HP hammered in servers, storage, and PCs in fiscal Q3 Remember a long time ago, how Compaq put the squeeze on its supply chain, dropped the boom on PC prices, and essentially made it impossible for IBM, the former market leader, to stay in the PC business? Well, Dell and other competitors in the PC, server, and storage rackets are trying to do the same thing to HP now, and its …
from an event I was at recently
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=267LkLipkWw#t=28m56s
(if youtube doesn't jump to the right spot on the first try scroll to the 28m 56s marker)
Most of the questions were more complaints about how HP does some things, and she responded really well I was honestly blown away. Especially when she gave the whole group her email address, thought that was great. There's a good 30min of Q&A there from IT folks like you and me.. I couldn't come up with any questions to ask her myself. I thought of trying to meet her she was walking around the floor with cameras following her while she talked to various HP employees, could of just yelled out her name and said hi, I've never met a billionaire before, but I was too shy.
Of the 3 different HP execs who presented at the conference she was the only one to do Q&A.
Of course you can decide to watch the full keynote, though I think for this audience the Q&A would be more interesting.
From what you describe it sounds like an internal HP rah-rah session. Oh, billionaire Meg "gave the whole group her email address, thought that was great" - she doesn't have to "give" it to you, you look it up. And you don't honestly believe that she reads her own email - she has a minion to do that and post most replies.
"could of just yelled out her name and said hi, I've never met a billionaire before, but I was too shy." Fcuk me, get a life!
AC for obvious reasons.
Yes, it's a bit of slip, though you could infer from the first sentence that ProLiant = industry standard.
In any case, Dell also isn't making any money from the sales even if it is stealing market share from HP. This is one reason why it is taking itself private. PCs, servers, etc. have reached saturation point which is why there is no money in volume anymore. You have exceptional products, like Apple's, to get any decent margins. I've been looking at some of the newer notebook pondering a move from my MacBook but the cheap ones are all underspecced, particularly the screens and come with Windows 8 (no thank you), the high-end waste their time with touchscreens, and there seems to be no middle ground (good but not touch screen, > 4 GB RAM, light) for € 500. If things don't improve my next machine may well be another Apple.
Not only that, but a lot of people at enterprise level don''t trust hp any more, after all the mendacity and what they have done with a whole string of aquistions - Dec / Compaq, 3Com. All great sucessfull companies that just disappeared without trace after being swallowed by hp, who, with the exception of Proliant, failed to capitalise on their strengths.. All that and the technical slips like killing Alpha in favour of Itanium development, which swallowed billions of dollars for little in return. Finally, all the board room intrigue and greed that made HP, one of the most technically respected companies in the business, a complete laughing stock and embarassment to many.
They just look like box shippers these days and they need to get back to intense R&D and genuinely innovative product. It was technical prowess that made them in the first place...
HP did not get here just because of Carly, Mark, whatever his name was ( maybe him), Meg.
They have had a long run of bad decisions by lots of different leaders.
Dont forget -
Donatelli
Fink
Belluzo
I am sure I am forgetting others who have a share in the current state. Bill and Dave would be disappointed.
It will take more than Meg to turn it around - how does HP draw in the talent they need to complete their turn around?
That's a tough problem even without headwinds. The first thing you need are leaders who recognize talent. That doesn't come from bean counters. The second thing you need is a reward system that promotes talent. A the moment, as well as for about the past decade, HP seems to have been missing both of those items. Given it has been that way for about the past decade, there are significant headwinds. And the bean counters keep counting fewer and fewer beans.
I've been working with both HP(3Par) and EMC(VNX) over the last two months on an enterprise disk deployment anytime I've needed any numbers, quote modifications, questions on configs I would hear back within a day or two from EMC...with HP I've been waiting for over 2 weeks at times....all I can say is, you can't make sales if you can't get your kitchen in order.
HP are at least one year into Whitman's 5 year plan. You would expect to see some green shoots somewhere. Instead we still hear about Execution challenges (we f***d up delivery) competitive pricing (we are way too expensive) and misaligned go to market model (we are selling the wrong stuff to the wrong people).
I suspect that even the redundancies are misplaced (letting go of troops on the ground instead of addressing the massive top heavy management structure).
HP epitomizes what happens when you just become a rice-box reseller. All the big customers buy direct, then the noodle stores open up in the US and sell to the smaller fry. Then you end up boasting about turn-rounds with software and services.
Painful, but the only way out is to figure a new architecture and make it yourself!
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