Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com. I'm at the Business Matchmaking event, these real cool events where small businesses are introduced to large corporations and the Federal Government to do business, and I'm with one of the major partners, in fact the major partner, the first company to team up with Business Matchmaking. I'm with Brian Burch, the Director of Connected Devices with Hewlett-Packard. Brian, welcome to the BusinessMakers show.

Brian: Thank you, Russ. Great to be here.

Russ: You bet. In fact, let's start with that title. My goodness, Director of Connected Devices. Is there anything that's not connected in 2011?

Brian: Not very many things. It's a pretty good job to have.

Russ: I guess so. You must cover the whole spectrum, my goodness. So anyway, let's talk about business matchmaking. Hewlett-Packard played a key role in the very beginning of really getting this movement moving forward, right?

Brian: Very much so. About seven years ago, HP partnered with SMA Global, who's the event producer, Hector Barreto, who was the head of the Small Business Administration at the time, and several other corporate sponsors and partners, in order to provide a forum for small businesses of all shapes and sizes to pitch their great opportunities, their products, their services, to large corporations, state, local, federal government agencies, just a way to almost speed date and find opportunities to sell more stuff.

Russ: Well, I'm always impressed with the number of small businesses that choose to attend, and it always looks like, man, there are relationships being built here at every event that I've been the whole time.

Brian: Yeah, so this event over the seven years has absolutely worked. I think the numbers are about 80,000 appointments between small businesses and those who wish to procure goods and services from them that have resulted in over $8 billion of contracts awarded, real money.

Russ: Okay, wow, really, really impressive. So there you are now at Hewlett-Packard with this very important job, Connected Devices, but the history of Hewlett-Packard is so, so very rich. Do you sort of feel that in the culture there?

Brian: Sure. I mean, HP's been around for a very long time. In fact, the company was started in the late 30s in a garage in Palo Alto, California, which is now considered to be a California State Landmark. And actually it is officially recognized as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. A lot of people don't know that HP's first large order actually came from Walt Disney, who bought eight audio oscillators in order to manage the sound production for the movie Fantasia. So from those humble beginnings, a hundred plus billion dollar corporation was born. HP has a long history of innovating, of making markets all over the world, and of really caring deeply about the small business and how important the small business is to the economy of the United States and other regions of the world.

Russ: I find that first order to be totally fascinating. I always like to home in on first orders. And what was the product?

Brian: It's called an audio oscillator. So Fantasia was an amazing advance in terms of the use of sound in a movie, and I think it was an Academy Award winner for sound, and HP helped make that possible. This audio oscillating test equipment allowed Walt Disney to innovate from a sound perspective.

Russ: I'm curious, where else were the audio oscillators going to be sold to if Walt hadn't come along with this vision of this wild movie?

Brian: I think Walt's vision and the great job sort of probably sold a lot of audio oscillators from that day forward, but it was used to such great purpose. So yeah, HP sort of began as a test and measuring company with a lot of devices to help engineers do their jobs better, and then grew to be the corporate and consumer company that we know today with huge portfolio products and enterprise services and software and all the things we do up and down the line.

Russ: Right, well speaking of those products - and once again, your title, Director of Connected Devices - how did you get there, and what has sort of been your specialty? What do you attribute your success to?

Brian: Well, you know, I think HP is a very customer-centric company. We serve millions upon millions of corporate and consumer customers all over the world. Very sensitive to the trends and the needs. So my Connected Devices job allows me to do a lot of cool things. But right now I've just assisted in launching this product, which is the HP TouchPad. And so I would say a very revolutionary shot fired in the tablet market with a full multitasking device that allows people to both work and play. In fact, our tagline is that it is supernatural in the way that it works, and that it works like nothing else. It is unique in the market in terms of its capabilities. You can do everything that you need for work, email, calendaring, access to your desktop or corporate applications, but you can also listen to music, watch movies, read books, all the things that people are finding to be really interesting about the tablets.

Russ: Okay, now let's talk a little bit more about the touchpad. This is just now announced and released, and once again, back to you and your title, does that mean that you've sort of been working on the background on this product for some time?

Brian: So the very smart hardware and software engineers within our Palm operation are the ones that actually get credit for making the product. What my job in the Connected Devices group has been is to sort of focus on the applications and the services and sort of all the things that go around a great product like this to make it hugely successful in the market. So it's a great device, but it needs access to a lot of other things in this day and age to be connected to all the things we care about.

Russ: Absolutely. So when did you see the first prototype of what was going to be HP's TouchPad?

Brian: So several months ago, you know, it just launched here the 1st of July, I got to see it early in the process and get trained on how to share it with some of our corporate customers under NDA. So it's been really fun for me to watch. I wouldn't call myself a parent, but it's been very fun to watch it as it develops and the software matures. So this is a tablet version of an operating system called webOS the gang at Palm actually released in 2009. So it's been optimized and specifically designed for the tablet environment. It does an amazing job of the full multitasking experience that to date hasn't been available on a tablet, that we all kind of have grown used to on a PC. So it's a natural innovation for HP to bring that type of capability to the tablet market.

Russ: Well, the tablet market is very exciting right now. I mean, I can sort of remember four or five years ago people were sort of trying to introduce at least displays that would unattach from a laptop or something, and the touch applications were kind of beginning to develop. Even IBM came out with their table computer. And it all kind of looked interesting but it was real difficult to see real consumer products and usage until your competitor came out with the iPad. And man, they rocked the market. Now that certainly had to affect a lot of the thought processes in how HP would come out with their version, the TouchPad. I've already seen several things about it that I really like. This webOS is quite a bit different than the way that the iPad operates, right?

Brian: Yeah, so actually the engineering staff at Palm, which is a company that HP acquired, actually one year ago the transaction for HP to acquire Palm closed on July 1st of 2010. So just one year later we gave birth with all the great work that they had already done on webOS and some of sort of the magic that HP brings to the table from a hardware perspective to the TouchPad. And webOS was, and is, incredibly innovative as an operating system. It was launched at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in January of 2009, to rave reviews, and basically the industry progressed. The hardware capabilities to sort of put this much horsepower into such a small mobile form factor kind of happened, and the screens developed, and now this amazing software has a beautiful hardware product to be encased in. And we have differentiated the TouchPad dramatically from any of the other competitors in the tablet space. It works like no other tablet. It provides you with a full multitasking experience that allows you to do both work and play at the same time, not compromised. Browse in a multi-tabbed format so you can browse multiple pages and switch from pages very quickly.

Russ: Cool.

Brian: You can listen to music while you're doing other things.

Russ: Cool.

Brian: We have a very respectful and elegant notification system so that if somebody's trying to get ahold of you or reach you, the tablet will notify you but it won't stop what you're doing. And, uniquely, we've married the TouchPad with our line of webOS phones. So that, for instance, if you get a call on a webOS phone while your phone is upstairs or in your briefcase, but you have the TouchPad in your lap, you'll see that call on the TouchPad and you'll be able to answer that call on the TouchPad, and you can either use the built in microphone and speakers in the TouchPad, or if you have your Bluetooth headset maybe connected to your TouchPad you can take it that way. But things that no one else can do. Tons of innovation in the market.

Russ: Really cool. And I want to talk to you more about after this. I'm talking with Brian Burch, the HP Director of Connected Devices, and we'll be back with him shortly. This is the BusinessMaker show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. This is the BusinessMaker show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on with Brian Burch of Hewlett-Packard, the Director of Connected Devices. And we're talking about the brand new cool TouchPad. Brian, you already laid down a pretty long list of functionality differences in this device and other touchpads, but I've got a couple of questions. Number one, if I pull up a website and it's got flash, can I see flash on this thing?

Brian: So the HP TouchPad supports a full web browsing experience, including Flash, which is most prevalent for web video today, and HTML5, which is likely to be prevalent in the future. So there are no compromises with the TouchPad. If it's out there on the web, you can see it, you can enjoy it.

Russ: To me, that is huge. I just don't understand the iPad not being able to display it. So let's move to another one of those. If I have a PowerPoint file and I want to look at it on my tablet, will the TouchPad handle PowerPoint?

Brian: You bet. So the HP TouchPad ships right out of the box with a product called Quickoffice, which is specifically designed to allow you to open an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document or a PowerPoint from someone that's emailed it to you. And you'll be able to actually edit those documents, resave them and send them back.

Russ: Oh my goodness, okay. Well, that's really cool too. This is just another softball for you too. I'm sure you don't have to use iTunes to download photos and music and documents and everything else, right?

Brian: No. So the HP TouchPad and webOS are designed to be connected to the internet, so in fact the entire inspiration for webOS was around a fully web experience, connected experience, a cloud based experience. So the way the TouchPad works is different than virtually all other products, where it does not require a certain sort of anchor or piece of software on your computer. It easily allows you to download content from the cloud, to move content from your computer through a simple USB connection, so that you can easily choose what you want, very few restrictions. A part of the reason for that is that this is a device for both consumer and our commercial customers, and we wanted to respect the fact that in a business environment, they don't necessarily want to be forced to sort of update the product through a desk based piece of software. So the TouchPad uses an over the air connection and it will update and get new features over the air in a cloud based configuration.

Russ: Brian, what you're telling me, in my opinion, is all very impressive. But my God to get the word out to the market, to just sort of cut in to the market share momentum by the other guy still seems like it's going to be an enormously huge challenge.

Brian: Well, you know, nothing's ever easy that's worth accomplishing, and HP luckily has some amazing scale. From a geographic perspective, we do business in virtually every country in the world. We have a billion dollars of revenue. We have an amazing channel that we've developed over the years, an unprecedented number of partners, both in the consumer and the commercial space. And the marketing campaign that we've unleashed for webOS and for the TouchPad is probably one of the largest in our history. So we are going to tell this story, and we have a motivated and committed group of partners that are going to help us do so as well. No company, I think, does a better job of working with its partners to achieve mutual success than HP does.

Russ: Okay, well good luck on it. I hear you loud and clearly, and the features and the functionality of the product are extremely impressive. But I've sort of been in the world of technology for my whole career, and for some reason, it's not always the best technology that wins.

Brian: That's true.

Russ: And that marketing momentum. But good luck, because it is very impressive.

Brian: It's a great product. It's an exciting time.

Russ: Okay, now, you sort of mentioned and alluded to the size of the company today and the breadth of products is significant. I've sort of being a Hewlett-Packard customer forever. That laser jet printer that you guys started back in the early 80s or whenever it was, maybe it was the early 60s for all I know.

Brian: No, 80s is right.

Russ: Was so impressive. And then the acquisition of Compaq computer, and then the other acquisitions that you've made along the way have all been impressive. But it starts starting to seem, boy, it's probably a challenge to head it the right direction for the future. I mean, who knows what's it going to be like. That leads up to the question to you, what do you think things are going to be like in the information technology world three to five to ten years from now?

Brian: So the good news is, smarter people than me are figuring that out. I do have my suspicions, but one of the things that does make HP special, you mentioned some of the acquisitions, you know HP has spent more on research and development over the years than probably almost any other company in the tech space. I think last year the total was almost three billion dollars. So HP is one of the small number of companies that are investing really heavily, not only in sort of research and development for products that are near completion, but also looking further out on the horizon.

And I guess what I would say is that based on my personal sort of instincts and what I see running around the labs at HP, in the very near future you're going to be able to access or connect to your stuff, whatever you define that is -- your presence on the web, your music, your photos, your television shows, your movies - virtually anywhere you are, without boundaries, without limitations. I mean, we've moved to a web-connected world. You joked at the beginning of the program about how connected devices, what isn't connected? The great thing is that we're just going to continue to remove any impediments to you connecting with your stuff, those you care about, those things you enjoy.

Russ: Brian, I really appreciate you sharing your observations about the future. I appreciate your comments about business matchmaking and what you're doing there, it's very effective, and I really like it that you brought in the TouchPad and shared. Thank you a lot, man.

Brian: You bet. It's been great to be here, Russ.

Russ: All right, that's Brian Burch, Senior Director of Connected Devices at Hewlett-Packard. This is the BusinessMaker show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.