Funny as I read this article, I have the track Outro - M83 playing from Cloud Atlas playing. Got me thinking of Steve Jobs effects in the future of silicon valley.
Do not simply look at HP's consumer products and think that is the extent of their talent and products. HP has an enormous Enterprise catalog and service sector. Thats where the real money is for them and where their real quality work is put in. I love Apple products but if I had to pick something else for the server farm, it would most likely be HP. I have thoroughly enjoyed their products and support.
For some reason, I find that comparison completely absurd.
It's been known for awhile now
I don't believe theirs a "movement" in any such regard. I think, like with any person, place, thing - there are people that have differing opinions. That doesn't make them hateful or whatnot.
This is dumb
After Hurd came Apotheker, who wasted one year at enormous cost to the company. If they had hired me as CEO and paid me $100 million for playing Minesweeper the company would have done better. Just publishing the idea that HP could leave the PC hardware business cost them gazillions. (You can't go and tell people that you think about leaving a business. You either do it, or you don't do it. I would have been worth the money compared to Apotheker just by playing Minesweeper and not talking about leaving the PC business).
I would have agreed with that had I not known how far HP has fallen since then. Since Hurd left, HP hired a software guy to run a hardware company, exited the smartphone and tablet markets (Palm purchased under Hurd) and threw away the $1.2 billion it cost to acquire them, flirted with exiting the PC business, fired the software guy, hired Meg Whitman as CEO who, as an HP board member approved the bonehead moves Apotheker made, laid off 27,000 employees after posting a profit decline of 31%, wrote off $8.8 billion from their purchase of Autonomy and increased the number of pay offs to 29,000.
I bet the HP board wishes everyday, check that, multiple times a day, that they didn't fire Hurd.
.....but otherwise HP is a zombie company kept alive by the voodoo of branding and market positioning protectionism ala Walmart. That strategy worked for Walmart and Costco's successes but I don't think it really works for tech.
I was with HP in their alleged "cash cow" enterprise software & services division (TSG) before Hurd's departure. None of us had wanted to work for HP - we were all acquired in, some had even left HP previously following the Mercury software acquisition. ................
.......
I used "cash cow" to mean that it's a myth - the business produced less than 5% of HP's total profit. HP's enterprise software portfolio primarily came from Mercury software and Peregrine Systems - both of which were acquired in the late 90s / early 2000s way before Hurd. Opsware was acquired during Hurd's reign as well as EDS - EDS was a huge write-down that's manifested now (customers were looking to dump EDS upon HP announcing the acquisition and were asking me for some guidance for MSPs of that scale). The way they "grew" the business basically was they charged customers more and more for services (consultants) they didn't need or got cheaply instead of paying 3x as much for a major technology consulting firm (EMC, Accenture, or even IBM). But the customers didn't want to keep the software itself typically because they were expensive to maintain (it was basically all completely outdated and prohibitively difficult to scale by the time the proof of concept had cleared and the sales guys had made their commissions).what / who killed the "cash cow " ? = enterprise software & services division
- Oracle ?
- Apothekar ?
- Dell ?
- ...new technology changes ....
Just thinking about the possibility of Steve being right about the importance of HP to silicon valley is scary.
what / who killed the "cash cow " ? = enterprise software & services division
As a side note I've often wondered what would happen to Agilents devices if Apple acquired them and added iOS to many of their instruments. We would enter into the age of smart DVM and O'Scopes with all sorts of apps. If there is one thing I hate about Agilent, and the other big instrument makers, is the unbundling of software enhancements and the general gouging for those enhancements. Imagine a DVM, or O'Scope API like the current APIs for things like the accelerometer on iOS devices.