HP evolves to face market

In a year of major change, Hewlett-Packard's services division also transformed, starting with its name. After acquiring EDS Corp. in 2008 for $13.9 billion, the company dropped the EDS name in late 2009, creating HP Enterprise Services to reflect its broadened areas of expertise.

“The name change represents the next major step and the integration of EDS into HP and emphasizes the growing global role of enterprise technology services in HP’s portfolio,” said Dennis Stolkey, senior vice president of HP Enterprise Services' U.S. Public Sector. The company earned the No. 12 spot on the Top 100 with $2.6 billion in prime contracts.

Stolkey said the growing global role for HP will be concentrated on three key areas in 2010: cybersecurity, federal health care and intelligence.

“Cybersecurity is the biggest threat to both the public and private sector, and every day it continues to grow,” Stolkey said. “Five years ago, we were worried about hackers, but look how it’s graduated,” he said, rattling off frightening examples, such as the Spanish takedown of three ringleaders of a 12.7 million-strong botnet army that breached 40 banks and NASA’s reported loss of 30 million pages to hostile actors through security breaches. “We want to help our clients address this issue,” he said.

Another pressing issue is the Obama administration's health care mandate, which Stolkey said has created a number of opportunities for HP Enterprise Services. “We’re looking to continue to help the government control health care costs, expand health coverage, close loopholes in existing programs, reduce fraud and utilize electronic records,” he said.

The HP-EDS merger is facilitating the company’s ability to take on not only the hot-button issues but also an array of equally important if less glamorous pursuits. The company’s most significant events of the past year represent the variety of aspects in which it supports the government at the federal and state levels.

In one of its biggest moves of the year, HP Enterprise Services established a new Defense Command and Control Infrastructure practice, led by retired Rear Adm. Elizabeth Hight, former vice director of the Defense Information Systems Agency. Stolkey said the new practice will help the company’s defense clients transform their information technology environments for mission success and get HP Enterprise Services' various offerings more clearly aligned with mission needs in decision-making and warfare domains.

In other prominent Washington roles, Stolkey said that on May 21, HP Enterprise Services finalized migration to support the Treasury Department Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Integrated Mobile Employee Technology Refresh and Optimization program. He added that another important contract activity is the renewal of an agreement to provide systems engineering and technical support for DISA’s Multinational Information Sharing program.

Stolkey’s organization also is going beyond the federal sphere, including a four-and-a-half year, $245 million deal inked last year to consolidate and digitize the records of more than 40 offender data systems for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The project will “transform the organization into a digital environment,” Stolkey said.

And HP Enterprise Services continues to undergo transformations of its own. Behind the new programs and contracts is growth that will be the backbone of company success in 2010.

“We’re growing through acquisition, yes, but also through organic means,” Stolkey said. “We’re doing better than market, and we are hiring like crazy, especially for people with security clearances.”

The extra hands on deck should be able to help the company face the market challenges Stolkey said he sees ahead this year, including the issue of funding delays as federal, state and local governments face massive deficits. The company is also feeling the pinch of a DOD mandate to insource 40,000 jobs, particularly in the acquisition arena. “Companies around the Beltway, including us, are feeling some movement," Stolkey said. "Government is hiring away some of our people.”

It’s a challenge with a silver lining for job seekers, and one Stolkey and his company will gladly take. “We can put good, smart people to work all day long,” he said.