The $53bn 'startup': Hewlett Packard Enterprise begins life The UK country chief of $53bn “startup” Hewlett Packard Enterprise might have had a number of concerns on his mind this morning but retail stock levels or a huge separation task weren’t among them. For HP, the grand old lady of Silicon Valley, has split in two a year after going public about plans to hive off the PC and print …
Poor Andy, had to cope with knowing everything. That must be a first for a senior executive, most seem to get away with knowing bog all about the businesses they run.
Just for the record Andy, it's not you who has to know everything, just who knows, and who can brief you before you speak to the media. That's why you have CFOs, CTOs, VPs of this and that and a whole bunch of Enterprise and Solutions Architects in your company.
I've just seen their banner ad on this site.
'Accelerating Next'? WTF does that even mean?
And as for the logo, I can just imagine meeting that took place to choose one. Picture if you will a weekend trip away somewhere at a resort so the PHBs could have the meeting to decide it...
- 'Right we've got to come up with the logo. Any ideas?'
- 'I think this oblong looks nice'
- 'Good! that's that done then. Who's getting the beers in?'
Buzzword transform! Resynergise bullshit bingo! Cloudy enterprise jargonburger! Bong!
Meanwhile the site is broken. It leads straight to the German website, and that stupid video loop (WHAT IS THAT?) keeps reloading the entire page.
I have a mysterious and unexplainable premonition that this may not end well.
The reason for splitting up has never been satisfactorily explained; my own view is that Meg's turnaround was turning out to be either completely or semi-mythical and they needed to do something. It certainly wasn't part of the original plan.
"The reason for splitting up has never been satisfactorily explained"
Cue music:
"When your profits heading south,
And the shareholders are starting to grouse,
When your doom's on every mouth....
Just bust it all to bits!
.
Bust it all to bits, and scatter the fragments widely!
Some may fall over, but one may find clover,
And then it can buy all the other bits over!
Until in turn it starts to fall over,
Then you can just bust it all to bits!"
There really wasn't a lot of reason to stay together though. Essentially operated as 2 different companies anyway, no synergy really in terms of markets, products, etc, and very little operating synergy. Splitting allows each company to be more focused. Disclaimer, I now work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. In nearly a decade, I'm not sure I could name one person I met would worked in the PC or Printer division (now HP Inc.) so life really hasn't changed. And other point is I am literally amazed how well the split 'appears' to have gone. No internal disruption that I've noticed, everything has continued to work, etc. It seems we're a lot better at separating 2 companies than we are at merging 2 together!
I now work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise....And other point is I am literally amazed how well the split 'appears' to have gone. No internal disruption that I've noticed, everything has continued to work, etc.
I'm an end user at one of HPE's large enterprise customers, and you're quite right, nothing's changed. We get the same shit, expensive, unresponsive service we had before, the same laughable first line offshore support, the same one-sided approach to delivering the bits of the SLA that benefit HP. Well done to all of you!
"my own view is that Meg's turnaround was turning out to be either completely or semi-mythical."
Yes, I think that's basically it. Whitman started out by intentionally lowering the bar -- tanking the share price through massive write-offs and trash-talking her predecessors. Classic "big bath" accounting scheme. She then promised a five-year "turnaround" to restore the company, but she couldn't even execute on that much lower expectation. Having run out of time, she tried to sell it off, but nobody wanted to buy all those disparate failing or declining businesses as a giant package. Now she's breaking them up into smaller bite-size chunks in the hope she can then find acquirers.
In a couple years, some ODM will buy the PC/printer part for just the brand recognition, I predict. No company is going to want the EDS side, though, because anyone can just poach EDS's last remaining talent through hiring. Whitman will then do what Carly has done -- go into politics. No tech company will ever again make the mistake of hiring her.
Why do they actually believe that this is going to work better as two companies? Just thinking out loud... was it the fact that they "too many things on their mind" that they miserably failed with Palm, Palm OS, WEB OS, tablets, phones? Maybe they failed in that area because the server guys messed with Itanium... or Oracle. Yes the looser thing is contagious... I mean come on....This is pretty ridiculous. In the mind set of someone that really wants to make a long term investment, how does this sound? Reassuring? Anyway.
I also tend to think that most of their major problems - the thing they mention as "focus", come from all the job cuts that they made. Having people for example support personal systems and other people support server systems, does not make either redundant just because both provide support and a brilliant mind in top tiers thinks: now that is a good way to cut costs! That is a good way for people that are on the other side of the line to say good bye and farewell when the guy that supports your machine knows less than you who require support.
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Why do they actually believe that this is going to work better as two companies?
Deep down, really deep down, I'm not convinced that they do believe it. They are pushing the 'two smaller, more agile, more focussed companies ' line but 'smaller' needs to be seen in context; Hewlett Packard Enterprise has c.250,000 employees and even HP Inc. has c.50,000 - hardly small organisations. 'Old' HP was so silo-ed that it had 'focus' anyway, just not in a good way...
HPE’s strategy is to shift the company away from labour-intensive, low-margin application support work and into higher-margin areas like mobile, security, and cloud computing. The UK arm of the company is set to announce the next phase of this strategy.
HPE says a number of UK employees will be impacted. A representative tells us:
"HPE UK&I has reached agreements with our strategic partners to allow more flexibility in managing labour demands. There are a number of employees who will move from HPE and become contractors to HP’s Mobility and Workplace Services organization. HPE will continue to own and manage the end-client relationship and overall service responsibility."
We know that HP has done this several times this year, workers in the US were told they were being transferred to contract-work company Adecco as of August 15, 2015 as the HPE spokesperson confirmed this to us. Also in Germany, HP employees were recently informed they would be transferred out of HPE in Q2 2016.
As well as transfers out, HPE will continue an aggressive round of headcount reductions with up to 20% of the staff base expected to leave the company in 2016.
These additional reductions are not expected to cost HP more money than the restructuring budget publicly released earlier in 2015.
HP layoffs in HP ES have been going on for about the last seven years, since the unit was formed when HP bought EDS and doubled its workforce. HP has spent about $1 billion (US) a year on restructuring costs.
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