Hewlett Packard has big plans for big data as it prepares to split the company Posted on : Aug 12 - 2015

Big data and data analytics will be big for HP as it prepares for its split into two separate companies.

In just a little under three months, Hewlett Packard will officially split into two separate companies, with one (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) focusing on enterprise technology, including data center hardware, and the other (HP Inc.) selling personal computers and printers.

At a recent HP conference in June, CEO Meg Whitman detailed the way she envisions Hewlett Packard Enterprise to serve potential customers in a service-oriented line of business. Whitman emphasized the idea that HP  HPQ -3.04%  could help companies build out hybrid cloud infrastructure, in which companies can access both data centers hosted by public cloud providers like Amazon as well their own internal cloud data centers.

HP, along with other legacy tech companies like IBM  IBM -0.79%  , has made it clear it sees the cloud as key to rebuilding the new enterprise-focused company. At the same time, HP is also counting on data analytics as a way to distinguish itself, and as HP software vice president and executive council member Robert Youngjohns told Fortune, data analytic services will be another key part of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s business.

Like many enterprise companies, HP sees the rise of big data as something that’s been radicalizing the industry over the past three to five years, Youngjohns explained.

What is different today is that businesses now have tremendous volumes of data being generated from everything from sensors loaded into cars to the multitude of emails that a company might produce on a given day, he said. There’s also an explosion of new data technology available on the market that seemingly can go out of vogue as the latest and greatest new tech wins the favor of engineers and operations staff.  View more