As previously done in my blog, I've invited Antonio Rodriguez, Chief Technologist for HP's IPG Inkjet and Web Solutions Group, to share his thoughts in this blog.
Here it is:
I am really excited about the recent organizational move inside HP's Imaging and Printing Group, and my new role in it, for two reasons, both of which have to do with the tech environment we find ourselves living in today:
Coming of the cloud
1. Clouds, clouds as far as the eye can see— but the good kind, of course. The shift to cloud architectures is now officially inevitable, and over the next 5-7 years this redistribution of compute cycles and storage is going to ripple through everything; from today's current web services to desktop printers. We need to get ahead of it by understanding exactly what it means to each of our key customer segments.
For instance, what does it mean for me as a user if my image collection can exist in a "bottomless" hard drive on my PC, where the entire repository can be synchronized, replicated, and backed up quietly behind the scenes? Does this change the notion of upload?
Sharing? What I might want in terms of output?
Another example: what does a driver born of the cloud mean for me as a printer customer? Smaller install footprint? An Internet-addressable printer? All of these questions, and many more, are key to what we are going to have to start answering for the consumer use cases inside of HP's Inkjet and Web Solutions Group. And we won't be able to do it without starting from the pooled engineering talent we've got in this new group.
2. The blinking VCR clock syndrome hits the Internet big time
If Apple has taught us anything with the iPod/iPhone ecosystem, it is that customers will reward solutions as opposed to point products. I don't want a music player any more than I want a set of engine pistons — I want a way to consume music whenever, wherever. Ditto for the smart phone: what I want is a set of experiences around the my media, web, email, and my contacts. Users are no longer willing to play the role of plumber, hand-assembling solutions out of disparate pieces. For our part, this means we're going to have to start to retool our printers, web services, retail touchpoints— in short all of the elements of the ecosystem that IPG has worked so hard to put together over the last two decades. We're going to need to rip all of assumptions apart (and some of our offerings) and begin from a set of consumer experiences we are looking to make delightful (and I don't choose this word lightly). This one will not come without pain, but the alternative— becoming irrelevant— is far, far worse.
The science fiction writer William Gibson wrote "the future is here; it's just not widely distributed." As I've sat inside IPG over the last year, I've seen bits and pieces of it all over the place. Now it's time to take it to market, in a big way.
Posted
06-23-2008 4:09 PM
by
psipgcto