14 September '09

Day 1.                    Just 7 seconds away . . . . . .

Berlin, 14 September '09, 18h CEST - 45 journalists and 12 analysts from 22 countries all expectantly waiting for the video link to open; 9,100km away at HP's Palo Alto Headquarters my colleagues were about to flick the switch to connect both locations to a common global stage to announce the next stage of HP's Enterprise printing strategy.

The delay - between broadcast in Palo Alto and reception in Berlin - is just 7 seconds, but it felt like an age.   Thanks to two satellites and a pair of relay stations, the link duly went live and we were joined in Berlin live and direct by Mark Hurd, HP's chairman, chief executive officer, and president, and Vyomesh (VJ) Joshi, executive vice president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group.

Their presence confirmed the significance of these announcements for HP IPG and our enterprise customers.  VJ set the scene with a compelling overview:

• Companies are spending the equivalent of around 6% of the annual revenues on printing and digital imaging (in some cases, that's twice as much as their entire IT budget - although 90% of companies don't even realise it!)
• A few percentage points cut from these costs will go directly to the bottom line; HP's managed print services (MPS) offering is currently generating between 28% and 50% cost savings across enterprise print environments
• Getting to grips with the print environment is not merely good practice - it should be a business priority

 Take a look for yourself here:

http://h41131.www4.hp.com/uk/en/stories/transforming-business-processes.html

There will be more details coming through tomorrow.   But the simultaneous link was sufficient to whet the appetite - not merely for tomorrow's discussions - but also for the barbecue dinner which now awaits us!

 Day one. . . . and still counting

I just wanted to share a few statistics from today's announcements ranging from the scale of the launch to the market opportunity which is before us :

• 49 - the number of journalists who were joined by a total of 12 industry analysts from 22 countries in Berlin to witness the news live
• 40 - the number of face to face executive briefing sessions scheduled with Bill DeLacy, senior vice president, HP IPG, EMEA and his senior executives
• 75% - the current worldwide marketshare (amongst enterprises) for HP's print environment management platform, Web Jetadmin (it's not merely HP customers who are using Web Jetadmin!)
• 25 - the number of years that Canon and IPG have been working together to deliver laser print technology to customers
• $9 - the management cost associated with every $1 spent on printing
• $57 billion - the potential size of the market for print services and solutions to support the business print and digital imaging environment across the globe
• $5 billion - the total contract value of HP's managed print services offering worldwide
• 450,000 - the number of devices currently under management by HP
• 18 billion - the number of pages printer per year by HP's managed print services customers