LAS VEGAS -- HP customers are looking to the company to overhaul its support, integrate its broad portfolio and keep its technology accessible. At HP’s annual software user conference this week, it became clear in which areas the vendor has made progress and which efforts still need more work.

HP welcomed more than 2,600 customers to Software Universe, a conference that showcases the company’s former OpenView products alongside technologies gained with acquisitions of Mercury Interactive,  Opsware and a slew of others. During the show, HP unveiled new automation capabilities and inked a deal with VMware to jointly develop software for managing virtual server environments. The announcements indicate a move in the right direction, industry watchers say, but HP will need to execute well in the next 18 months to spin its technology piece parts into gold.

"HP faces the same challenges as other big software vendors in which the technologies they’ve acquired introduce complexities and can be challenging to implement if the vendor doesn’t present its software to customers in a simplified, business-relevant way," says Dennis Drogseth, research vice president at Enterprise Management Associates. "HP as a company historically invested in siloed tools, but now the vendor is integrating its investments to work toward solving business problems."

HP’s software business -- the fastest-growing unit within the company -- is estimated to make approximately $3 billion out of the vendor’s more than $100 billion in total revenue. To capitalize on the opportunity, HP must present its software as flexible, integrated tools while emphasizing that it won’t bind customers to one vendor or product road map in the long term. Vendors such as HP and IBM must be cautious in how they present their broad technology portfolios and avoid suggesting that an investment in them is an all-or-nothing deal if they want to succeed with today’s software buyers, industry watchers say.

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"Clients are wary of how HP’s technology can wrap around and add value to what they already have. We all know no one will completely abandon previous investments," says Evelyn Hubbert, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "The integration story is a good one, it makes sense for HP and its customers, but the vendor really needs to keep its products modular and flexible and able to deliver incremental value if customers decide to buy more than point solutions. It’s a tough balance."