New HP Software and Zero Percent Lease Financing Help CIOs Respond to Tough Economy

HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced enhanced Business Technology Optimization (BTO) software solutions to help chief information officers (CIOs) quickly adapt IT investments to drive down costs and strengthen competitive advantage.

HP also announced zero percent lease financing for qualifying customers of its BTO and Information Management (IM) software through HP Financial Services, the company’s leasing and financing arm.

At HP Software Universe in Vienna, Austria, HP introduced two significantly enhanced solutions – HP Quality Center 10.0 software and new integrations of HP’s BTO software with HP Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) 8.0.

HP additionally announced software products delivered by its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) option. This helps customers immediately gain the benefit of HP’s market-leading solutions, without the upfront capital expenditure associated with software projects.

CIOs can deliver improved business outcomes – including reducing cost, mitigating risk and generating revenue – despite tighter budgets, with three essential actions combined with HP Software solutions:

• Prioritize investments based on business value by taking control of IT spending;
• Eliminate redundancy and respond flexibly to changing business needs by centralizing service delivery functions; and
• Improve quality and lower costs by standardizing through best practices and automation.

HP BTO solutions save health care services provider more than $30 million

An IDC Business Value Spotlight Study sponsored by HP found that a leading health care services provider saved more than $30 million over three years using HP BTO solutions.⁽¹⁾

Since implementing HP software, the company has significantly reduced the number of business application performance issues and has achieved higher patient safety goals. The company is now able to increase its customer base and deliver healthcare solutions to more hospitals per year, thus increasing revenue. Furthermore, the company has decreased its prescription error rate by 80 percent and increased staff productivity by 25 percent.

Prioritize, optimize and standardize with HP Quality Center 10.0

• Prioritize projects and optimize application portfolio – Through the integration of the new HP Quality Center 10.0 software with HP Project and Portfolio Management software, customers can save millions of dollars by cancelling low-value projects and ensuring high-value projects stay on track.
• Centralize, standardize and automate for higher quality applications – Customers can decrease costs and enhance the reliability of applications by driving common processes and key performance metrics across teams, enabling the sharing and reuse of all assets across projects, and automating tests for all their modern application environments.
• Ensure the success of projects – HP Quality Center software can act as the heart of the application delivery process by incorporating requirements management, test management, functional and security testing, and defect management all in a single platform.

"Our customers include some of the most respected and demanding companies in the world,” said Christopher Rence, chief information officer, Fair Isaac Corporation, a leader in analytics and decision management technology. "They insist upon the highest standards of quality, performance and security – and naturally, so do we. By using HP software solutions, we were able to uphold these standards while reducing our operating expenses by approximately $1.2 million in 2008.”

HP Universal Configuration Management Database 8.0 integrated with HP BTO software

• Speed problem resolution and reduce costs – With HP’s UCMDB integrated with HP’s market-leading Business Service Management (BSM) suite of products, customers can prioritize incidents (for example, systems failure, service downtime, poor end-user experience, etc.) based on business impact, get directly to the root cause of a problem, and speed problem resolution.
• Speed decision making and effectiveness with centralized IT operations information – The new version of HP UCMDB is integrated with more than 17 products across HP’s BTO software portfolio, including new integrations with HP’s enhanced BSM software solution: HP Business Availability Center 8.0, HP Operations Manager i-Series, HP Network Node Manager i-Series Advanced, and HP Service Manager 7.1. These integrations allow customers to have an end-to-end view of their business service.
• Reduce errors, risk and cost associated with business service changes and proactively fix network problems – The newly improved BSM solution provides prepackaged run-book automation work flows using the HP Operations Orchestration product, integrated with the HP Network Automation 7.5 and HP Service Manager software. These software integrations can automate the execution process of business service changes, which is critical to driving increased efficiency and cost reduction.

"In this economic cycle, smart CIOs are turning adversity into advantage by investing in key solutions to manage cost and risk. At the same time, they are positioning their business to be more competitive when the business cycle rebounds,” said Robin Purohit, vice president and general manager, Software Products, HP. "HP Business Technology Optimization software has a strong track record of helping CIOs deliver more business value and cost saving out of their technology investments.”

HP SaaS and services offerings maximize the value of software investments, faster

• HP Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provides BTO software on demand backed by 24/7 support that includes a technical account manager, ongoing mentoring and best practices. The HP SaaS solution enables customers to accelerate deployment and time to value, and supports centralizing service delivery and standardization, without significant start-up costs and training.
• In addition to its large-scale transformative capability, HP Software Professional Services can help CIOs quickly adapt to change through packaged QuickStart services designed to rapidly deploy BTO software.
• HP Software Support achieves the industry’s highest level of customer satisfaction by working with customers to maximize their HP Software investments.

Other HP services

HP’s EDS Testing and Quality Assurance Services optimize the systems engineering processes, minimizing rework and improving productivity and quality to reduce the risk of system outages from software failures. These services combine proven processes, end-to-end test capabilities and the deep expertise of testing professionals in global centers of excellence to help customers achieve greater business value from their technology investments.

HP’s new lease financing option

The HP Financial Services zero percent promotion is available for licensing and support costs on HP BTO and IM software solutions for qualifying deals over $100,000 through Jan. 31, 2009. The promotion is available in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. More information about HP’s lease financing option is available at http://www.hp.com/software/financing.

An online press kit with more information about HP Software Universe is available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/swuniversevienna.html.

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com/.

Note to editors: More news from HP, including links to RSS feeds, is available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/.

⁽¹⁾ IDC Business Value Spotlight sponsored by HP, "Improving Product Quality and Increasing Delivery Speed with a System Framework Supported by HP Quality Center, HP Performance Center, and HP LoadRunner,” Doc # 08C5706, November 2008.

Financing is available through Hewlett-Packard Financial Services Company and its subsidiaries (HPFS) to qualified commercial customers in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. for transactions over $100,000 through Jan. 31, 2009, and is subject to credit approval and execution of standard HPFS documentation. Leasing rates as low as 0% are available on eligible HP BTO and IM software. Not all customers may qualify for these rates. Zero percent lease rate assumes transaction is documented as a software license lease with a $1 end-of-term purchase option (or local currency equivalent), assuming lessee is not required to pay any nominal end-of-term purchase price at the end of the lease term and disregarding any charges payable by lessee other than rent payments (such as maintenance, taxes, fees and shipping charges). Other restrictions may apply. HPFS reserves the right to change or cancel the programs described in this news release at any time without notice.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2008 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

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