HP Has Its Head in the Clouds With R&D Restructure

Hewlett-Packard is redirecting its research efforts all in the name of cloud computing.Under the direction of Prith Banerjee, HP's director of research, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor will consolidate its focus from 150 projects to 20 to 30 larger projects that reflect a new vision for an "everything as a service" Web. The projects will fit into five areas, according to Banerjee: information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure and sustainability. To let customers in on what its doing -- and encourage feedback -- HP also launched the HP IdeaLab Web site.

Instead of depending on faster and faster personal devices -- for SMBs, a constant drain on their IT budgets in terms of both buying and maintaining -- users will start to depend on the network cloud to deliver personalized services based on where they are and what they're doing, according to Shane Robison, HP's executive VP and CTO. "Software as a service is just getting started," he predicted.San Jose Mercury News, InformationWeek