SureSupply

Fear and desperation are great business motivators. The story of SureSupply is one I've told a hundred times to anyone interested in hearing it. It's a once-in-a-career tale that spans nearly a decade, and I was fortunate to be one of its founding architects.

SureSupply was HP’s first IoT aimed at facilitating supplies purchasing by enabling HP’s printers to directly interact with their users and HP’s multi-tier channel via the web. The idea was simple: When an HP printer runs low on supplies, it alerts you and provides an easy path to order the right supplies direct from HP or your preferred reseller.

My team and I brought the idea to HP in 1999. HP gave us $50,000, a prototype printer and a week to prove it could be done.

As the initiative’s lead architect, I worked directly with HP’s global business unit and product engineers to define business requirements, hardware and software design and crafted the overall experience. In addition, I managed development of the web-based ordering system, the channel commerce solution, i18n architecture (22 countries/ 18 languages) and co-developed the embedded web server that enabled the technology while managing an internationally dispersed project team of application, product and quality assurance engineers.

With my help, HP took the program to the enterprise space. I led the effort to retool the technology to consolidate the ordering needs of and entire fleet of network printers. To do this, my team and I developed ResellerLink – a native application that discovered SureSupply-enabled printers across subnets and enabled an administrator to mass configure them to order from a preferred retailer.

The technology matured and became standard in all HP printers. Development moved offshore, opening new opportunities for me to step in and direct the program’s marketing and channel support. During that time, I created a number of end-user and reseller and end user-focused marketing tools and led development of the SureSupply channel marketing website.