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Certifying Architects
Hewlett-Packard's Rick Fricchione discusses the idea of architect certification, lifecycle management, and the huge services deal HP struck recently with Microsoft.
by Patrick Meader

Enterprise Application Lifecycle Management 2003

Rick Fricchione

Rick Fricchione is responsible for all of Hewlett-Packard's Microsoft Services offerings, including infrastructure and solutions consulting, availability services, and managed offerings. HP's Microsoft Services has the largest Microsoft-trained workforce in the industry. Rick is a board member for the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, and was one of the founding members of the RosettaNET managing board. In 1998, he was named a Smithsonian Laureate for his work in ERP deployment and mission-critical computing.

PM: In September 2002, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard announced a joint deal to commit more than $50 million to creating an army of 5,000 .NET sales representatives and 3,000 service professionals. Tell us what HP and Microsoft are each contributing to the deal, as well as where that deal stands now.

RF: Let me give you the overview. Some of those numbers are dead-on; some of them are a bit off. The total deal calls for Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft to commit $55 million between them, shared equally. That's $27.5 million apiece.

Specifically, it calls on Hewlett-Packard to train 5,000 salespeople in .NET. So, Hewlett-Packard will run 5,000 of its 10,000 salespeople through this process to get them to understand how to create .NET solutions. On top of that, Hewlett-Packard is creating a dedicated .NET sales force that will number in the hundreds. These salespeople will joint-sell .NET solutions with Microsoft. In these cases, Hewlett-Packard will provide someone who is not concerned with Unix, Tandem, VMS, or any other solution providers. These salespeople will be in the business of selling .NET solutions, period.

PM: You've mentioned some of the target numbers. Where do things stand today?

RF: I have about 3,000 dedicated Microsoft professionals who carry Hewlett-Packard badges. There are about 2,500 more in India that we have access to in an entity wholly owned by Hewlett-Packard entity.

The 3,000 people break down like this: 1,800 are infrastructure professionals, and 1,200 are .NET solutions professionals. These people fall under a business group called Enterprise Microsoft Services. The .NET solutions practice today consists of about 1,200 people, but we're going to grow it to 3,000 people. The overall business will grow to 5,000 people. We're adding 1,800 people between September 2002 and 2005. Some of these are going to be new hires, and some of these are going to HP through acquisitions, where we go out and buy companies with the right expertise. I also anticipate some of these professionals will be offshore, whereas others will come from finding all the pockets of people inside Hewlett-Packard and co-opting them as appropriate for this task.

For example, this happened recently with Hewlett-Packard Shopping's online site, where you can buy Hewlett-Packard printers and so on. It's a high-volume, consumer-oriented Web site built entirely on Microsoft technologies, and I took the 45 people who created it and turned them into Microsoft practice people. Essentially, they've been transferred from Hewlett-Packard IT to Hewlett-Packard consulting. The internal project is done; now we'll have them do external work.