HP launches scorecard application to summarise business metrics

HP plans to introduce a scorecard application that can visually summarise a wide swath of metrics taken from other HP software, the company announced.

The idea behind the software is to unify operational and management data under a single set of data, said Piet Loubser, HP senior director of product marketing. "It doesn't help to manage, measure or optimise one part of the portfolio. We need to look across every aspect," he said.

As a hypothetical example, Loubser noted that a tool that measures the financial health of a given project may show that the project is under budget, but would miss the fact that the project is behind schedule, a metric that would be captured only on project management software. This Executive Scorecard could bring together these disparate elements within a single view, he said.

"Bringing together all the different perspective across the IT landscape is a critical objective," he said.

The HP Executive Scorecard software can gather metrics from 50 other HP software products within the HP enterprise software line. The Executive Scorecard is a cornerstone of the newly named HP IT Performance Suite, an umbrella brand that will encompass all of HP's enterprise software.

The idea behind the software is that it can summarise for executives the health of IT or other organisational operations, using actual operational data collected by HP and third party programs. Metrics can be collected from IT maintenance applications, security applications and even financial applications.

Thus far, the company has built 50 connectors that can extract key performance indicators (KPIs) from HP software. The company has identified 150 HP software programs that could ultimately supply KPI data to the scorecard. For instance, HP software such as HP Network Node Manager could provide summaries of network shutdowns within an organisation.

HP also plans to publish a data model that third party software providers could use to feed data to the scorecard as well.

Specific modules will come with the package to visually summarise such activities as financial planning and analysis, project and portfolio management and asset management.

HP plans to reveal more about this software at the company's HP Discover 2011 conference. The software will be formally launched in July. The company has not disclosed pricing yet.