, and the world's largest imaging business. That same creative energy brought HP's RISC architecture and open systems approach ... because HP knew computing couldn't be pervasive ... if systems weren't open.

And we will continue down that same open systems path - for there's room - and there's a need - for everyone who is able to play in this huge space.

I was also drawn by the fact that HP has long been a powerhouse in the global telecom sector. HP "gets" telecommunications ... your issues ... your markets ... and your future.

By way of example:

• HP supplies IT infrastructure to every one of the Fortune 500 telcos.
• Billing systems on HP computers track 1 billion phone calls per day.
• We and our partners deliver management, network intelligence, billing and customer care solutions for UNIX and Windows NT platforms.
• We enable telcos to migrate from network-focused to customer-focused business models.
• Our OpenView platform, another symbol of our commitment to open systems, is the foundation of modern communications.

Last year, HP generated $8 billion in communications-related revenues. Telecom sales are growing at 35 percent a year. We're the No. 2 computing company in the world and the No. 1 provider of IT to mobile operators around the world. We have an installed base of 130 million printers worldwide. We're deeply embedded in everything you do.

Finally, HP has been part of -- and in many cases leading -- every important standards body of telecommunications.

That's today. But what about tomorrow? I came to HP because I'm convinced that our strength with the telecom sector ... is a unique opportunity ... to launch your companies into tomorrow's e-services world. To prepare for that, I've spent my first 75 days at this company ... lasering our future vision even tighter.

We've realized we're the Performance Company ... as well as the Innovation Company. We join the best of both worlds. As a result, the creations of our company imagination ... will always be keyed directly to real needs. Customer needs. Your needs. We've realized that the best ideas in the world ... including HP ideas ... are lost if we:

• don't tell the world about them ...
• if we can't get them to market in time ...
• if we can't make them work for you.
• Most of all, we're all lost ... if we don't prepare you for the future.

The task for all of us now is to cut loose from the mechanical business models of the past ... based on the old physical economy ... and go with the flow of imagination. Envision what isn't here yet, but what will come.

It's to adopt the skill of the great Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung ... learning to look beneath the surface. Because if all we see is the surface of today's Internet world ... where it is right now ... we'll miss what's underneath, and what's coming.

And we won't be ready for it.

Now, some words about infrastructure for the coming e-services world - bullet-proof, of course.

The current model of PCs and laptops competing for wireline space with voice transmissions ... won't be the model for long.

The current model ... of "do it yourself" on the Internet ... will be coming to an end.

A refrigerator or a car unconnected to the Internet ... will be headed for extinction.

The model of a business buying software and mastering it for a customized application ... will be going away.

As everything dissolves before our eyes in this new world, the ground will be shaking beneath our feet.

The result will be a smarter world, a faster world, a richer world. For individuals, life will be easier. A lot of the drudgery of things will be taken care of, via the Net. Whole new industries, skills and economies will be born.

Everyone in the IT industry is committed to this new world. We see the real benefits it can yield. We see what this can do for your companies, your customers, and ultimately for the global family.

But we also know we can't possibly do it alone. We know we haven't come this far alone.

You in telecom have been more than our partners. You've provided the foundation for this vision.

How impressive it is that in virtually all countries in the world now, you can pick up a phone and be certain you'll get a dial tone. As you well know, that is no small achievement.

Because you are there for us and everybody else, we've come this far.

Reliable voice and data wirelines are the foundation, and wireless has opened up whole new regions, like Eastern Europe. Wireless has also jumpstarted places in the developing world, where there are more wireless subscribers now than wireline.

But for the e-services world to reach its full fruition, and lift us all to a new plane of convenience and prosperity ... a similarly reliable network needs to be in place. We need a bulletproof infrastructure. It needs to be secure, reliable, ubiquitous - and always on - always working.

It isn't there yet. You and I both know that. But it can be.

Your challenge is to provide the same bulletproof quality and availability for exponentially exploding volumes of data, as you do now for voice. Even though some skeptics like Business Week say that telecom will be blindsided by the Internet ... I don't think so. It won't be easy to meet the challenge. So what else is new? The ability to meet challenges ... is wired into our collective DNA.

This new world is one that HP has thought about for 20 years. And out of this soul searching has come ... e-services.

We've been thinking about and preparing for a world of intelligent interconnected devices accessing services ... anytime, anywhere .. always there ... always on ... for two decades. Now, as billions of new devices and consumers come online generating trillions of new transactions ... our vision is becoming a business imperative.

We feel so strongly about it that we've split into two new companies. Agilent Technologies is our former test and measurement division. They are here today too. But because their products ... and their competitors ... are so different from ours in computing and imaging ... the split allows both of us to focus with the necessary speed.

As for what the new laser-focused HP brings our customers like you ... we bring you total solutions ... from start-up financing to customer care.

We aren't just a hardware company, although our hardware and Mission Critical Computing are valuable pieces of the mix. But for an SP or telco first finding their way into the new e-services world ... or for somebody who wants to maintain their early lead there ... we can be with you every step of the way.

And e-services is the vision that drives our solutions and our strategy. Some of our competitors are offering visions and products that sound vaguely like e-services. But when you scratch the surface, you find they have limitations ... and perhaps a different vision altogether.

HP's e-services are different from the competition, because:

• no one understands Mission Critical computing platforms like we do ...
• no one is more committed to open systems and standards...
• no one is more networked ...
• we're truly global ...
• building and sustaining partnerships is a core competence ...
• we have one of the largest financing capabilities in the industry ...
• we're consumer as well as enterprise focused ...
• and we're appliance-friendly.

In fact, we started talking about and building information appliances long before it was a buzzword.

Nobody else is doing it the HP Way.

HP E-services is built on more than vision. But there's more. It's built on a real HP breakthrough called e-Speak. E-Speak was started 5 years ago in HP Labs. We were initially looking for a way to turn virtually any IT resource ... into a service. Using printers, storage, computing more efficiently was our target.

But we realized e-Speak has the power to break down the communications barrier that has kept so many systems, devices, programs and IT brands ... separate and unconnected for so long. HP's e-Speak is the universal compiler and translator ... the Rosetta stone of the brave new everything networked world.

I repeat ... e-Speak is universal. It is pure HP.

E-Speak doesn't change the application or the operating system. E-Speak automatically registers the attributes of both users and services ... negotiates content ... manages backup and restoration in case of failure ... and provides a uniform framework for appliances, network computers and PCs of all makes. Think of what we can all do with this architecture - the doors it opens.

With the rise of the Net, e-Speak can be used to enable e-services to talk to one another ... to identify what they can do, to broker e-services and find the best e-service for a particular job.

By creating this universal compiler, e-Speak enables an e-service to draw on virtually any other e-service on the Net to complete a specific task. This is why the e-services marketplace is going to grow at an exponential, not a linear, rate.

What do we mean by e-services? An e-service is ... any asset that is made available via the Net to drive new revenue streams ... or create new efficiencies.

E-services can be applications, computing resources or services, processes or information.

They'll conduct a transaction, complete a task or solve a problem. They'll be used by people, applications, businesses, even things. Some already are, and will be, available on Websites.

Others will work behind the scenes ... invoked automatically by all sorts of Internet-enabled computers, devices and things.

The proliferation of e-services will span all industries. All kinds of services will be offered as e-services, to more people, via a wider variety of devices.

Business-to-business e-services will include things like billing, automated supply chain management, procurement and ERP.

Computing e-services will allow companies more flexibility in managing IT infrastructures, like outsourced storage, directory services and datamining.

Pay-per-use consumer e-services will do things like financial planning, trip planning, traffic routing.

And we will plug into them via utility-like infrastructures ... corporate networks, the Net, phone companies and ISPs ... using a variety of devices like cellular phones, pagers, PDAs, televisions, even cars.

If that's too big and nebulous, let's see where we are now. Chapter One of the Internet is coming to an end. Chapter One was the story of single customers contacting single businesses with a browser. Chapter One was about exchanging information ... buying and selling in single transaction lines. HP helped write Chapter One through our open systems approach. We saw early on that connectivity was going to be the key ... and we provided that key.

• We championed infrared technology and communications standards for appliances.
• We pioneered 100 megabit and gigabit Ethernet networking.
• We provided essential software capabilities through products like Virtual Vault and OpenView.

Our HP OpenView is the de facto industry standard now, managing more than 100,000 networks ... 70 percent of net activity. The same goes for our Virtual Vault online security solution, adopted by more than 100 banks worldwide.

But Chapter Two is here and it's the big bang. Where as in evolutionary biology, there were simple amino acids for eons ... suddenly they exploded into a million life forms.

E-services is the explosion of Chapter Two. And Chapter One didn't last a billion years ... it only lasted three or four. E-services does to Internet hierarchies and business models what deregulation does to any industry ... and more.

In Chapter Two, no more do it yourself on the Web. The Web will do it for you. Services are becoming person and context-aware. Things will now happen automatically, according to your known preferences.

For example ...

You're in China and you have a business meeting coming up that day. And, by the way, you don't speak Mandarin and your clients don't speak English. So you pull out your handheld and you let it know when the meeting is ... and your offered price of $300 an hour for an interpreter. Your bid goes around the world. Within a few minutes you are matched with an interpreter who will be linked with the meeting for the agreed price. In the meantime you can do something more interesting.

That's at the individual level. At the company level, we're going to see enterprises comprised of thousands of e-services ... some built by the company itself, but most subscribed to, leased or rented from sources outside the company.

Our vision of e-services includes three new business models. Not only are they certain to arise in the future ... they are already taking shape now. And HP is helping to build them.

The three models are:

• apps-on-tap;
• next-generation portals; and
• dynamically brokered services.

Apps-on-tap mean outsourced application services. We expect them to become mainstream this year. Forrester predicts this market will grow from $90 million last year to $10 billion by 2001 -- or 15-20 percent of all applications. ASPs will be there for enterprises to rely on the providers' specialized expertise, rather than trying to figure out how to handle these processes expertly in-house. Corporate customers will rent, subscribe or pay as they go for using these applications.

Outsource hosting of e-mail services will be the first and easiest. But others will follow.

Next-generation portals will combine a set of complementary services and link them intelligently. Horizontal portals will serve specific functions like accounting or procurement for a whole range of different companies and industries. Vertical portals will serve specific industries. Enterprise portals will aggregate services in new ways ... to gain customer loyalty or better support employees or partners.

Finally, dynamic brokering is an expanded version of the Chinese language interpreter example I gave a minute ago. This model is proof of why the e-services marketplace is going to grow at an exponential, not a linear, rate.

But only if our telecom infrastructure keeps pace. It would be a real pity to limit economic growth, through insufficient bandwidth.

Can the infrastructure be put in place? A bulletproof infrastructure?

Nobody wants to endure the negative news headlines about your Website going down and customers losing out. CNBC in the U.S. is now giving a daily report on the response times of online trading sites.

But that's the world we're headed for. Soon, we will all be judged on the performance and the responsiveness of our systems.

If your enterprise customers suffer because of a telecom problem, they will take the heat from their customers. But while you're not as visible, you're just as vulnerable. That's the terrible reality of this new world. Because global connectivity makes your customer's problem ... your problem.

HP's strength in the telecom future ... isn't just a mix of superior vision and performance-proven tools. It's partnerships, agreements and breakthroughs. HP and its partners have scored big in the telecom sector ... especially in the last several months. Numerous deals and partnerships have been sealed with more to come in swift succession.

As just two examples:

We began a strategic alliance with Nokia to jointly develop and market business-critical mobile Internet solutions. Under the agreement, Nokia and HP are working together to create Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) -based solutions for HP-UX, Windows NT and Linux servers.

And HP has been chosen by our host city, Geneva, to be the integrator and a co-sponsor of the first worldwide showcase of a standard-based, multi-vendor WAP Service: Geneva Now.

Today you can see - and feel - the culmination of our decades of telecom partnerships. And you can get a glimpse of what kind of infrastructure the new e-services world will demand.

Our future vision ... is becoming a reality.

Just this morning, I announced the latest in a series of initiatives aimed at enabling the creation of mobile e-services for wireless service providers and extended enterprise environments.

Twenty-three communications companies have lined up behind us. And that's only the beginning.

We call it the HP Mobile e-services Program. We intend to become the major worldwide player in the Internet-enhanced mobility space.

The worldwide mobile data market is projected to be $80 billion within the decade. By 2001, we expect the number of mobile phones to exceed the number of PCs and to reach the one billion mark by 2003. Half of these mobile devices will be data capable.

HP is committed to teaming with leading industry players to develop next-generation mobile service solutions. These will be based on the company's e-service technology and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) standards.

Mobile devices and Internet technology are the two watershed events as we draw to the end of the 20th century. HP's ambition is now to help lead the next chapter ... as we enter the new millennium. We'll do this by combining mobility ... with a new generation of intelligent e-services. We'll offer a suite of services like consulting ... financial support ... and joint marketing activities.

Additionally, we'll provide Mobile e-services-on-tap over the Net on a pay-per-use basis for SPs, including infrastructure ... management process ... and global capabilities required to run and rapidly scale their businesses.

We're also creating a worldwide Mobile e-services Bazaar, starting in Finland ... the Silicon Valley of mobility. Our Bazaar will provide development, business, marketing and sales assistance to application providers. An HP-branded portal will allow operators and enterprises to learn about and download trial Mobile E-Services.

Merging wireless into the e-services world ... is our best shot at creating total connectivity for this planet.

Like everything else we do ... HP is telecom's performance partner to build the mobile e-world. The pent-up energy of my organization ... is now targeted right.

We all need each other now. We at Hewlett-Packard are ready to stand with you ... to build this e-services world infrastructure.

So as you grapple with turning this week's ideas ... and visions ... into reality ... we hope you'll consider us your partner. We've been working with you for decades. We know your business ... just like you know our products, our services, our people.

The door to the e-future is halfway open ... but neither one of us can push it open alone. We've got to stand shoulder to shoulder.

Today, in this hall, we're dealing with the creation of the collective consciousness. More than anything, the world we're building together ... is about the end of isolation. The world we're building together is the creation of a collective imagination ... the creation of a collective intelligence ... the creation of a collective energy ... that will lift us to levels we cannot yet see.

The Big Bang is here. Knowledge ... and products ... and services ... will explode to fill our lives. But this is not something to be afraid of. The individual is the big winner here. The individual is liberated.

These machines, devices, services ... they are only our tools. They are only tools for each and every one of us. If we choose to use them ... they will empower us. The parent ... the child ... the thinker ... the artist ... the merchant ... the official ... all of us, can be more than we were before.

Imagine the creativity ... that we can unleash.

Envision it. Believe in it. Build on it.

We do, at HP. And we're ready to build it ... with you.

Thank you very much.

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