Overview:
For most home computer users, Hewlet Packard is best known for its printers, laptops and digital cameras. Although consumer electronics are big business for the world’s largest computer seller, there’s much more to this Palo Alto, CA firm, including a growing focus on software and business services. HP has about 156,000 employees worldwide, including – at last count – about 1,800 at its inkjet printer research and development facility in Vancouver.

Ranked No. 14 on the Fortune 500’s top publicly traded firms, HP divides its products and services into three categories:

- Personal Systems Group
- Imaging and Printing Group
- Technology Solutions Group

Roots:
Like so much to come out of Silicon Valley, HP got its start in a garage. There, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Stanford University classmates, built an electronic audio oscillator, used by sound engineers, according to the company’s online history. Following the company’s founding in 1939, Hewlett Packard became a leader in electrical products used for testing and measurements, and in making medical equipment. The company built its first computer in 1966. By the 1980s, HP was becoming a major player in computers and printers. In 1999, the company spun off its measurement, components, chemical analysis and medical businesses in order to focus on computer, printing and imaging. Along with business services, those key areas of the late ‘90s continue to bolster Hewlett-Packard today.

Strategy:
The 21st Century has been a tumultuous time for the company’s leaders, but despite scandals in the boardroom HP has been growing fast. To fuel growth, HP put renewed focus on intellectual property, with an ongoing search for new uses of existing patents. The company also puts a heavy focus on new research and inventions, many of which come out of HP’s Vancouver facility, where researchers develop new ink jet printer technology. Hewlett-Packard is one of the largest patent-holding IT companies in the world.

What it hasn’t invented, HP has often been willing to buy, as a string of recent acquisitions demonstrate. HP has made more than 20 software buys since chief executive Mark Hurd joined the company in 2005, according to the San Jose Mercury News. In July, HP announced plans to make two more acquisitions: software firm Opsware Inc. for $1.6 billion and thin client company Neoware Inc. for $214 million.

That growth has been accompanied by work force cuts that began in 2005, when Hurd called for a “simpler and nimbler HP.” The company laid off 14,500 worldwide then, and has also trimmed manufacturing operations in Vancouver. HP no longer provides specific job numbers about the local site. In 2006, HP announced plans to reduce IT spending by consolidating 85 data centers into six, and to reduce real estate costs by consolidating several hundred real estate locations worldwide.

Results:
This year, Hewlett-Packard became the world’s largest seller of computers.

Personal Systems Group, HP’s computing division, reported a 15 percent volume increase in 2006, driven largely by sales of personal computers. In the same year, Imaging and Printing Group net revenue increased 6 percent, reflecting higher unit volumes, the continued expansion of printer hardware placements and strong performance of color-related products. From profits of $2.5 billion in 2003, the year after it acquired former rival Compaq, HP has grown sales steadily to post net earnings of $6.2 billion on sales of $91.6 billion in 2006.