Hewlett-Packard or HP (styled as hp) is an American multi-national Information Technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. It provides hardware, software and services to consumers, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors. HP produces lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers and computers for home and small-business use. Many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with Compaq. HP, from 2001, promotes itself as not just a supplier of hardware and software. It showcases a full range of services to design, implement and support IT infrastructure.

BLAZE TO BRILLIANCE
In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard’s garage with an initial capital investment of $538. HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957. The company’s first customer was Walt Disney Productions, which purchased eight audio oscillators to use in its movie Fantasia.
FAITH FACTOR
HP’s Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) is the leading imaging and printing systems provider in the world for printer hardware, printing supplies and scanning devices, providing solutions across customer segments from individual consumers to small and medium businesses to large enterprises.
ENGAGEMENT THAT ENTHRALS
HP is listed in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers according to their policies on sustainability, energy and climate and green products. In November 2011, HP secured the 1st place (out of 15) in this ranking (climbing up 3 places) with an increased score of 5.9 (up from 5.5). It scored most points on the new Sustainable Operations criteria, having the best programme for measuring and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from its suppliers and scoring maximum points for its thorough paper procurement policy.
INNOVEDGE
HP Labs, the research arm of HP, was founded in 1966. HP Labs aims to deliver new technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP’s current strategies. The examples of recent HP Labs technology include the memory spot chip of 2006. HP IdeaLab further provides a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community.
HP also offers managed services by which they provide complete IT-support solutions for other companies and organisations. Some examples of these include offering ‘professional support’ and desktop ‘premier support’ for Microsoft in the EMEA marketplace. This is done from the Leixlip campus near Dublin, Sofia and Israel. Support is offered on the line of Microsoft operation systems, Exchange, Sharepoint and some Office applications.
BRAND EQUITY
With the acquisition of Compaq in 2002, HP has maintained the ‘Compaq Presario’ brand on low-end home desktops and laptops, the ‘HP Compaq’ brand on business desktops and laptops, and the ‘HP ProLiant’ brand on Intel-architecture servers. The ‘HP Pavilion’ brand is used on home entertainment laptops and all home desktops.