Business 4 min read By Callum Montgomery
HP's Nordic CTO on AI Safety and Shifting from Hardware to Solutions
Rajendra Sitompoel, HP's chief technology officer for the Nordics and Benelux, explains how the company is moving from a hardware focus to a solutions and experience focus, while navigating the challenges of safe AI adoption and keeping tech teams motivated.
HP is undergoing a strategic transition from a hardware-centric business to one focused on solutions and experiences, according to Rajendra Sitompoel, the company's chief technology officer for the Nordics and Benelux regions. The shift comes as HP has slipped down the Fortune 500 rankings over the past two decades, from 11th in 2006 to 84th this year, overtaken by the likes of Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft.
«We're going through a transition,» Sitompoel said. «From more of a hardware focus to a solution and experience focus.» In practice, this means developing a deeper understanding of the challenges clients face and identifying the technologies and services that can help them. Sitompoel's role expanded to cover the Nordics around six months ago, and he has since been balancing that internal shift with time spent talking to clients, CIOs and CTOs.
A central concern for Sitompoel is the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the need to help people adopt it safely and securely. «AI is developing at a rapid pace and we need to help people adopt it in a safe and secure way,» he said. «People have to be comfortable with that transition in their everyday work and they have to understand security and resilience.» This includes preparing for incidents beyond a company's control and knowing how to minimise negative impacts or respond appropriately. «We can't control everything, and neither can our clients, so we need to be able to respond accordingly and have conversations about security and AI adoption with our customers,» he added.
On motivating his technology teams, Sitompoel emphasised giving them the freedom to operate and to stress-test the security of technology without crossing boundaries. «I've almost never had to stop someone because we're working with sound professionals, they know what they can and can't do,» he said. «So it's about giving them freedom and challenging them to bring more value for the company and our customers.» He also stressed the importance of keeping the focus on end customers rather than getting lost in technical specifications. «It's easy to get lost in specs and tech but for me, it all comes down to how we can support people in the workplace,» he said, pointing to devices such as laptops, mice and monitors. «This is all nice, but how do people actually use it? And also the companies acquiring our solutions, how do they actually benefit from it?»
To reach more strategic goals, Sitompoel acknowledged that some things have had to be postponed, including IT investments and changes to team structure. «We wanted to focus our efforts on navigating the period we're in now where there's a lot of change — you don't want to shift too many things at the same time,» he said. As a measure of success, he looks at the ratio of client meetings to internal meetings. «If that ratio leans too much towards internal, that means that I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do,» he said. «I need to make sure there's a healthy balance in that ratio — it tells me if I'm leaning in the right direction.»
HP's transition reflects broader pressures on legacy technology companies to adapt to a market where services and customer experience increasingly drive growth. Sitompoel's approach highlights the dual challenge facing technology leaders: managing internal change while helping clients navigate complex issues such as AI security and resilience. His focus on client-facing time over internal meetings underscores a belief that staying close to customers is essential for steering the company through its strategic shift.
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