NEED TO BREAK INNOVATION GRIDLOCK, SAYS HP

By Saraswathi Muniappan

KUALA LUMPUR, July 15 (Bernama) -- Malaysian companies, especially small and
medium enterprises (SMEs), should change their mindset and invest more in
information technology (IT) to enhance and expand their operations, according to
Hewlett-Packard (HP).

"Some companies in Malaysia use systems that are backward by some 20 years,
especially SMEs," said HP Malaysia's general manager for enterprise servers,
storage and networking, Anita Lim.

Lim said one out of two companies worldwide suffered from innovation
gridlock, a situation where IT was blocked from driving new business innovation
because the majority of funding was consumed in operating in the current
environment.

"About 62 per cent companies in Asia Pacific and Japan are facing an
innovation gridlock, which stops them from taking full advantage of business
opportunities," she said during a media retreat in Bali recently.

At most times, organisations fail to realise that it is cost-competitive for
them to upgrade their systems rather than maintaining the old ones as newer
systems are designed to be more efficient and cost-effective, Lim said.

According to her, 70 per cent of IT budgets are channelled for operations
and maintenance of aged IT infrastructure, and the remaining 30 per cent for
innovation.

"Actually, it should be vice versa," she said.

However, such a scenario was not confined to Malaysia as it could also be
seen in the region, Lim said, adding that 45 per cent of IT spending in Asia
Pacific was on legacy systems compared to 30 per cent globally.

She also said that based on studies, 99 per cent of companies linked
business success with success in IT, while seven out of 10 companies stated IT
was a fundamental enabler of business.

At the height of the financial meltdown in the United States and Europe,
the financial sector, including that in Malaysia, was seen as more aggressive in
upgrading, especially when the processes involved governance issues, Lim said.

"There was a surge in financial sector related companies investing very much
in such systems," she said, adding that the cost of lost business opportunity in
the Asia Pacific could translate to as much as 92 per cent.

HP Malaysia's enterprise business country manager, business critical
systems, Kelvin Khaw, said businesses also made mistakes by waiting too long to
change or upgrade their systems, taking a "wait and see" stance as the old
systems were still serving them well.

"However, that is how loss in business opportunity occurs when the systems,
especially those dealing with storage and critical solutions, are unable to deal
with a sudden surge in demand," he said.

To help users in managing capacity, the HP StoreOnce deduplication software
was launched recently, said HP Malaysia's enterprise business country manager,
storage works division, enterprise servers, storage and networking, Chung Chee
Cheong.

It is a new generation software that can be deployed at multiple points in a
converged infrastructure, reducing the number of times data has to be
dedupicated and enabling clients to more efficiently manage and control data
growth.

According to him, HP is the first company to eliminate this complexity by
coming up with a single, unified architecture for deduplication.

Another product is HP Blade System portfolio, which enables clients to
reduce network sprawl and shift millions of dollars in resource from IT
operations to organisational innovation.

HP also recently announced a new high performance network solutions that
expand the portfolio to enable the company's converged infrastructure strategy
by delivering simplified server connectivity.

-- BERNAMA