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Never underestimate the power of a big stick.
In July 2005, Hewlett-Packard set out on a mission to half the number of applications it used and shutter 79 of its 85 data centers. The move, as The Wall Street Journal reports, was part of HP CEO Mark Hurd’s goal to drastically cut the percentage of company revenue spent on information technology from about 5% -- or about $4.2 billion -- to 2%.
But, the Journal says, HP’s chief information officer Randy Mott was, in his own words, “blindsided” to find out eight months into the project that the company had twice as many applications as it originally thought.
He also ran into resistance from other business units, according to the Journal, which didn’t want to participate in the IT consolidation effort. Several vice presidents dug their heels in. Mott told the Journal that some units stood up and said “We're not going to give you a cost-benefit analysis (for why we use the IT we have). We're just going to tell you what product we want.”
To address the problem, Hurd and Mott got the support of the company’s board.
And then the hammer came down. Hurd threatened to fire executives who continued to stonewall the effort.
Mott then went back and, using the new number of applications, began his tech consolidation effort anew. By July 2006, he told the Journal, the project was back on track. The company now has six data centers and expects the number of applications it uses to decline by 1,600 this year alone.
The Journal then quoted a presentation Hurd gave to a gathering of HP information technology executives: "There are going to be booby traps all along the way if you have a culture like we do at HP," he said. But, he said, the solution is top management support. "Getting the CEO lined up is hard, and that's the key person," he said.
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