Livermore, who has been head of Hewlett-Packard's services unit for the past three years, earlier this month took on the added responsibilities of the company's high-end computing business.
Before the restructuring, designed partly to sell HP's range of products more effectively to large organisations, Livermore was in charge of a unit bringing in about $12bn (£6.7bn) of HP's roughly $73bn in revenue in its last fiscal year. Now she's the head of divisions that accounted for about $28bn.
Of course, this promotion to lead what HP calls its Technology Solutions Group still could be seen as small potatoes by Livermore. After all, she was viewed as a top candidate to take HP's chief executive post several years ago. But Livermore, a 22-year HP veteran who speaks with a hint of her native North Carolina accent, says losing that position to Carly Fiorina is "ancient history."
For now, Livermore says she's pleased to be leading HP's charge in areas such as business process outsourcing (BPO). The company recently entered this budding field, which involves farming out tasks such as payroll and invoice processing, by winning a contract with Procter & Gamble to handle finance and administration duties.
ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com recently spoke with Livermore about the company's new structure, its BPO strategy and her own role at HP.
Q: Why the change in organisational structure?
A: The Technology Solutions Group will include a broader portfolio of businesses for HP. It includes our storage business, our server business, our software business and also our services business. A lot of the focus is on how do we continue to drive market share and leadership in each of the individual categories and yet at the same time how do we take advantage of the power of our portfolio when we are competing against some of our more focused competitors who might not have the strength and capabilities of HP.
It sounds a little bit like IBM's strategy. They are trying to market themselves as if they are able to do everything at once.
HP is definitely not trying to be like IBM. We want to position ourselves as a different kind of player, a different kind of partner in the industry. I think one of the big differences is around our partnerships with systems integrators and software companies. If you look at the way HP partners with Microsoft, with BEA, with Oracle, with Accenture, with Deloitte, it is very different than IBM would. And we believe that the power of those partnerships is a big differentiator for us in the market. The sales organisations in all those companies are working along with HP, and we are both generating business for each other. So if you think of the power of the R&D investment or the power of the sales investment when you are working with those kind of companies, it is tremendously different.
