Among the several initiatives Hewlett-Packard is taking to transform itself into an organisation that can tango with the market real-time, is its unique iCOD, or Instant Capacity on Demand, programme. Launched recently, iCOD allows customers to order equipment beyond current requirements paying only for what they will use immediately. Whether its servers or storage systems, orders are placed based on projections of scalability in the near to mid-term and the customer pays for each product only as it goes online. This is a win-win situation for both the company and the customer, since the latter builds in redundancy for instant deployment in the future while the former gains in terms of revenue predictability and customer fidelity. While the $50 billion computing major is counting on iCOD to boost revenues significantly, figures were not made available. HP director for always-on infrastructure Nick Van der Zweep, however, provided eFE with an overview of the iCOD initiative and what it means to the company andits customers in an interview with Sudarshan Kumar.Excerpts:
How was iCOD born? What were the ideas behind such an offering?
The iCOD program was born based on customer demand. Customers have found that now that they are putting more revenue generating/customer facing applications on the Internet that they experience unpredictable growth rates. The iCOD program addresses this by allowing instant upgrades.
What product categories are part of the iCOD initiative?
Currently the iCOD program covers multiple HP products. For instance, it covers CPUs in HP9000 servers (L, N, V, and Superdome Class systems). We also have iCOD-storage available for storage with our XP256 and XP512 storage systems. There is also an iCOD-Server program that we introduced for service providers where we stock servers on site at customer premises so they can instantly buy and activate an entire server.
Is iCOD available globally or only in select markets?
The iCOD program is available globally. For instance, iCOD-CPU and iCOD-Storage is available worldwide. The iCOD-Server program is available in North America and will be rolled out across the world.
What does it mean to HP in terms of revenue predictability?
Revenue is positively affected. We are selling more systems due to having this program as it differentiates us in the market. In addition, due to the ease of activation of the additional capacity, we have seen additional revenue due to our customers activating and buying more capacity that they would have without the program.
What is the benefit to customers?
They have been able to generate more revenue. When they hit peak periods of compute or storage requirements, they can instantly bring capacity online. Due to the speed that they can bring on capacity, they do not turn away customers.
What has been the response so far to ICOD?
We have sold thousands of iCOD products. In addition, there is much work being done on "Utility Infrastructure". We have already announced "Utility Pricing for Superdome" which allows our customers to activate and then deactivate capacity and only pay for the capacity used per month. The iCOD programs are part of our Utility initiatives and we will continually enhance our offerings to meet our customer's needs.
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