A company that has traditionally kept a low profile is now coming out with a slew of electronic commerce offerings. With as much pizzazz as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard is taking centre stage to announce new products and partnerships.

HP "has really caught on to the Internet," said Christopher Willard, research vice president at International Data Corp. "It will compete very hard in this space next year. In reorganising its Internet activities, HP is borrowing some management ideas from start-ups. It has formed a division to focus on the Internet and electronic commerce, with Joseph Beyers (46) as general manager.

"My whole philosophy is to create a more independent software strategy to replicate an Internet start-up environment," he said in an interview. HP wants to move activities previously fragmented across three organisations, into one, Mr Beyers said.

"It's amazing how unconnected we were in our activities. Now we're increasing the communication links. The five parts of the Internet Business Unit, based in Cupertino, California, focus on electronic services, Internet security, electronic commerce software, electronic business, and Internet financial transactions. Verifone falls under the last part. "After we acquired Verifone, we kept living too much at arm's length," Mr Beyers said. Pulling the units together, he said, is a great opportunity to accelerate and broaden Verifone's focus.

In recent years, HP's growth rates have fallen behind those of other high technology companies in the market for Internet-based computer systems. Edward Acly, director of middleware research at International Data Corp, said HP "had to do this to be competitive. E-business is a natural extension for any of these computer guys".

The formation of the Internet Business Unit was announced in March. Then two weeks ago, at an extravaganza on Wall Street, HP unveiled its Unix server aimed at supporting functions like data warehousing, electronic commerce, integrated supply chain management, and technical computing.

Created specifically for the Internet and electronic services, Lewis Platt, chairman and CEO touted that the HP 9000 N-Class Enterprise Server outclasses all of its competition by "at least a factor of two".

The company expects the N-Class server to generate $10 billion (€9.4 billion) in revenue over the next few years, up from the $6 billion earned from its predecessor, the K-Class. The N-Class line offers the ability to route traffic to other servers if there is an overload on one. "It prevents the World Wide Web from becoming the World Wide wait," said Patrick Rogers, worldwide marketing manager of HP's business critical computing business unit.

It guarantees up-time for hardware, the operating system, storage and the data base. HP has also been entering into alliances. Last month, it invested $10 million in Security First Technologies, a spin-off of Security First Network Bank which was the world's first Internet bank. Security First, known as S1, is the Atlanta-based Internet banking software provider. The money will go towards S1's development of a financial services portal. "We're fighting to be number one in Internet banking," said Olivier Trancart, worldwide head of Hewlett-Packard's financial services business.

"There was a need for us to link to develop an unique solution for North America and now we're working on one for Europe," he said. He predicted that HP's strength in telecommunications would give it a leg up in financial services. As those two industries converge, "the battlefield will be the Internet", he said. HP has also joined up with Ariba Technologies. HP was selected as the exclusive provider of hardware, software, and hosting and deployment services for the Ariba.com Network, a business-to-business Internet service designed to connect suppliers and buyers worldwide. HP has also bought Open Skies, a new portal for low cost airlines.

Just this week, HP announced Commerce for the Millennium. Part of the package includes software for Internet Service Providers so they can offer electronic commerce services to small and medium-sized businesses. HP says it can deploy a hosted solution to service providers in 90 days. Merchants can then run an electronic business, from acquiring an online merchant account, to building a store, to doing online payment processing.

And these announcements from HP seem to be just the beginning of many to come.