The Cube - HP New Support Reality - Scott Weller, HP, with John Furrier and Dave Vellante

Scott Weller, the VP of the support business within HP’s technology services group, stopped by theCube  after Hewlett-Packard’s announcement of the new Always On support portfolio to discuss some of the trends in his field (see the full interview below).

He started off by outlining a product from his point of view: hardware and propriety, often third party software elements that make up the stack or platform, which powers customers’ apps.  Weller says that because these customers care more about the apps than the infrastructure powering it, it becomes a challenge for them to solve any backend issues that can arise – and this is where his unit and Always On come in. In his words, HP is helping to ‘comprehend the stack,’ and the support line of business has been setup to try and address issues from top to bottom.

Turning the interview to another direction, Weller started talking about the client’s point of view midway through the interview. Specifically he addressed automation, and refuted the myth that automation drives down the labor associated with keeping IT up and running.

Companies are working with multi-vendor environments more and more, which results in complexity that requires a high-quality talent pool to handle it all. Weller noted that this is true within HP as well, and that the company is seeking people with a broader skill set, even in areas such as sales.

IT is becoming increasingly complicated as it weaves into new business models, and the CIO is the executive that’s in change of this reform. The person holding that position in a company is a service broker rather than a manager these days, Weller said, simply because of the sheer amount of sourcing options at hands. Governing processes and decisions is becoming more important than anything else.