IT life: Nick Lazaridis, HP Inc.
Nick Lazaridis, HP Inc’s President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa talks about his career in IT and the biggest challenges he’s facing at the moment
What is your role and who do you work for?
I’m the President of EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) for HP Inc. In this role I am responsible for HP Inc’s business across the region.
How long have you been in IT?
I’ve worked in IT for my entire career, starting out at Acer, followed by stints at Dell, Lenovo, and AMD. I’ve been at HP for over four years already – first in Singapore as COO, then Senior Vice President for Printing and Personal Systems for Asia Pacific and Japan. Last November I took on the role as President for EMEA at HP Inc. following the separation of the business.
What is your most interesting project to date?
There are so many incredible projects across the HP universe that it’s hard to choose one! At the moment, I’m excited by our acquisition of Samsung’s printing business, which will truly disrupt and reinvent the $55 billion (£45.7bn) A3 copier market.
We’re also working hard to emphasise our services offerings, with a greater focus on our sizeable and growing contractual business. And beyond that we’re ramping up on 3D printing and blended reality.
What is your biggest challenge at the moment?
At HP we say that challenge equals opportunity, and opportunity equals growth – so it’s important we’re more than equal to our challenges!
The main challenge for us, over the last year, has been setting up the world’s largest startup – the new HP. While staying true to our values, we set out to completely reinvent ourselves.
The separation has given us the freedom to be more autonomous, and to invest more in R&D. As a result, the impact has been phenomenal – our innovation is better than ever, and we’re breaking into new categories and disrupting entire markets, 3D and the A3 copier market being prime examples, but also in our core print and personal systems businesses.
What technology were you working with ten years ago?
We were working with PCs that were three times as big, three times heavier, three times slower, and three times more expensive!. A 100 gigabyte hard disk drive and 2 gigabytes of system memory were considered “premium” (today we have 1 terrabyte of storage and 8 to 16 gigabytes of system memory). We were connecting to printers on our desks, with a bundle of wires involved. In fact, we were mostly tethered to our desks for the majority of our working lives also!
Technology has come so far and is so much better today. And in 10 years’ time, with the impact of blended, virtual, and augmented reality, it will be unrecognisable from today.
What is your favourite technology of all time?
It would have to be the invention of the IC, without which entire industries we know today and our way of life today would not be possible. Think about the world before and after integrated circuits, there has been no invention so important to advancements in the world’s technology than this “little big” invention!
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