Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane Defends Strategy Shift at the 2011 InformationWeek 500 Conference

DANA POINT, Calif., Sept. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Speaking at this year's InformationWeek 500 Conference, Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane and Chief Technology Strategy Officer Shane Robison discussed HP's change in strategy and the confusion that followed in the market.  HP announced in August that it would buy the software company Autonomy, end production of the TouchPad tablet computer, and explore spinning off its PC business.  The executives acknowledged the company didn't communicate the changes well, and they explained how HP will become a strictly enterprise-focused IT vendor with particular depth in managing unstructured data—the 85% of information that isn't managed within the columns and rows of conventional databases.

"Predictability is important, but technology companies that just keep doing what they are doing, die," Lane said. "You have to keep changing, and that's uniquely important in the technology business."

In a candid conversation with InformationWeek SVP and Editorial Director Fritz Nelson, Lane said HP was not a leader in consumer devices, describing HP's TouchPad tablet as "a generation behind" the iPad.  HP will continue to support its webOS mobile operating system.  By separating webOS from the hardware business, Lane said HP will be able to take advantage of what he described as "the best platform in the world" for commercial application development.  "You cannot develop serious, portable applications on Android," Lane said, noting that the Web app development platform behind webOS can port applications to Android, Apple iOS, and Windows, as well as webOS.

For complete coverage of the discussion with Lane and Robison at the InformationWeek 500 Conference, please visit http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterprise_apps/231601245.

The 2011 InformationWeek 500 Conference takes place at the St. Regis Monarch Beach in Southern California from September 11 – 13.  Attending are more than 325 influential CIOs and IT executives representing companies such as FedEx, JetBlue Airways, San Francisco Giants, Vail Resorts and Prudential Financial.  The conference is sponsored by: Cognizant, Dell and Intel, HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division, IBM, Information Builders, Microsoft, MphasiS (an HP company), Rimini Street, Inc., Riverbed, SuccessFactors, Syniverse, VMware, Vidyo, Inc., and Workday.

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wng@techweb.com

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