HPE Launches ‘Pointnext’ To Provide Digital Transformation As-A-Service

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has launched a revamped technology services organisation called Pointnext, focused on guiding customers through their digital transformation journeys.

Drawing experience from a range of disciplines and industries, HPE Pointnext will collaborate with customers around their adoption and implementation of key technologies such as cloud computing, big data and  the Internet of Things (IoT).

Through three types of services – Advisory & Transform, Professional and Operational – Pointnext aims to help businesses harness the power of hybrid IT, data analytics and mobile platforms to enhance customer experiences, deliver new products and improve operational processes.

HPE Pointnext

At a press event in London, HPE execs explained how the advisory & transform stage is focused on collaborating with customers to design a technology roadmap that suits their specific needs. Then comes the implementation, i.e. professional services, where HPE guides customers through the transitional phase of technology adoption.

Finally, an operational services team will manage the outcome of this transformation, optimising workloads, resources and capacity to keep clients’ businesses running at peak performance.

“We think it’s very important to approach our customers with an end-to-end, holistic approach,” said Eric Pradier, EMEA VP & GM of Technology Services Consulting.  “They need advice at the beginning, they need to shape the right way, they need to map the different transformations they will have to do and then they need to be helped to architect the different technologies and the different solutions.”

“Some customers want us to do it directly with them. Some customers want us to do it together with our partners, together with system integrators. We have a very simple rule; the customer decides how we wants to do it and we adapt to that.”

HPE’s MD of UK and Ireland Marc Waters emphasised this last point, saying how being unlike a traditional system integrator or outsourcer enables this adaptability: “We have highly flexible capabilities across those three blocks so we can operate as a full end-to-end lifecycle or the component parts as required, depending on what stage an organisation is on their digitisation journey.”

Speed and agility

Two of the key characteristics of the new organisation that were really hammered home during the event this morning were the importance of speed and agility, both of which Pointnext apparently has in spades.

“We know what’s happening in the marketplace in every industry with the disruption caused by digital and the need for digital transformation across all organisations,” Waters said. “Companies, whatever sector they operate in, need to accelerate their digital strategy. It’s about speed and we have the expertise and the capabilities to get organisations there faster.”

This need for speed was echoed by Pradier, who said: “Everything is about acceleration because we all know that any business at the moment is at risk and could be disrupted if they don’t accelerate on digital transformation.”

And agility is equally as important, both in responding to the needs of the customer and adapting to an ever-changing market rife with technological innovation.

This also trickles down into the customers, with one of HPE Pointnext’s mandates being to ensure clients have “the right agility to cope with the transformation that they will have to implement going forward”.

HPE is certainly not holding back when it comes to Pointnext, through which it will hope to become the go-to vendor for those businesses starting out on, or looking to develop, their digital transformation journeys.

“We want to make a bold statement that we are very, very strong in services,” concluded Herbert Rastbichler, EMEA VP  and GM of Technology Services Support. “We have the framework that is pointing our customers towards what’s coming next in technology.”

Quiz: The world of tech in 2016