The Engadget Interview: HP’s Stephen DeWitt

HP caught the industry without notice yesterday, announcing some serious executive reshuffling, with Stephen DeWitt, the company’s former head of non-public Systems Group Americas stepping up to fill within the lead role at HP’s webOS global business unit, while Jon Rubinstein could be in control of PSG globally. This game of executive musical chairs raised numerous questions relating to the state of the company’s beloved but arguably underperforming mobile operating system, particularly inside the wake of the TouchPad’s lukewarm reception amongst reviewers, ourselves included .

We managed to seize your time with DeWitt, no matter what’s certain to be a reasonably packed schedule at this time, discussing the impact of the TouchPad’s reviews, the prevailing and way forward for webOS, and what smartphone he carries around in his pocket.

Are you able to give us a little bit background on yourself?

i have been running the computer business of HP, here within the Americas. I joined HP three years ago. The “FedEx” version of what i have been doing: I’m an established techie, did my first startup after I was a young person, after which served at the executive staffs of Symantec within the early 90s, Cisco within the mid-90s, left there and did my first full-blown startup because the CEO of Cobalt Networks. We were a pioneer within the server appliance space. Everybody said we couldn’t tackle companies like HP and Dell, but we did a fairly darn good job. We took the corporate public after which sold it to Sun for a number of billion dollars earlier this century. After which I stayed on with Sun to redefine their Edge computing strategy.

I left to do another startup called Azul Systems, which was a pioneer in massive throughput computing, primarily designed for enormous parallel workloads like transaction processing, reservation systems, etc. So I’ve seen the primary unit exit the door, and i have also seen the 100 millionth unit exit the door. I’ve operated in every geography world wide. I had the chance to work with HP — the goal of bringing me on was to rework what has historically been a business defined by the gross margin and transaction (what percentage dollars are you able to eke out of a computer?), to a relationship-driven model. And that is what we’ve been engaged on. A ton of stuff was accomplished. I’ll bring that very same passion for experience and global reach to webOS.

Are there any specific products that you’ve got worked on at it slow at HP so you might point to as successes?

It is not just products. It’s really experiences greater than anything. I’ll provide you with an example — inside the last 24 months, we’ve opened nearly 275 HP stores. You do not see any of them here, because them all was opened in places like Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. We now have dramatically overhauled our online experience. We’re within the process immediately of moving from a transactional model to a relationship model. Our support systems — literally everything round the products — is moving to a model of elite support 7 / 24 / 365.

Look what we’re doing with the Butler system surrounding the TouchPad. We all know everyone is going to get excited once they come home and tear that shrinkwrap off. We wish to be sure that experience is flawless. That Butler paradigm is extending across everything we do. Our transformation is available in lot of various shapes and sizes.

Are you interested by expanding the HP Store model into the States?

Well, we have already got awesome retail representation here within the States. In the event you walk right into a Best Buy this weekend and go searching, i feel you are going to see an evolved experience from what the old retail experience was inside the US. The era of getting a table packed with PCs with out identity around them goes away, and it has been replaced with a way more intimate experience. We’re working with people like Best Buy and Staples — Staples does an excellent job of moving customer data, of creating sure that initial experience is superb. And we need the Butler paradigm to increase throughout all of our retailer partners.

Are we bringing HP stores to the united states? That is not in our plan. But what’s in our plans is transforming the retail experience, and we’ll work with our partners to do this.

You’ve got a variety of experience being inside the position of the underdog, previous to working at HP. Is that the way you view webOS in its current state?

I appreciate the underdog, i assume, because I’m a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, and you’ve got to be an underdog. But I’m a son of an entrepreneur, and my dad beat into my head as a tender man that I should build my very own businesses, innovate, don’t let people set my agenda. I went to an entrepreneurial college — Babson. I did my first startup once I was a teen. i like technology. It is the only industry i have been in, and i have had the chance to play on various sides.

Are we an underdog on this battle? Look, Apple came to the market two years before we did with their iPad. We all know all about their iPad, we all know all about what it does well, we all know all about what Apple’s doing. That’s great. I’ve always applauded companies on this industry which have been innovation pioneers. HP has an extended history of being an innovation pioneer, to boot. Actually, we’ve created many, many industries, we’ve spun off many companies. HP has innovative roots. That’s why I came here, to innovate at another scale.

i believe that the way forward for computing goes to be about maintaining your state, about taking everything that matters to you, your content, your apps, and holding your state against any screen you study. That is the way forward for computing. With a view to get from where we’re today, the devices, the technology, the platform, the developer community, each of the global
ramifications to that, you are not going to do that in a federated model, you are going to must do that with a well-orchestrated, global community that may drive this. i believe that’s as big a chance and forward pass as anywhere within the industry, and that is the reason why I’m fired as much as do it.

You will have quite a lot of experience at the business side of the spectrum — do you notice the TouchPad as a primarily business-minded tablet?

No, because we are not business and consumer, anymore. It’s you. All that matters is you. You are the design center. It isn’t, “oh, here, we wish to sell a product to someone who works at Bank of America,” or, “we wish to sell a product to Jane Doe in Findlay, OH.” We wish to sell products that permit your own identity to be reflected in that device, and we wish to make accessibility to that flawless — the complete human factors: touch, voice, video. One of several beautiful things about webOS is how awesome the accessibility is inside the platform, and if we are able to add to that accessibility unique services for the developer community, like Synergy and an entire slew of alternative things we’ve stated (and believe me, we have much more within the hopper), we expect that’s a gorgeous powerful combo.

There are specific elements that must be incorporated into the device if it will attract users at the enterprise and SMB side. Do you’re feeling that the TouchPad fulfills those needs in its current state?

Absolutely, and if they are not there, we’re probably responsive to them. And one point i would like to make in this is — hold small businesses aside at the present — one size would not fit all. And among the realities about selling to the economic world is, you cannot just throw it over the fence and say, “oh, I’m eager about that product, make it work.” You have to customize, you have to bring an application portfolio out to those devices. It has got to have all levels of security, from remote wipe if the device goes rogue — how do you’re making sure it doesn’t go bad — to the relationship into corporate data.

And incidentally, not everyone’s legacy apps were built an analogous way by an identical code base. There is a lot of labor there, and a key a part of what we’re gonna do is build such a mobility practices that may be extended both through our service organization — and as , we’ve a good looking substantial service organization. We acquired EDS a few years ago. There’s 175,000 employees over there which can be all day, on a daily basis running the IT infrastructure for many star companies that we know and love.

We’re gonna bring this portfolio into that world and permit them to tailor solutions to their specific environment. You can not fake that. There’s work there, and we expect we’re well positioned to deliver that.

I imagine you’ve seen most, if not all the TouchPad reviews. The reception for many reviewers was fairly lukewarm. What’s your reaction to the criticism?

Well, look what we got criticized on. I’ve gotta love this. First individuals are saying that we have got a fat device. You want a cord to power an iPad. You do not in our world. The truth that we’re a number of millimeters fatter is because we now have Touchstone , and Touchstone allows our device to be inductively powered. And that Touchstone feature allows us to do such things as touch-to-share. So we traded off a number of millimeters — which on the end of the day, isn’t going to have any impact on functionality — for features and performance.

We now have other devices that we are going to work on which might be going to produce other form factors and weights, etc. But we do not lament the undeniable fact that we expect we offered an incredible ease of use capability for the tradeoff of multiple millimeters. That’s one issue we got hit with inside the press, and that i think that, on the end of the day, users will see the price, and we just ought to communicate that.

The second one piece is application availability. Here’s one of the most simplistic, no-brainer argument there’s. Obviously everybody’s going to come back out and say, “well, you do not have the apps Apple has.” Well, no kidding, Apple’s been avaiable for purchase for about a years. We’ve more native TouchPad apps than Apple had once they launched the iPad. Everybody understands there is a time period if you end up working at inspiring the developer community to get the entire apps out. We have now all the key apps out, and we will have a ton more day-to-day. There have been some questions on the Movie Store app and a pair of others — they weren’t ready and weren’t planned to be ready until the 17th of July, and they’re going to be ready by the 17th of July. We will be delivering over-the-air updates, with a view to haven’t any complexity for patrons, on a totally regular basis. We’re engaged on an over-the-air update that we think to have out by the top of the month.

Here’s among the many slings and arrows that you simply get by showing products before they’re ready for the reviewer community. We knew full well that we were going to get this kind of feedback, and we’re very confident that we’ve addressed each one who was in there.

Did you are feeling that any of the criticisms were apt, which you plan to work on, moving ahead?

Um…yeah. And also you know, it is not just the feedback you get from reviewers, additionally it is the truth that our user community is terribly vocal. At the thousands of units which are already available, the feedback that we’re getting from the client base is amazing. One of several things that’s new for HP — and I’ll admit it, though i do not are looking to be defensive, because it’s nothing to be defensive about — we have not done this prior to now. We’ve not had assets like this. We’ve not had a community, per se. And so, we’re being used to this regular cadence of delivering updates. Remember, it’s an atmosphere that evolves day-after-day.

Six months from now, we will have an extremely different discussion about apps. My hope is that during six months we’ll have a discussion about each of the new stuff that we dropped at the market, all the innovation that we’ve dropped at the market, not only playing catch up, so our number is as big as somebody else’s number.

What do we expect for the 17th?

That’s our official retail launch date. What you’re gonna see is all the major retailers could have their advertising and their promotions. This weekend is basically the start of the month-long back to university season. We very consciously picked this as a launch date. Search for major promotional activities, broadly. Not just across all of our webOS devices, but across our PC products to boot. Seek plenty of in-store experiences: merchandising, labor, promotions, bundles — all kinds of factors will kick off at the 17th.

And the OTA update?

So one can be out by the tip of the month, in addition. We’re trying real hard to check the 17th, but you could a minimum of expect it by the top of the month. And, incidentally, there’ll be another update after that and another update after that one. That is the way it may be sooner or later, and that i think the elegance of which is awesome for end users. Their products are actually recuperating, and that they don’t even comprehend it.

These updates are coming soon after the initial reviews and feedback. Are these lessons learned from the device, or are they features that did not arrive in time?

a little of both. Yes, yes, and yes. There are bug fixes, there are new features, there are new apps, new capabilities, the entire above.

You mentioned the effort you might have in communicating how this device is healthier than the iPad.

My point was, reviewers — and that is the type of thing that drives people nuts — one writeup was, “HP has a very elegant OS, we like it, but in addition a major, clumsy design.” Are you kidding me? There’s nothing big and clumsy about this design. Pick it up. Hold it. There’s nothing big and clumsy here. Everyone desires to go, “study the iPad 2″ — and incidentally, Apple spends quite a few time marketing thin and lightweight. That’s great. We’ve spent lots of time marketing thin and light-weight in our PCs. And we’re certainly going to have a broad portfolio of goods which can be thin and light-weight. We decided for capabilities that we feel are meaningful, making it just a few millimeters bigger. That is not something that we lament. We would like that the reviewers had said, “incidentally, the indisputable fact that it is a couple of millimeters bigger is since you shouldn’t have to charge it.” This is because we do touch-to-share, it is because of those unique capabilities. We clearly didn’t do a decent enough job in communicating that and we are going to fix that.

Will you fix that by comparing the device on to the iPad?

Apple’s Apple, and HP’s HP. We feel very confident in our products and where we’re going. We believe that we will be more open than a number of our competitors, and simultaneously, not a loose federation. We are going to be very global, and we predict that, on the end of the day, we’ll bring a cost proposition which could stand by itself. Are we nervous about competitors? Heck, we’re nervous about everyone that’s obtainable. We now have loads experience about being nervous a couple of lot of competitors. While you operate on the size and scale and choice of geographies that we do, we get within the competitive game. But we’re desirous about what we’re doing at once, and on the end of the day, we’ve to win out there, and we all know that.

You made references to other products which will be using the webOS platform. We’ve heard mention of printers and other products of that nature up to now. Are you able to discuss specifics?

No. And i am not seeking to be glib here. There isn’t any question after we lifted the shroud on webOS, we gave our competition fair warning, so far as what we’re bringing to the market. I’m sure glad we didn’t launch at CES in that cluster of goods, because we aren’t slapping Android on a tool and calling it an afternoon. We’re creating something meaningful that matches in an end-to-end ecosystem and ultimately can deliver against the vision that I shared earlier about holding you in-state. And we needed to be able to control the experience from top to bottom, and that is what we needed to do. Now we have an excellent and multi-decade relationship with Microsoft. We’ll bring webOS to our PCs — to not replace Windows. That’s absurd. We will marry together what we expect are unique capabilities of both platforms. And we are going to continue to explore how one can do this. We now have an exceptionally aggressive smartphone plan of record and a really aggressive tablet plan of record. We’ve plenty of products that we’re engaged on, and we are able to lift the kimono when we’re able to bring it to the market.

And there is the potential for moving beyond the computer, tablet, and smartphones for webOS?

Sure.

Are you able to speak in any respect about what Jon [Rubinstein]‘s new role can be?

We’ll have Jon bring his magic to lots of factors we do. i will have the ability to leverage Jon everyday as I arise to hurry with a few of the initiatives that his team is operating on, and as we drive this scale phase, Jon and that i would be lockstep with numerous that. Beyond what we’re doing inside the webOS world, we’ll bring Jon’s product expertise and vision to our broad PSG portfolio. Jon is a countrywide treasure, and you may see his expertise in a number of our products.

Am i able to ask really quickly what sort of phone you’re carrying around in the mean time?

i’ll admit it: I carry the Veer . Everyone sort of says it’s more of a phone targeted on the female demographic and the young demographic, but i am keen on the truth that it’s small. I always use Bluetooth, so having its small form consider my pocket just works for me. This thing is simply so little. It’s perfect and everything is synced with everything else. i exploit my Veer with my TouchPad. It really works for me.

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This post is tagged: executive staffs, lukewarm reception, parallel workloads, personal systems group, reservation systems