HP is betting its future on big data and is hoping its acquisition of software company Autonomy will help drive its customers into the ‘next generation’ of information. This according to Eyad Shihabi, MD, HP Middle East.
“Autonomy is a significant acquisition because of the content they bring to the game from the solutions perspective. The vision they have has set a different perspective for HP,” Shihabi said.
HP completed its $10 billion acquisition of Autonomy in October after being impressed by the firm’s next-generation information platform.
According to Shihabi, HP has now integrated this into its own new information optimisation solution, which provides enterprises with the capabilities to understand and dissect the masses of unstructured information from messaging and social media.
“In 2011 almost 1.8 billion zeta bytes of data was generated. We’re expecting by 2020 about 35 billion zeta bytes of information,” Shihabi said.
“There are about 97,000 tweets every second, and there is a lot of information in the tweets we can use from a business perspective. There are 12 million SMSes every minute. There are 294 billion emails a day. So how can businesses benefit from this explosion of information? We have the right portfolio of products and services to be able to help our customers to go out and really unleash the power of information,” he added.
HP has already put together half of the team to bring its information optimisation solution to the Middle East market, with the full team expected to be completed by March.
Shihabi believes the 2008 economic collapse led to businesses understanding the transforming power of IT and how it can enable organisational functioning, which in turn led them to invest in new forms of infrastructure and virtualisation. “Where things started to become difficult for our customer is they ended up with massive amounts of data and information,” Shihabi said.
HP claims it is investing heavily in its information optimisation solution and capitalising on the rise of social media.
“When you have insight into information you can then think. It’s unlimited – the sky is truly the limit to some of the benefits you can get from this. It is an opportunity for businesses to increase their revenue, and be able to come up with new sources of information,” Shihabi said.
