Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba announced a joint initiative focused on developing a cloud offerings line-up for “smart community” businesses. The two companies will offer social & collaborative for the energy conservation, transportation, telecommunications and medical sectors, among others.

Toshiba in particular has been looking to monetize this segment before its agreement with HP, and reportedly has established a dedicated smart community business unit. The company revealed some of its expectations for the joint venture.

“The Tokyo-based company forecast sales in its smart- community business, including grid and building facilities, will triple to 900 billion yen ($11 billion) in the year ending March 2016.”

Toshiba’s stock fell 0.3 percent as of 9:41 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and HP lost .4 percent to $34.26 at 4 p.m. in the NYSE.

Hewlett-Packard in particular has been branching out of its core, low-margin hardware business ever since CEO Leo Apotheker took office less than a year ago. The company unfolded a great number of new ventures this month at the HP Discover conference, including a $2 billion fund meant to help customers finance their hybrid cloud deployments.

Today, the largest PC maker in the world said that it will move some business laptop production to Japan from Shanghai to shorten delivery time to local customers.

“China has become less attractive as a global manufacturing base,” saidYuichi Ishida, a Tokyo-based analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co. “Personnel expenses in China are rising by about 20 percent a year.”

Going back to Toshiba, the Japanese IT giant is also expanding its turf. In a press release published a few hours ago, its Toshiba Medical Systems subsidiary announced that it acquired 90 percent of U.S clinical visualization and analysis company Vital Images. The deal totaled 273 million dollars, or 22 billion yen.