back to article Life after HP cracks off into two: Execs spill the beans – tiny little beans

The theme of the opening keynote at the HP Discover conference on Tuesday was "Winning in the New Style of Business," but what the audience in Las Vegas really wanted to know was whether HP can really win by splitting into two companies. That transition is expected to complete by the beginning of HP's fiscal 2016, which starts …

  1. HonestAbe

    Sad

    Sigh. Not a single new technology release. Whitman runs through some buzz words she doesn't understand like "disruption" and "internet of things" and then quickly moves the audience's attention *away* from HP toward actual disruptive companies like Uber.

    I felt so bad for Nefkins, Neri, and Youngjohns, who just looked embarassed and uncomfortable. No doubt they were thinking, while they were on stage, about their on-going discussions with corporate recruiters and career counsellors.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sad

      the new company's "simpler structure"

      = we fired loads of them and those left who are any good will quit....

  2. mdubash

    And yet, as consumer technology continues to invade the enterprise, not just tablets etc but datacentre hardware such as consumer-grade storage, HP decides they are two entirely different things and splits them apart. Not convinced....

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HP has already set arbitrary staffing numbers they plan to get down to before 1 Nov. no matter what. There are two rounds of layoffs planned between then and now, with additional opportunistic layoffs along the way. People critical to delivery, fully funded through customer contracts, have already been laid off with more being sent to the block in the next few weeks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yup just gone but am now back consulting for the organisation I was TUPEd from. Much better rates as well - they are planning to bring work back in again, and the yo yo goes on. There has been great upset within the organisation about the quality of work and contractual wrangling from HP/EDS

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "There has been great upset within the organisation about the quality of work and contractual wrangling from HP/EDS"

        Tell me about it. My employers outsourced our IT to the Great Satan that is HP a few years back, we've since had our own major strategic challenges, and a core problem for all of our growth businesses is now the outstandingly poor IT service we get, the appallingly sluggish response times, and the obscene costs for doing the most rudimentary things, and the "SLA says no" approach of HP.

        When the outsource deal was signed, our Procurement guys thought they'd done a good job. But as always with ITO and BPO vendors, the vendor sales & legal team was hugely more experienced than the customer side, with the result that HP limit everything they do to the absolute minimum permitted by the SLA, charge the earth for anything overlooked in the contract discussions or considered a "non standard request", and won't themselves be held accountable for SLA breaches because they knew how to insert exclusion clauses that our foolishly trusting project team simply didn't see coming. With HP's balance sheet bloated with goodwill from serial botched acquisitions, any cost saving from their cheapskate operations is more than swallowed by the necessary return on capital they need to charge (something our own directors weren't clever enough to work out in advance, even though many in our business knew exactly how this would play out).

        I doubt that HP's fat cats read these pages, but in the event that they do, I'd just like to say how much I hate you, your "rape & pillage" ITO business model, your soiled brand, your bungling mis-stepping company, your crummy enterprise service, your ineffectual GSD and your low rent missing-in-action on site support. And that's a real pity, you've recruited and TUPE'd some brilliant IT people over the years, you had a heritage of talent and enterprise in Hewlett Packard, but in the pursuit of your own obscene and undeserved bonuses you've sh@t on these people and replaced them with underpaid, poorly trained and demotivated drones.

        Did I made it clear how much I dislike and despise HP?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, it looks Avago went well since it was splitted from HP...

    ... thereby maybe one of the companies will get better....

    1. Mpeler
      Unhappy

      Re: Well, it looks Avago went well since it was splitted from HP...

      Avago was a sub-split, so to speak, and is probably doing better because Bill Sullivan embodied the "Peter Principle" and was booted upwards.

      HP split off Agilent (the "original" HP bits) in 1999, and then Avago (semi components, etc.) and Verigy (semiconductor test) was split off later from Agilent.

      The fiber test group was, sadly, deep-sixed in the process as no-one wanted to put dark fibre back online after 9-11 killed the economy (even though if they had waited, it would have paid off).

      They also managed to miss the LED lighting boom (bye-bye Lumileds), killed off super-duper electron microscopes while HP killed their atomic clocks biz.

      Heyyy, if you're killing off the labs, who cares about basic scientific research, or? You can always get it off the shelf (say the folks who stick "Invent" at the bottom of the HP sign and hope it does the trick as well as the humans did).....

  5. Mpeler
    Mushroom

    HP Ink?

    It must have been a typo - surely they meant "HP Ink", the only thing that's been keeping them afloat since the last time they "Invent"ed (BAH, Carly) anything useful.

    A non-technical CEO at the top of a (no-longer) highly technical company once known for innovation and well-thought-out products, that knew how to listen to its customers (take that, Microsoft), and suggest (or default) options in a logical and HELPFUL manner, when needed.

    A non-technical CEO whose only strategy for re-"invent"ing HP is to slash and burn a trail of tears through the company, viewing valuable employees who have given far beyond (probably) what they should have (in pursuit of the HP Way) merely as "headcount" and chattel.

    One of a series of non-technical CEOs who would have been better being seen and not Hurd, firing the "invent"ors and laying off most of the labs, such that "Invent" is slathered onto the bottom of the company logo as a vapid marketing afterthought, an insult to the men and women who actually DO invent, and are (hopefully happily) doing it for other companies now.

    And now you go on stage with the vanquished "three musketeers" (or would that be Huey, Dewey, and Louie?), splitting the once great company, hoping that at some point they don't collide as two garbage trucks (as Scott McNealy so aptly put the Compaq merger).

    Meg Whitman. HP.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    We're seeing it now.

    RIP, Bill and Dave. I doubt there's anyone left at what's left of HP who remember you. Sad...

  6. Tony S

    @Ledswinger

    I had the misfortune to work for a company that outsourced their IT to EDS / HP. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't believe that it could be so bad; but having seen it, I now know that it really is so terribly poor.

    Helpdesk staff that had little of no technical skills, just the ability to read from a script. Highly detailed security practices that people ignored on a daily basis. A baffling array of policy and procedure documents that contradicted each other. IT staff that actively set out to do things that they knew would cause problems because they were so pissed off at the way that they were being treated.

    Even worse, the business had people with no technical ability managing many aspects of the IT. Anyone that did have any skill was ignored and became so frustrated that they left as quickly as they could.

    I am so glad I got out of there; soul destroying

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Really?

    "...splitting off from the PCs and printers business would give HP Enterprise more focus and allow it to move with greater agility."

    Seriously? What, the guys in Enterprise were so jealous of the ink cartridge margins they couldn't find time to do their work??

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    EDS

    A recent wall st journal article suggested that after the split, tens of thousands of enterprise services employees would be hit. If those targeted are in high cost positions in high cost countries, I wonder how much longer EDS's former headquarters will remain under HP's ownership.

    (Too bad EDS's former headquarters wasn't for sale when Toyota was looking for new digs for its USA headquarters.)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rationale for separation

    The rationale for separation has never been satisfactorily explained and most of the arguments could equally be used for staying as one company.

    I think the separation is happening because Meg's much heralded turnaround isn't happening fast enough (or perhaps at all - revenue is still falling) and separation was one wheeze they came up as a bit of misdirection. It certainly wasn't part of the Meg's original plan.

    We know that there's major 'savings' to be made at HP ES; with revenue falling as it is I predict amputations rather than mere cuts - it's going to get messy at ES.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why do I get the uncomfortable feeling ...

    ... that Meg Whitman and her supporters really don't have a clue?

  11. hidden

    Same old comments. Let-go HP staffers grumbling...

    1. Mpeler
      FAIL

      How would you know? You're probably not good enough to have gotten in during the Bill and Dave days.

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