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HP, the world’s largest IT company, unveiled a series of state-of-the-art products and solutions specially designed to help over 8 million small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in India leverage IT for business growth, achieve sustainability through green IT and create immersive experiences for better customer intimacy.
The SMB sector accounts for 30 per cent of the total commercial IT spend in India. According to ICT market intelligence firm, IDC, the biggest market transformation the sector will experience in 2010 will be business’s attitudes toward technology, which will be increasingly viewed as integral to long-term success.
“Businesses are constantly in a race to think and react faster than others, more so in the year of recovery”, said Chua Hwee Koon, Vice President, Mobile Business Unit, Personal Systems Group, HP Asia Pacific and Japan. “As organizations refresh their technology, it is imperative that their investments in IT create business efficiencies, lower total cost of ownership and allow them to scale quickly to match business growth. Businesses that invest innovatively in technology will be in the best position to take advantage of the recovery. Innovation was the one currency that never lost its value during the crisis.”
To maximise the impact technology can have on the SMB sector in India, HP addressed the challenges that CIOs are facing in 2010 as they rethink their IT investments to position for growth in the recovering economy. The company also showcased a series of innovative solutions in action in a variety of business, education and retail environments. Each scenario featured real life situations and tied back to three areas in which the company believes the biggest opportunities currently lie:
1. Leveraging IT for Business Growth
As new technologies like cloud emerge and traditional technologies evolve, CIOs are continuously looking to reduce the complexity of technology in the entire enterprise, reduce total cost of ownership yet scale for business growth. Through scalable solutions that are easy to manage and focusing on enabling a secure mobile workforce, CIOs can leverage IT for business growth.
2. Green IT for Sustainability
Climate change is putting pressure on governments and businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. At the same time, businesses and governments need to collaborate easily beyond borders. HP is enabling collaboration while reducing carbon emissions with transformational technology like HP SkyRoom.
HP SkyRoom is affordable HD videoconferencing software that offers live, real-time collaboration for face-to-face meetings to link people and their content. With HP SkyRoom, air travel can be reduced as distance and time zones can be bridged for business professionals to meet and collaborate virtually.
In 2010, the majority of enterprises will spend more on power than on hardware according to IDC. Costs related to energy consumption have become a business constraint for growth. As an environmental leader, HP is leading the way to help businesses manage power costs with products that have energy-efficient features.
3. Immersive experiences for Better Customer Intimacy
HP also showcased how enhanced customer intimacy can be achieved by transforming traditional retail environments into enriched retail environments through the Points of Attraction; Entry; Consideration and Purchase with its portfolio of digital signage and retail Point-of-Sale products and solutions.
Apart from this, businesses also benefit from HP’s unrivalled ecosystem of industry leading channel partners, technology partners and business consulting and systems integration partners. In India, for example, the company currently has over 3,500 channel partners comprising of Premium Business Partners, Business Partners and Registered Resellers.
In addition, HP Total Care offers company’s a range of free and fee-based support, services, options and programs for every stage of their computer’s life: from choosing it to configuring it, to protecting it, to tuning it, and ultimately recycling it.
The HP Smart Finance in association with ICICI Bank takes this support a step ahead by enabling customers to get the most from his/her IT budget. It makes technology solutions easy to own and easy on the balance sheet, enabling the customer to focus financial and other resources on managing and growing its business.
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SMB/SME News 
