back to article HP: Lenovo's buy of IBM x86 biz is bad, bad, bad...

The volume of noise from anxious biz customers and some channel types over Lenovo's buy of IBM's x86 server biz is deafening the ears of those gentle folk at HP. At least that is what Bill Veghte, global boss of HP's enterprise biz, told us, and given rivals' efforts to highlight HP's slips in recent years who can blame him …

COMMENTS

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  1. dogged

    HP spreads FUD about competitor.

    Film at eleven.

    1. K

      My thoughts exactly!

      IBM has been all but invisible in the SME market for X86 products. For at least the past 3-4 years, the only real options were HP or Dell, though IBM had products, getting details and prices were nearly impossible.

      Lenovo might help break the current Dell/HP status quo and bring some needed competition/innovation.

      1. Kunari

        K, true that IBM x86 has been all but dead for years, but Cisco UCS servers are great and already eating into HP/Dell business.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Cisco servers?

          Many Cisco server are made by... wait for it.. HP.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Cisco servers?

            Where are you getting that info?

            1. ecofeco Silver badge

              Re: Cisco servers?

              Where am I getting that info?

              I built and shipped the damn things. By the thousands at the factory.

              Admittedly, that was a few, though not many, years ago. (WAY past the NDA, BTW) The only difference between them and the HPs was the faceplate and loaded software.

              I know more about HP servers and who buys them than I ever wanted to.

              Thanks for the update Graeme. I missed the contract change over. As for 10 years ago, they were still being made by HP just 4 years ago. I was there.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Cisco servers?

            Maybe 10 years or so ago (maybe less), but not now. Cisco's video servers were just rebadged Proliants. Cisco & HP used to be very cosy, to the extent that HP reps got paid more for selling Cisco switching than they did for selling HP switching. Then they bought 3Com/H3C and Cisco spat the dummy.

  2. WireBug

    ROTFL

    "Customers and partners are concerned. They are concerned about what the future will be for them – not only in the product but also in support and services," claimed the exec veep and GM of the Enterprise Group.

    hahaha, that's rich coming from HP considering their recent changes to support.

    1. BillG
      Mushroom

      Re: ROTFL

      in snaffling Big Blue's x86 division it [Lenovo] will leap into second spot in the global sales stakes

      The problem is many governments, and their contractors, are forbidden from buying Lenovo (read: Chinese) products. Both the U.S. and U.K. military have Lenovo on the "Do not buy" list.

      1. The Godfather
        Alert

        Re: ROTFL

        That my dear fellow has f--- all to do with politics and everything to do with protecting 'their own'

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh Please !

    HP means it's bad for HP and there will be source all over HP's walls.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Oh Please !

      Don't you mean

      Brown Sauce all over HP's walls....

      mines the one with a Sausage Sandwich with added 'brown sauce' in the pocket.

  4. typeo

    Cue response from IBM

    "HP's takeover of Autonomy is mad, Mad, MAD"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cue response from IBM

      IBM probably isn't overly concerned with HP these days. They are not IBM's primary competitor in any space after x86 goes to Lenovo.

  5. John 156
    FAIL

    HP - What's it for?

    Despite the fact that I'm grateful to HP for overpaying for my Autonomy shares, I will still not forgive them for selling me an inkjet printer in which the total capacity of all five reservoirs is less than that of the monochrome HP printer which it replaced, such that it is for ever running out of ink. You can only expect to get away with a stunt like that once.

    HP should either find some something useful to do or sell out to the highest bidder; its glory days are long over.

    1. BillG
      IT Angle

      Re: HP - What's it for?

      Despite the fact that I'm grateful to HP for overpaying for my Autonomy shares, I will still not forgive them for selling me an inkjet printer in which the total capacity of all five reservoirs is less than that of the...

      I can't forgive HP for their 24MB printer drivers, 3MB of which is the driver and 21MB is HP bloatware that hooks into your system like a virus, installing many run-on-start programs, and checks for updates every half hour.

      Good luck trying to uninstall these programs as they leave residue that haunts you with problems for years.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not all bad

    Sure, it might be bad for customers and the channel on the short term, but if it hurts IBM itself, then it's GOT to be good in the long run.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Really?

    "Veghte said customers tend to buy servers with storage and reckoned there will be a "gap" in Lenovo's portfolio."

    That is obviously not the case. EMC, no servers, is the long time market share leader in storage. NetApp doesn't even have a full featured storage portfolio, let alone servers, and it doesn't seem to have hurt them. HDS, no servers or anything else, and a much larger storage market share than HP. Cisco, when they were a pure play networking provider, trounced HP's wider portfolio in the networking space. Cisco is now the fastest growing server provider despite having no storage.

    Ironically, the only company that has been top of market in servers and storage has been IBM (formally market share leader in servers and number 2 in storage).

  8. KT189

    Funny that HP would be making these sorts of squeeky noises. Lenovo is buying IBM's X86 Business not just the Server technology. The people who transition will be experienced in selling Enterprise X86 solutions as well as Storage, so will the IBM/Lenovo channel.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ""Customers and partners are concerned. They are concerned about what the future will be for them – not only in the product but also in support and services," claimed the exec veep and GM of the Enterprise Group."

    Well, Lenovo wants to be in that space and IBM wanted out. So there should be little concern to the customers. Companies that used IBM Thinkpads are typically still using Lenovo Thinkpads.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Get'in out

    Everyone... and I mean EVERYONE is getting out of x86 hardware - except for I guess Nutanix. Go whitebox guys like SuperMicro !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Get'in out

      That seems to be the way things are trending. Large shops are moving to white box. Shops without thousands of servers are moving to the cloud providers like Amazon, Google, MS Azure, IBM SoftLayer, etc which all use white box or even DIY builds.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Lenovo - capable of doing things right

    How's HP's after-sales service? While it's not a server, I have a Lenovo laptop, personally, and it's just a mid-range E145. The other day, the keyboard went wonky, all the keys on the left resulting in weird output. It must have been hardware, because I could not use those keys even in BIOS settings. I phoned Lenovo support with a heavy heart, expecting a long call for little result, but just 15 mins later, I was assured a replacement keyboard would be with me the following day. We live in a rural area where deliveries are notoriously poor, so imagine my surprise when a courier from Glasgow phoned to make sure I someone was home. The upshot was that the machine was repaired less than 21 hours after placing the call. Fantastic service, I'd say, and if they respond like that with SME servers, bring it on.

  12. ben_myers

    And this is news?

    This is the same sort of one-sided biased rumor-mongering peddled 24/7 by Rupert Murdoch in his real-world "Tomorrow Never Dies." And why in hell should I even think about what HP thinks about Lenovo's buy of the IBM server biz?

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