Mott plans to become more self-reliant, too: As he pares down the IT workforce, 90% will be HP employees. Today, half of HP's IT staffers are employees of other companies under contract. Mott believes businesses have missed an opportunity to use IT automation in lieu of people-powered system administration. Businesses "are spending more on people doing things, less on technology doing things," he says. That's about to change at HP.

So HP is directing cash into IT equipment with the goal of saving money down the road. Mott is one year into a three-year IT overhaul. By the time he's finished, the CIO expects to get 80% more computer-processing power with 30% fewer servers. He also wants to double the amount of storage capacity and add 30% more network bandwidth at half the storage and networking costs he inherited.

	Mott's motto: More from IT; less from people
	Tech Overhaul
	1 Reduce the number of internal applications from 5,000 to 1,500.
	2 Establish 29 core IT sites, shifting resources so that 80% of IT staff time is spent on development and 20% on support. Reduce IT workforce from 19,000 (internal and external) in 2005 to 8,000 in 2008.
	3 Consolidate 85 data centers into six, located in three U.S. cities, all interconnected for redundancy and business continuity.
	4 Build an enterprise data warehouse to generate more accurate and timely business intelligence; distribute business intelligence more widely across the company.
	5 Build a best-in-class IT infrastructure using HP products as a showcase for enterprise customers.

Mott's mandate is to look for areas of growth at the same time he's scaling back. HP wants to use its IT shop as a showcase for new technologies out of the company's development groups and research labs that customers can see in action. "Randy's basically going to be the beta test site," says Art Data, VP of IT at International Truck and Engine. Mott wants to rev up innovation within HP's IT department, so that by 2009 80% of staff time is spent on new projects and just 20% on maintenance. Today, it's about half and half.

Centralizing and slashing IT isn't revolutionary. Far from it--many U.S. companies spent the dot-com bust years doing exactly that. But it's a necessary step to make HP more competitive on deals. More standardized systems could make HP a more compelling vendor to buy from, says Ralph Szygenda, CIO at General Motors, which will spend about $1 billion on HP services alone over the next five years. GM's IT department has run into different prices, distribution systems, and order-entry methods across HP units in the United States, China, Russia, and Brazil, and that's forcing GM to try to smooth out the variations. "I don't want to manage HP to look like one company," Szygenda says. Decentralized systems at HP meant higher labor costs learning how each group works, and in some cases higher prices--like in China, where HP charged premiums to cover compensation programs for salespeople. "If HP China has a different way of working than HP Brazil, I don't want to do business with them. It slows down General Motors," Szygenda adds, calling Hurd "a CEO that has embraced standardization, honestly, a little late."

Though much remains to be done, Hurd has effected a remarkable turnaround already, largely through a relentless focus on improving operations and raising morale. When Carly Fiorina was CEO, it was unclear whether HP would survive intact without being diced into smaller companies. Hurd has untangled Fiorina's matrix management structure to give salespeople more responsibility and clearer lines of reporting. He's shunned the press interviews and celebrity hobnobbing Fiorina thrived on--no trips to Davos or on-stage appearances with Gwen Stefani. He's even getting HP's researchers down to business, reducing the number of patents HP files to cut back on expenses and focus on quality. HP was awarded 1,797 U.S. patents last year.

Hurd's approach resonates with some customers. Richard Plane, chief technologist at Harris, which makes communications systems for broadcasters and the military, says Hurd's HP publishes product development road maps that look out three years or less, more in line with Harris' budget planning than the 10-year plans under Fiorina. But Plane wants more visibility into HP's research pipeline. "HP is an innovation company, but we're not seeing much of what they're doing in their labs," he says.

HP doesn't really have a technology superstar along the lines of Microsoft's Ray Ozzie or Sun Microsystems' Andy Bechtolsheim. HP Labs director Dick Lampman keeps a low profile, and CTO Shane Robison isn't a household name. HP nanotechnology researcher Stan Williams is a leader in his field, but his work may not bear fruit for a decade or more.