Hewlett-Packard Company: Strategic Partners For Internet Services

Abstract

The explosive increase in traffic on the Internet has been met by an
equally explosive increase in corporate interest in this electronic
medium. More and more companies are seeking to exploit opportunities in
the nascent marketing arena of the World Wide Web. Others are using the
Internet as an information warehouse and public communications network,
providing employees free access to the databases and e-mail services of
the information highway. Many are hoping to establish their own presence
on the World Wide Web as a means of disseminating information about
products and services to clients and customers.

Immediately, these companies confront myriad issues of access, security,
design and training. A partner such as Hewlett-Packard Company, with the
experience and knowledge born of decades in the networking and
internetworking fields, can help these companies realize their corporate
Internet vision.

Overview

Internet growth is a well-documented fact. Within the last five years, more
than 100,000 hosts have been added to the information highway. Behind
these host locations are subnetworks of other hosts numbering in the
millions. The number of end users accessing the Internet and World Wide
Web through on-line service providers or custom accounts can only be
estimated from the four terrabytes of data traversing the Net per day.

The Internet is commonly understood to be an information resource.
Databases operated by governments, universities and corporations provide
an unprecedented pool of information for anyone with the knowledge and
skills to access and search them.

The Internet also serves millions of end users as a global e-mail network.
Internet e-mail is faster than postal or overnight mail services and far
less expensive than voice telephony. It is quickly becoming a primary
vehicle for exchanging thoughts and facilitating understanding.

A key feature of the Internet is the World Wide Web. The Web comprises Home
Pages established by individuals, businesses and government organizations.
Home Pages are used to disseminate information, market products and
provide support services for "surfers" -- visitors who access the pages
and their functions.

More and more companies are seeking to exploit opportunities on the
Internet. Some are purchasing access on behalf of employees and
implementing connectivity from their internal networks and internetworks
to the "Internet with a capital 'I'." In so doing, they hope to enhance
their competitiveness in the marketplace through better market
intelligence and improved communications with clients, customers and
traveling personnel.

Other companies are setting up electronic storefronts -- corporate Home
Pages -- on the Internet to increase visibility and brand-name recognition
among the user community, to market products and disseminate product
information, and to facilitate customer feedback and product support.

The business drivers for participation in the Internet are simple and
profound. Many experts assert that companies not doing business on the
Internet in 1996 will likely be out of business by the year 2000. Business
leaders repeatedly assert that it is strategically important that their
organizations have an Internet presence, if only to appear in step with
their competitors. A few already are using the Internet as a vehicle for
reducing costs and expanding profitability. In addition, Internet services
already are a profit center for many firms.

Challenges

Companies are well aware of the potential profits to be gleaned from
Internet participation, but they immediately confront challenges in
realizing their vision. These challenges include access, security and
control, Home Page design and employee training. The demand for quality
guidance in realizing a corporate Internet presence has outstripped
available resources.

Business demands have led to the creation of an undisciplined and unpoliced
cadre of Internet-access providers and consultants who field poorly
designed Internet solutions that cost their clients millions of dollars
annually. This is evidenced by the numbers of Internet marketers who have
removed Home Pages from the World Wide Web nearly as quickly as they have
posted them.

Specifically, companies need competent Internet assistance in the following
areas:

 Access: Companies need to identify how they will use the Internet,
 how much and what kinds of access they need and what the most
 cost-effective means for realizing their goals is. Also of concern
 is the stability of Internet-access method, or on-ramp, and the
 scaling of on-ramp services to company needs.

 Security/Control: Companies need to consider the security of their
 internal hosts, networks and internetworks in the face of highly
 publicized security breeches resulting from Internet hackers and
 others. Moreover, they need policies and procedures to control
 the use of the Internet by internal personnel: to prevent Web
 surfing from becoming a drain on productivity and to prevent
 malicious programs from being introduced into internal systems
 and nets via files that are downloaded from the Internet.

 Design and Planning: Internet Home Pages can help or hinder a
 company's image. Proper design is extremely important, as are
 knowledgeable implementation and maintenance. Planning also is
 required to identify internal corporate changes that may be required
 to facilitate Home Page services, such as on-line product ordering,
 information requests and technical-support questions. For companies
 electing to establish Home Pages and Internet access using internal
 servers, careful configuration planning is the only means to ensure
 investment protection in platform and network technology.

 Training: The entire Internet vision of a company will fail if
 personnel responsible for administering Internet access, as well
 as corporate end users of the Internet, are not fully trained
 in the tools and methods deployed. Software for server management,
 TCP/IP connectivity, network monitoring and administration, Web
 browsing, Home Page design, Web searching and even e-mail editing
 often are cryptic. Many companies report that, in fact, difficulties
 in getting users on-line with the Internet are more time-consuming
 than establishing secure and stable Internet access.

Against the backdrop of these challenges is the challenge of finding a
reputable firm with the demonstrated capability to help companies realize
their Internet vision. Few vendors combine the hands-on knowledge in
networking and internetworking with an intimate understanding of the
Internet, Home Page design and security that are needed to provide a
comprehensive solution. This is unacceptable to business leaders for whom
an Internet presence is a strategic direction.

"Hewlett Packard fields one of the largest corporate internetworks in the
world," said Robert R. (Bob) Walker, HP director of Corporate Information
Systems. "We are actually using the same technologies to connect our
offices worldwide that the Internet uses to connect its Web. Our internal
network technology is based on TCP/IP. We use home pages internally on our
network, and more than 70,000 copies of Web-browser software have been
deployed on desktops throughout the company to access these internal web
pages.

"The same Web browsers are used to surf the Internet. Our employees are big
users of Internet Web Sites as well. We use the Web to tap into rich
sources of information. We also use the e-mail on the public Internet. In
the second quarter of this year, we had traffic in the range of four
million messages -- two/thirds incoming and one/third outgoing."

Walker says that HP's experience already has led the company to confront
and surmount challenges that other companies will face once they make
their connections to the public Internet. The most significant challenge
is that of information management and its two paradigms. The first is
e-mail, or "pushed" information.  Companies will need to manage how they
push their messages to their customers and clients once they are on the
Internet. The second paradigm is pull-based information. The Web is a good
example of this paradigm: You need to figure out how to place information
on a home page so it can be accessed and pulled easily by the people who
need it. HP's internal experience may be of help to companies that want to
establish an effective Internet presence.

"We have more than five terrabytes of data moving over an internal network
comprising hundreds of routers and tens of thousands of links, " said
Michael Moy, a network infrastructure manager at HP. "We are connected to
the Internet at six locations, providing research interfaces for our labs
environment, support for our joint partnerships, and more and more
connections with a commerce focus.

"We also have one of the few IP networks in the world that charge back to
their departments for network usage. Plus we provide all of our own
internal support, including network management, monitoring and resource
control."

Moy says that the extensive use made internally and externally of popular
Internet Web-browsing and e-mail software and the feedback collected from
HP employees, positions HP with a unique understanding of most products.

"Many people in my organization have now moved into Internet consulting
services as part of HP's Professional Services Organization," said Rick
Nordensten, data networks manager at HP. "They previously were responsible
for wide area networking between HP sites. They know more than most
experts about data and file transfers and Internet connections.

"We have more than 80,000 hosts, including HP 3000s, personal computers and
workstations connected to about 800 routers at this point in the United
States, Asia and Europe. There is about 50 percent to 75 percent growth in
e-mail traffic per year. Managing this kind of network gives you the kind
of knowledge you can leverage to support HP customers."

"HP's vast experience in network management and connectivity is a large
part of the knowledge bank available to HP customers," said Randy Whiting,
manager of electronic sales promotion at HP. "We also share the experience
of our customers in another important way. Just like many businesses, we
needed to find creative ways to interact with our customers
electronically. We needed to take what we had collected about customer
preferences and awareness, map that to the tens of thousands of products
and services offered by HP, and make ourselves an easier company to do
business with."

In April 1994, Whiting's organization launched an Internet home page for
sales and marketing. This event was part of the CommerceNet Launch, in
which HP and Whiting were heavily involved.

"We put together a team of content, infrastructure and technical people and
created the ACCESS-HP Web Page," said Whiting. "In retrospect, it was not
glitzy, but there is more to being successful than a flashy home page. We
put the focus on providing information to support customer relations. That
was a big challenge because there was a lot of information: three thousand
to five thousand pages of sales and marketing content and ten times that
amount of technical information.

"We had to deal with a classic issue -- the advertising mentality vs. the
mission-critical information-support service mentality. We found a balance
that would give HP its first Internet presence while providing a
significant improvement in our technical-support services. By putting
technical-support information, plus drivers for printers and other
devices, on our Home Page, we could reduce the number of telephone-support
requests. The page has paid for itself many times over. Plus, we get a lot
of feedback in e-mail from visitors to the site indicating that the reason
they purchased our product is because of information they got from our
Home Page.

"HP Labs has pushed the envelope to develop more-personalized and
better-designed Home Pages for internal and external use. We have
developed new methods of data indexing and content architectures that will
be of great use to HP customers who tap our capabilities in this area."
 
 =========================================================
 From the 'New Product News' Electronic News Service on...
 AOL (Keyword = New Products) and Delphi (GO COMP PROD)
 =========================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 company/author mentioned. For additional details, please
 contact them directly at the address/phone# indicated.
 Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
 =========================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  USA
 Email: rbakerpc@delphi.com  -or- RBakerPC (on AOL/Delphi)
 =========================================================
