HP Gives CIOs Sharper View Of Performance Metrics

The suite includes HP IT Executive Scorecard, which gathers performance data from multiple sources in the IT environment, including HP and third party products, and packages it into a unified dashboard view. Another new offering, CIO Edition Standard, combines IT Executive Scorecard with pre-integrated modules for financial planning and analysis, project and portfolio management, and asset management.

HP already had IT management, scorecard and dashboard features -- what's new is HP's ability to offer a "holistic view" of the customer's IT environment, according to Piet Loubser, senior director of product marketing for HP Software. By offering a common system for IT performance metrics, HP says it can help CIOs figure out how to better leverage investment in areas like virtualization, cloud and mobility.

"One longstanding problem for CIOs is point solution sales. They need to demonstrate value and cut costs, and they can't drop the ball on compliance," Loubser said in an interview. "By providing a holistic measurement of IT, you can provide IT leaders with the opportunity to think about the bigger picture."

IT Executive Scorecard pre-loads data automatically from HP's own applications, and through technology from SAP and Business Objects, it can also pull in data from any source within the IT environment. Through this functionality, customers can do a TCO calculation and make adjustments as needed, Loubser said.

The key concept behind IT Executive Scorecard is to turn transactional data into real information, said Karen Dicks, managing director and vice president of Melillo Consulting, a Somerset, N.J.-based HP partner. "It's valuable for me to have an overarching system that pulls information from a variety of software products in an organization. It also solves problems with data not being current or accurate because it has been manually pulled together," said Dicks.

In addition to performance management, IT Executive Scorecard includes some 50 key performance indicators (KPIs). These work with the dashboard to give administrators a sense of whether the IT environment's performance is meeting expectations. HP has identified around 170 KPIs overall and plans to add these in future releases, Loubser said.

Channel partners with the necessary services skills can also add compatibility to custom built applications, Loubser said.

"We believe this is an opportunity for partners to build connections to the data. Some have skills and knowledge about parts of the environment, and they can implement these very well," he said.