2000-b: Internet Imaging Model

When Lee Caldwell arrived at HP and asked me to join his staff, there was one overall, simple goal:

"Drive printing and imaging into the fabric of the Internet."

HP's huge success in printing had been driven by meeting the need to print from computers as customers created documents and photos using desktop applications. Printers and cameras were primarily tethered peripherals. Lee saw what many others saw - that the Internet would enable a huge transformation in this model - but Lee was able to energize HP to believe it and act on it. My role was to make that happen.

While HP (especially CEO Lew Platt) missed the opportunity to capitalize on the rise of the Internet in the 1990's, Carly was determined to change HP's entire culture and orientation to adapt to the Internet's impact. She did this partly through widely criticized organizational change, but she also firmly established a new HP vision for e-services. The high level principal was this:

"Any process, any problem, any asset, can and will be turned into a service and delivered over the Web."

Our imaging & printing goal was completely consistent with this, and we would spend a lot of energy working to drive it inside our business and also across HP through Carly's cross-company initiatives and the growing HP CTO community.

In May 2000, Lee laid out this strategy for our Imaging & Printing Systems (IPS) organization:

Convert everything analog to digital

–make it easy to print on digital devices

–drive eServices through our appliances

Make it easy to route things in the digital area

–Universal document routing architecture

–Concentrate on the Enterprise

Make it easy to add value to digital document

–grow an ecoSystem of new imaging services

IPS would have four strategic thrusts: Digital Photography, Commercial Printing, Internet/eServices, and Services & Support.

To make all of this real, we created an Internet Imaging Model vision and plan and pitched it everywhere possible. We also sponsored teams to work on specific implementation elements. Making all of this happen globally required collaboration with companies outside HP, and working this part led me to gain experience and visibility with companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Kodak, Canon, and many others.

A good way to summarize the Internet Imaging Model work is through a briefing that I created in late 2000 for a meeting between Carly and Steve Ballmer at Microsoft. I'll close this post by walking through the main points of that executive briefing.

Our internal view for this Microsoft pitch was driven by these initial thoughts:

• Four models for imaging pipeline/system functionality:

• On the printer (today’s HPA architecture)

• On the PC or other local host

• On network servers

• On the Net

• Maximum reliance on open standards and partner contributions (investment)

• Map use cases onto new architectures to validate credibility

• Identify non-IPS components that are key pieces (e.g. storage architectures and always-on infrastructure)

Our strategic frame:

• Reduce complexity, increase simplicity, radical change in ease of use

• Fundamentally decrease COGS and TTM and development costs

• Drive increased usage as primary business model

• Ensure an open system (not proprietary)

• Rapidly enable 3rd party ecosystem driving sales and usage of HP products, supplies and service components

• Acknowledge inherent value of legacy annuity but create compelling transition plan

• Act quickly at strategic levels to assert HP leadership

• Find ways to co-opt Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, and other strategic partners

The pitch to Microsoft:

Internet Imaging System Model Transformation

Microsoft Partnership Opportunity

Executive Summary – November 2000

Hewlett-Packard’s leadership vision for imaging and printing in the Internet age requires a transformation of the Internet imaging system model that will:

·         cause huge shifts from analog to digital imaging and printing

·         create the free flow of digital information enabled by printing and imaging components based on an open architecture and woven into the fabric of the Internet

·         transform customer experience in a wide array of connectivity and service delivery environments

·         create enormous opportunity for an expanded ecosystem of developers and partners by the development of an open imaging and printing architecture driven through widespread adoption of industry standards

·         enable HP’s vision to connect everything and print anything

HP understands this opportunity in the framework of our e-services strategy and wants to build on our successful relationship with Microsoft to make it a reality.

Current HP-Microsoft collaboration in printing and imaging is aimed primarily at a driver convergence strategy (OmniPrint) and a digital imaging intiative (for Whistler) that overcome past obstacles and provide:

• freedom to innovate with respect to imaging and printing, e.g.,
• driver GUI features
• more complete access to the rendering data stream
• improved print quality and performance to differentiate HP products
• flexibility of deployment with respect to product releases and the resolution of customer satisfaction issues

HP believes this work is critical to sustaining our current business. It is key to achieving customer satisfaction and maintaining compatibility for new and legacy products as Microsoft evolves the Windows environment. There has been great collaboration between the HP and Microsoft teams over the past year on this effort, and breakthrough thinking has made this possible. Our teams are working together aggressively to achieve a measure of the convergence in Whistler and the full solution in Blackcomb.

HP also believes that Microsoft’s .Net strategy and our own e-services strategy require an even more open imaging and printing architecture and a new level of open partnership free from today’s legal and technology restrictions. This is not a major policy shift. Rather, it builds on our success and accelerates it within the emerging .Net and UDDI framework.

What does HP want from Microsoft?

1. Reinforce collaboration targeted at the current Microsoft printing and imaging paradigm. HP wants a commitment to continue today’s successful HP-Microsoft relationship that is creating the framework for migration of legacy systems to new models of technology innovation and deployment flexibility in imaging and printing.

2. Adoption of a new, powerful imaging system model that is truly Internet enabled and open. HP has the business imperative, knowledge, and resources to create this and wants Microsoft to embrace it within their .NET vision. We want a commitment for an open partnership to work together on an open architecture and industry standards for Internet imaging and printing. We want to integrate printing and imaging initiatives within the .Net and UDDI frame of reference along with key partners.

What’s in it for Microsoft?

The basic collaboration on the current paradigm is a win for our mutual customers and consequently for Microsoft and HP. It provides essential freedom to innovate, enable better customer experience, and deploy products and services without undue restriction. By also adopting and leveraging HP’s Internet imaging system model, Microsoft gets a complete and open printing and imaging model designed for the Internet that will dramatically extend the power of their .Net vision and adoption.

This pitch and the follow-through work streams with Microsoft helped to cause major changes as printing and imaging broke free from the tethered peripheral model over the next few years. Microsoft understood that HP was serious and that we were investing to move in this new direction with or without their support.

In the end, Microsoft and Adobe and others continued to try to keep proprietary advantages where possible in standards, workflows, and commerce. But we were able to create printing and imaging devices that could stand alone, that could be Web-connected, and that could become platforms for Web services. We eventually cut our reliance on Microsoft for essential imaging pipeline components. We were able to make mobile printing work. And we were free to drive digital internet workflows in consumer, enterprise, and commercial markets.

Next: 2000-c: Commercial Printing & Workflow