Success in the cloud
HP Managing Director Martin Murphy sees cloud computing as “pivotal” in improving public services. He shares his thoughts on delivering IT services, education and the economy with Owen McQuade.
“One of the greatest strengths of HP in Ireland is that we are an all-Ireland operation,” says Murphy. The company has five main divisions on the island: a sales and services division, which is the largest provider of IT sales and services in the Irish market, an international multi-lingual customer service centre, an international financial services division, a manufacturing plant with associated R&D and marketing operations and strategic software development in Galway, including a cloud computing competency centre.
In Northern Ireland HP has three locations. Its main base is in Newtownabbey where it has invested heavily over the past 12 months, and in addition to being the company’s Northern Ireland headquarters, it is the largest business recovery centre on the island. The company’s C2k team is based in Belfast as is its newly acquired 3Par team.
Supporting the economy
HP’s contribution to the economy is summed up as: “Creating high value jobs through success in contracts, including government contracts, and by investing ourselves, expanding our Newtownabbey base.”
Murphy has been personally involved in both of the recent US investment conferences. He says that HP in Ireland is constantly “in discussions with HP corporately about other inward investment opportunities for the island.” “That process simply is about understanding corporate priorities around innovation and growth – cloud computing is particularly topical – we then look North or South to where we have strengths to offer and then that might lead to investment opportunities,” he explains.
From a business perspective, HP has been very successful in the public sector in Northern Ireland over the past 12 months having won over £100 million worth of contracts, which included a significant extension to the education project C2k, a framework agreement with DHSSPS and recently a significant desktop PC deal with the Northern Ireland Civil Service.
HP also has a significant presence in the private sector in Northern Ireland, by supporting major enterprise players in the economy such as Almac, Harland & Wolf and Seagate. “For example, we have had a long standing relationship with Almac. I personally think Almac is one of the greatest Northern Ireland private sector successes,” Murphy comments. “What they have achieved is phenomenal. There has been a very productive relationship between our two organisations.”
As for growth, HP is very much a technology company. “Over the past ten to twelve years it has pursued a strategy of evolving into services and this is very much the future,” he remarks. HP acquired EDS in 2008 as part of this strategy to further expand its services footprint globally. EDS brought a substantial base across UK public sector and with HP’s own strong base in public sector means that HP is now the number one provider of IT services to the UK Government today.
Murphy says: “In the last 12 to 18 months I think we have harnessed the EDS experience and major service engagement methodologies and we’ve been getting out and winning contracts including the extension of C2k, the technology partner framework in health locally and also the Railway Procurement Authority contract in the Republic. I think we have taken the learning of EDS and put it to best possible use,” he adds.
The 3Par acquisition brought with it a very highly skilled development team, currently based in the centre of Belfast. Murphy hopes to “expand and build” that team.
“We are constantly looking at how we can grow our footprint and how we can add and build more into what we are doing in Northern Ireland for our existing customers as well as attracting new clients.”
Cloud computing 
One area Murphy singles out for future innovation is cloud computing. “There is absolutely no
question in my mind about the savings cloud computing will bring, particularly to governments. Based on our analysis the savings for government are very significant and in the order of magnitude of 15 to 20 per cent by migrating into cloud computing,” he says.
“HP are working proactively to respond to increased budgetary pressures and the evolving agenda in the public sector in terms of driving continual efficiencies in everything we do for our customer.”
“From an island perspective, we saw the opportunity for cloud computing some 18 months ago. Our Galway operation has been focused on software development and this time last year we announced Galway as a competency centre for cloud computing within HP.”
The first piece of the strategy for cloud computing was to pioneer and pilot some areas where HP could “bring cloud to life.” In his view, cloud computing is “something which has been very difficult for the public to assimilate and understand not just what it is but how it is relevant to everyday life.”
He looks back to the transformation that has happened in all our lives over the past seven to ten years with the internet at home and the arrival of high speed broadband and sees HP’s work as “extending this further and asking how the cloud is relevant to consumers, small businesses and large corporates.”
“I think this has been a very difficult story to construct. What we managed to do was find a project that brought this to life in our Galway operation, around the area of product recall,” he explains. “Product recall is a growing industry. We tied in with a Canadian food standards agency to set a global standard for food recall. We worked to develop a cloud-based product recall solution which they have taken to various geographies worldwide and offered to their clients as a ‘farm-to-fork’ traceability system.
“With such a cloud-based approach, incidents can be isolated very quickly and rather than taking everything off the shelves, you can identify specific batches or production runs and withdraw those on a targeted basis. This project has proven the power of the cloud and our ability to pioneer such innovative applications.”
Turning to the Northern Ireland economy, Murphy sees a marrying of the strengths of the economy to the opportunities within the HP network. He sees the province as “a strategic part of our portfolio” and highlights the importance of the 3Par operation in Belfast as “extremely relevant to further growth, with the growth of storage being exponential and the need for companies to virtualise seems unlimited.” Murphy sees the increased regulation, particularly in financial services, as an opportunity to build virtualised storage which he sees as the “promised land for the next generation of computing.”
Education
Murphy is well-known for his views on education. “I think the genesis of my interest in education came from two things. The first that I have been heavily involved with Classroom 2000, a global flagship in terms of being one of the most advanced e-learning environments anywhere in the world.”
He saw what C2k could do with schools and the engagement with the pupils. Newer technologies such as video conferencing were added to enhance language capabilities and to connect to other schools in Asia or the US. “It was really the capability and the power of the system to enhance learning,” he adds.
The other trigger for Murphy’s interest in education has been the experience of his own children going through the education system. This, coupled with his roles in leading a large technology employer, has led him to focus on where the education system could be improved.
HP as an employer is focused on technology jobs which require maths and science subjects but more and more of the focus for the wider economy is on international services across multiple geographies. “The skills needed are therefore much broader than science and maths and cover language skills as well.”
Murphy observes that much of the focus of FDI has been on the US but this will change to focus on Europe and Asia, which will require a proficiency in languages in addition to technology skills, and “the marriage of these abilities will be the essential success into the future.” He explains: “I think the opportunity for the island, North and South, is in the area of shared services and international services into global markets and to be successful you have to be able to speak the language.”
Public services
Murphy finds that public services in Northern Ireland are quite advanced in their thinking around the large IT projects: “There have been some very transformational projects.”
Procurement is “very sophisticated” as it uses standard templates which lead to standardised procurement rules “and we are not breaking new ground with each contract.”
“The procurement leads to consistency in project delivery. It helps the department and the vendor to work together to deliver the project with peer reviews along the way,” he comments. The checks and balances along the way ensure the projects are delivered as originally specified and provide “a very strong way of doing business.”
Other areas where the Northern Ireland public sector has been successful have been the cross-departmental projects looking at functional activities such as HR and finance. Horizontal functions and services have also been delivered across the policing and justice system. “The workplace services with open plan offices and hot-desking and more like a multi-national than the Civil Service. It is easy to forget the positives in this era of cuts,” he notes.
The main thrust of Murphy’s approach is to “bring new innovative solutions to drive further efficiencies.” This is not just about taking cost out of the system but “investing to drive further efficiency towards the goal of efficient and effective public services.” The aspirational goal for him is to deliver a higher level of public services “by re-working what we have today, using technology as key enabler.” Cloud computing, he concludes, has a “pivotal role” in delivering those greater efficiencies.
Profile: Martin Murphy, Managing Director, HP Ireland
Martin Murphy is Managing Director of Hewlett Packard Ireland. Dundalk-born, he studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin and then “like a whole generation got on a plane” to work for Phillips in Endhoven in the Netherlands. On returning to Ireland he held several roles with HP, becoming Managing Director just prior to the merger with Compaq. His role has always been all-island and has seen the evolution of the company into the managed services and outsourcing arena. He highlights two events in that transformation one being the C2k project which was then the biggest outsourcing contract on the island and the IT outsourcing contract for the Bank of Ireland just after. His has a number of “extra-curricular” interests including contributing to the debate on education, corporate governance – “now key for Ireland, North and South” – through the IoD and business leadership with his involvement with the Smurfit Business School.
