2006: Digital Entertainment Services

By the beginning of 2006, I was fully engaged as the HP Digital Entertainment Services (DES) CTO. I had given up almost all other responsibilities including the HP Tech Con co-chairmanship, some Board positions and most of my direct reports. I still officially reported to Patrick Scaglia, but almost all of my energy went into working on the DES business.

We had great success on the DMP side of DES - called DVS for Digital Vault Services. The technology worked and continued to evolve. Customer engagements continued to expand. I spent quite a bit of time with DWA (Dreamworks) as a liaison for broad HP relationships with the Studios. I traveled to London/Bristol and LA/Hollywood frequently. I made trips to New York City, Grenoble, Amsterdam, and San Francisco to work on various aspects of content management and mobility. DMP was also being used to help power the other side of DES - Video Merchant Services (VMS).

When DMP was in the hands of HP Labs, there was some confusion about how HP would take DMP to market. The DMP development stream had split into two pieces with part of it breaking off with HP's CME organization. CME was a "front end" sales organization that counted communications and media companies among its customers. They drove further development with the goal of selling and servicing a product to their customers. DES picked up the HP Labs mainstream DMP technology. Unfortunately, that CME product was never completed. It did, however, generate a lot of confusion in the market and inside HP as CME and HPL both had offerings.

As I learned more about DMP, its applications and the intended customers, I promoted a strategy to focus on making the DMP the engine for DVS and VMS and to stop developing it for standalone sales to other companies. When that decision was taken, DES became a lower overhead and more profitable business. We also cleared up a lot of confusion between DES and CME. In the process, I developed a great working relationship with CME's CTO, Brian Levy, and with CTOs from companies like Sony, Disney, and Warner Brothers.

These were certainly interesting times with continued struggles as traditional media businesses collided with information technology. The Studios understood that things were moving to digital and the Internet, but they were afraid of losing control. Apple's success in totally disrupting the music business with the iTunes/iPod ecosystem made the Studios even more cautious. But HP had a great value proposition for them that was not so threatening. We would be the curators of content and help them transform their businesses to survive in the digital world.

Next: 2007: Digital Photography & Entertainment