As part of integrating its 2008 purchase of the Electronic Data Systems services company, now known as HP Enterprise Services, Hewlett-Packard announced a combination of seven products and services intended to help user organizations transform applications.
In particular, the portfolio is intended to help make user organizations more flexible and able to rid themselves of application backlog, much of which includes products with functionality that duplicates that of other products. The applications and services help user organizations discover applications in their environment, eliminate duplicated and outdated applications, create a cloud-based environment, modernize their client environment, and improve security.
HP has been selected by the Flemish government--essentially, the county of Flanders, in Belgium--as its main information and communications technology partner, says Luc Chauvin, ICT manager. The purpose of the seven-year contract is to deliver e-government services to the organization's 6 million citizens, he says.
"The environment consists of several key components to enable fast and efficient e-government services: user identification and management, access control management, data interchange through a service-oriented architecture structure, and a digital signature platform." These components are used as generic building blocks to deploy services to the public, such as study grants and building permits, including, in some cases, an automatic proactive delivery "push" model as opposed to a reactive "pull" model, he says.
Organizations are bringing new applications in, but not switching old applications off, says Paul Muller, VP of strategic marketing for HP Software, claiming that organizations can be more flexible the fewer applications they have. HP Application Portfolio Management software, delivered as a service, helps users discover applications, while the Application Rationalization Service helps them plan how to eliminate duplicates.
