HP Extends Environmental Commitments, Windows XP Sales to Continue

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) announced several integrated new initiatives to reduce the amount of recycled materials, carbon footprint, and energy usage of its own and customers printing activities. Elsewhere, Dell Inc. detailed how it intends to allow customers to continue purchasing and installing Microsoft Corp. Windows XP Professional.

Focal Points:

• HP is stepping up its internal and customer-oriented efforts to reduce the impact of printing on the environment. Perhaps most important is the company's new HP Eco Solutions program, which includes a new HP Eco Highlights label. To be included across all HP product categories, the new label will include information regarding energy consumption, recycled materials production usage, and the quantity of packaging that can be recycled. This label will be affixed to products and available on the Web and in HP's product data sheets. The company has also pledged to increase the amount of recycled materials used in its inkjet printers by a factor of three by 2010 compared with 2008 levels and improve the energy efficiency of its printing products by 40 percent by 2011.
• The company is also launching a set of online calculators for printing. Available online, the HP Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing allows enterprises to compare the carbon footprint of its current product set to a new fleet of optimized solutions. The HP LaserJet Power Calculator can demonstrate energy savings in kilowatt hours and estimated dollar savings between new HP LaserJet printers and competitors' products. New auto-on and auto-off technology, which will be integrated into LaserJet personal printers starting in 2009, aims to improve energy efficiency by over 20 times. The company has adopted a new global paper policy to reduce its own paper usage and implement best practices, which incorporates a set of policy guidelines that looks at the entire lifecycle of paper.
• With Microsoft's retirement date for Windows XP looming large for corporations small and large interested in avoiding new Windows Vista deployments, enterprise vendors are addressing concerns with options to protect infrastructure investments. Dell is one such vendor that will continue to offer Windows XP on new systems after Microsoft's June 30^th cutoff date, and will do so by taking advantage of the downgrade rights included in Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate. These downgrade rights allow end users and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on behalf of end users to factory install Windows XP on machines sold with either of the aforementioned Windows Vista versions. Smaller system builders are barred from installing Windows XP after January 31, 2009. This practice requires that large system builders continue to have stock on hand. Dell did not state how long it would continue this practice or on which systems. As of now, Lenovo Group, Ltd. has stated that it will continue offering downgrade options until the small system builder deadline.

Experton Group believes HP is continuing its pledge to be the most environmentally committed vendor in the IT industry. The majority of enterprises has already integrated environmental criteria into their request for proposal (RFP) process, and should be using a holistic, repeatable process to enable financial decision making. HP and others will increasingly roll out tools and services designed to help corporations better leverage new energy efficient products. Services to help identify areas for improvement should be implemented first on a pilot basis to determine validity, and then considered for corporate-wide implementation to allow all enterprise processes and operations universally to achieve the benefits of new products and operations.

Experton Group believes that Windows XP is a viable platform for enterprise desktop deployments and will likely continue to be for years to come. Vista downgrade options for those corporations not on Enterprise Software Assurance (ESA) will likely continue beyond the announced deadlines given enterprise and consumer pressure, as significant pressure will continue to be applied to enterprise system builders and Microsoft. ESA customers, of course, have the right to install whatever operating system they so desire. IT executives should continue to work with Microsoft and their preferred hardware vendors to make their requirements for Windows XP known and addressed, and should use their user group memberships to do the same.