Hewlett-Packard Co. — best known for its hardware and printing solutions — is broadening its footprint in the enterprise application market.
The Palo Alto, Calif., company announced Monday an alliance with Deloitte Consulting to develop collaborative software for manufacturing companies.
The jointly developed software will be designed to enable manufacturers to more quickly achieve the benefits of establishing common product information processes within their distributed design and supply chains, according to officials.
HP will use its computing infrastructure and the HP NetAction software suite for the basis of the PLC software.
Likewise, the two companies will incorporate process tools and templates that HP and Deloitte internally developed and tested to establish a baseline for common business processes, officials said.
The two companies will initially focus on developing product life-cycle collaboration software that provides a framework to support collaborative product development and product life-cycle management — which typically follows the phases of a product from engineering to after-market service.
The alliance between New York-based Deloitte, which is part of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, and HP came about as a result of the latter companys Partner Enablement Program for manufacturing customers, which aims to drive faster connection, management and collaboration of companies working together.