What Two Hewlett Packards Might Mean For Federal Healthcare

Hewlett-Packard announced on Monday that it intends to break itself into two distinct entities.  It sounds simple enough: Hewlett Packard Enterprise will house software and services, networking technologies, as well as its big iron servers and storage, while the other entity, HP Inc., will consist of PCs, notebooks, tablets, and of course printing systems.  Part of the rationale, according to HP CEO Meg Whitman, is to “more aggressively go after the opportunities created by a rapidly changing market,” by giving each half “the independence, focus, financial resources, and flexibility they need to adapt quickly to market and customer dynamics.”

HP as it stands today targets desktops, displays, thin clients, tablets, laptops, as well as servers, storage and services under the umbrella HP Healthcare Solutions with offerings particular to payers and providers, including care management, electronic health records, patient workflow and security software.  So will federal agencies that either already use HP products or are considering them effectively be forced to buy HP servers from one company and then have to work with the other company to purchase the desktops, notebooks, tablets? And what about services, like security and support, that are typically part of large-scale hardware procurements?

If the company has already devised a plan for dividing those, keeping them intact, or perhaps a cross-selling strategy for healthcare and other vertical industries, company officials are keeping that close to the vest.  “There will be a 12-month period where the specifics of the separation are detailed,” a spokesperson told Government Health IT.  That’s little assurance to agency CIOs or IT executives considering a fleet of PCs and printers as well as servers needed to network them all together — let alone the software it sells....