This article was written by Nina Buik, CMO of Connect.

With the New Year just around the corner, now is the time for one of the most important activities of the year – setting resolutions for 2013. To gain insight into the leading IT resolutions for 2013, HP’s largest business technology user community, Connect, performed a survey of its global members to uncover the key priorities and biggest roadblocks for IT projects in the New Year.

It’s no surprise that cloud and virtualization were listed as hot topics for the upcoming year. However, security was actually the leading IT priority, with 46 percent of respondents identifying it as one of their top IT projects for 2013.

What this tells us is that, yes, everybody is looking at embracing innovations, such as cloud, but the challenge is how to do that securely. In terms of inhibitors, the number one pain point customers are facing is budget constraints – with an astonishing 75 percent of respondents citing it as a major roadblock for adopting new technologies.

Based on these findings, CIOs are looking for new ways to minimize risk and overcome budget constraints by driving efficiency and doing more with less. These were key topics of conversation at last week’s HP Discover Frankfurt and Meg Whitman’s keynote. HP continues to develop new technology and services to help customers find new ways to securely improve their bottom line.

Despite great innovations from vendors like HP, CIOs can’t do it alone. That’s where communities like Connect come in.

Over the past three years, Connect’s community has grown by 19,000 members. Our community represents active and engaged HP business technology professionals united in their desire to achieve organizational and personal objectives by maximizing the ROI attainable from HP technologies. They share best practices, learn from each other’s expertise and forge strong partnerships with HP to identify new ways to achieve their IT goals.

As far as our resolution for Connect – we look forward to another year of working with our dedicated members to help to help them advance their careers, drive efficiency in their organizations and develop the best IT solutions for their businesses!

Leaders from nearly 200 countries recently gathered in Doha, Qatar to discuss global impacts and negotiate policies to reduce global emissions at the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP18) to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. They faced a daunting reality: global carbon dioxide emissions hit record highs in 2011 and are expected to continue their upward climb in 2012, according to The New York Times.

During the event, a new study, entitled “GeSI SMARTer 2020: The Role of ICT in Driving a Sustainable Future,” was unveiled. The study shows how information and communication technology (ICT) has the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 16.5 percent by 2020. Conducted by TheBoston Consulting Group, a leading management consulting firm, on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), the study was sponsored by HP and other leading ICT companies.

The new research identifies potential GHG reductions from ICT-enabled solutions in six areas: power, transportation, manufacturing, consumer and service, agriculture, and buildings. As one of the world’s largest providers of IT infrastructure, software, services, and solutions, HP is in a unique position to respond to the challenges outlined in the study.

In fact, we work to combine the expertise of our people, our technology portfolio, and collaborative partnerships to create environmental solutions that reduce impact and expand opportunities for our business, our customers, and the world. For example:

• The HP POD 240a—also known as the HP EcoPOD—is a modular, ultra-efficient data center that uses 95 percent less facilities energy compared with legacy data center designs while still maintaining peak performance.(1)
• HP Managed Print Services helps organizations save up to 30% in printing costs overall, millions of pages in reduced paper waste, and up to 80% in energy consumption.(2)
• HP energy management services, such as HP Energy and Sustainability Management and HP Carbon Emissions Management Service, help customers measure and manage energy consumption and carbon emissions across the entire IT organization.
• We help people and businesses shift to digital on-demand printing technology—including the HP Inkjet Web Press and HP MagCloud self-publishing web service—enabling them to reduce their carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions.

 Learn more about the GeSI SMARTer 2020 plan online—and read about several HP innovations by visiting our online Tech Gallery.

(1) New POD technology from HP offers 95 percent greater energy efficiency compared with a traditional brick-and-mortar data center, based on internal HP testing.

(2) Estimated energy and paper savings based on analysis of select HP Managed Print Services (MPS) customers’ imaging and printing operations using data gathered on devices and paper consumption, and comparing with post-MPS actuals or projections. Results depend on unique business environments, the way HP products and services are used, and other factors. Overall printing costs are unique to each company and should not be relied on for savings you may achieve. According to industry analysts, savings of up to 30% are typical with managed print services.

Did you know the average enterprise spends less than 30% of its IT budget on innovation?*  That means many enterprises currently lack sufficient capital for network investments that support cloud, mobility, rich media and bring your own device capabilities. That’s quite a problem for any 21st century business!

Fortunately, HP has taken on this challenge. HP’s new FlexNetwork Utility Advantage Program could be the solution that communication service providers (CSPs) and their enterprise clients have been looking for. The program enables CSPs, in collaboration with HP, to help enterprise customers modernize networks through hardware and software solutions, with no upfront cost.

Enterprise customers enter into a on a pay-per-use agreement with their CSP for the managed network offerings they need to support initiatives that speed innovation. "With HP’s FlexNetwork Utility Advantage Program, we can close the gap in our managed service offerings to deliver a networking infrastructure that allows our customers to move beyond operations to innovation,” said Oliver Spring, head of Product Line Management, Swisscom.

But if that’s not enough, FlexNetwork also offers great WiFi advantages. CSPs leveraging the program can deliver a unified wired and wireless local area network (WLAN) solution for cloud services or applications, on a pay-per-use basis. That type of simplification and cost efficiency can go a long way to helping enterprises grow in other areas!

“We have seen increased enterprise adoption of cloud-managed pay-per-use wireless local area network offerings,” said Tim Zimmerman, vice president, Gartner. “We advise customers to deploy integrated wired and wireless networks with a single management application to deliver consistent services and simplify operations.”

Whether you’re an enterprise or CSP, this breakthrough has a lot to offer:

• The HP FlexNetwork Utility Advantage Program is available worldwide through authorized CSPs.
  
  
• Additional information for enterprises interested in learning how HP FlexNetwork Utility Advantage Program can benefit them is available here.
  
  
• Additional information for CSPs interested in participating in the HP FlexNetwork Utility Advantage Program is available here.

* Based on HP internal research.

How can IT help tackle one of today’s toughest challenges – the fact that, in many parts of the developing world, there are too many people in need of medical care and too few clinics?

HP is showing the world how, in collaboration with the government of India and The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR). Together, they are providing affordable healthcare to communities that currently have none. Their recently announced solution – in essence – a very well-connected shipping container.

Simply transported by rail or road to remote communities, each container transforms on arrival into a sophisticated eHealth Center (eHC). There is a real need for this. Within just 100 days of operation in a resource-poor Indian village, the first center of its kind recorded an incredible 4,000 patient visits.

Each medically equipped container is fully integrated and cloud enabled. Staff are able to gather basic patient health data, and can send this from the eHC to any larger medical center or hospital. When medical diagnosis or a second opinion is required, they can consult with senior doctors by videoconference.

These rapidly deployable, fully integrated, cloud-enabled eHCs are set to “dramatically expand access, improve healthcare, and save lives,” says HP India’s Neelam Dhawan, Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Group and Country Managing Director.

Read the CSIR and HP announcement here.

HP improves access, quality and efficiency of global health. Find out more.