HP to Heavily Support and Invest in .Net

Dr.Stress writes: "CNet is reporting 'Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft plan to invest $50 million in a joint effort to sell corporate customers on the software giant's .Net Web services efforts....HP plans to devote 3,000 consultants from its HP Services unit to the effort and also train 5,000 people in its sales and support staff.' Microsoft will provide additional installation support, and the companies will jointly market .Net services. This was announced previously, but this article contains a few more details. Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??)."

Comments

Acquisitions sometimes turn out the other way arou

[amorsen]

Caldera bought SCO and turned into SCO. HP bought Compaq and turned into Compaq. It is not that unusual.

HP's always been in bed w/MS

[Brento]

Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately

Then do something about it.

You remind me of the people who whine about the government, but never get out to the polls on voting day. What have you done about it? If you're alarmed by the closeness with Microsoft, then either you haven't been paying attention to HP or else you're one of the newly merged Compaq folks, who were a lot more open-source-friendly. HP's been in bed with MS for years: I distinctly remember HP being one of the first companies to adopt the restore-cd-only policy with their Pavilions, only including a restore CD and not an operating system CD. HP's Kayak dual-CPU workstations were among the first & best NT-running machines I ever used, and I know they didn't build it to run Linux. HP's always been close with MS.

So if HP's relationship with MS surprises you, then you need to get more active with your management in the day-to-day decisionmaking. Every time HP releases a solution that specifically favors MS, sometimes at the expense of their customers, speak up and try to change their minds.

Re:HP's always been in bed w/MS

[Brento]

Well okay, but look what happened to Bruce Perens when he talked down MS at HP... boom, fired.

Perens wasn't working within the company framework. If I think my company's doing something wrong, I don't speak out in public: I work closely with my supervisors and make sure they do the right thing. If they continue to make the wrong choices, and I've tried my best, then I don't play whistleblower and run to the shareholders. That marks you as somebody who's not trustworthy, somebody who isn't a team player. You pull that, you get fired, no matter how high-profile you are.

I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's how the system works. The officeplace is like the Matrix - ya gotta fight the bad elements from within.

Why, YOU'RE next, HP

[puppetluva]

"Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??)."

Let's look at past microsoft buddy-buddy relationships:

• Sybase. They promise you access to OS internals in exchange for db internals knowledge, then they steal your product.
  
• Sun. They license your technology in exchange for distribution. As soon as it seems like it is catching on, they try to sabotage it.
  
• Resellers. They allow you to distribute product. If you gain any distribution power, they coerce you into complying.
  
• Visio. They allow you to stay alive. . . as long as you don't expand into the Microsoft Office space and you "donate" technology to Powerpoint and other products. As soon as you get too valuable, they buy you for much less that they would have if they had let you grow unfettered.
  
• IBM. You commision them to write a windowed OS to compete with the Mac. They steal your money and write their own while holding up your project.
  
• Customers. You buy their product in good faith. The change the licensing terms on you (after the sale!) in exchange for fixes to the broken product you originally bought. The only reason you bought it, was because they've killed all competitive products, so you have no choice.
  

Well. . . from past experience, I think HP should bend over. . . we all know what's next.

The only defence would be to never make any money or headway in the business relationship at all. That way, if they actually kill your business while they are sabotaging it, they won't rob your grave and relabel the loot "innovation."

I feel really bad for Carly Fiorona. She may actually believe that she is digging a foundation for her company. . .

Re:What's next?

[SerpentMage]

Exactly. This is MS's latest love slave. It did not work out that well with the others. Or MS has a new "VISION" and, well, you need new partners to realize that vision.

The old partners (IBM, DELL, BRISTOL, MAINSOFT, etc) just do not get it, like Microsoft does. But as the saying goes what comes around goes around. And right now one of the first companies that MS screwed over (IBM), looks pretty menancing for MS.

use this as motivation

[rnd()]

A lot of people will complain "Boo hoo, I wish HP would invest $50Million in Linux. I hate Microsoft". The fact is, HP has invested a lot of money in Linux so far, and will continue to do so. .NET web services are a standards-compliant improvement to previously existing technology that will IF ANYTHING help to promote cross-platform solutions: In other words this will help HP deliver enterprise solutions involving both Microsoft products AND gnu-linux.

If Linux was really 10 steps ahead of Microsoft, markets would recognize that fact much more than they have. The fact is, there are some areas where linux shines and some areas where commercial software shines.

To me, this is a good thing, since it will raise the bar on standards compliance in the industry and create more niche areas for linux to make its way into the enterprise.

the microsoft compromise

[Chris Canfield]

"Microsoft is in a leadership position here where we've got an opportunity to help Hollywood feel comfortable with digital distribution and to help them develop (digital rights management) solutions so consumers can have content everywhere," she said. "We have two relationships we have to balance here: the consumer who wants the content and Hollywood so they feel comfortable with that process and don't clamp down and make that impossible."

It's still my computer. If you don't trust me with your movies, then don't put the f***ing things on my computer. I'll still rent the DVD's, you will still make money.

Most people would rather own their computer and rent at blockbuster than simply having a licence for their computer and lots of pretty movies to slowly, slowly download. Since when is this any sort of *compromise* when the terms are dictated from above?

Re:.NET is great !!!

[IamTheRealMike]

.NET is great! The .NET framework library is very complete and easy to use. The .NET CLR is also very cool. I will be nice when I can develop things using Visual Studio .NET and deploy the assemblies on Linux servers using MONO.

Check out java. That does all those things, but it does them now, and it's got a lot of support and it's also multi-vendor. You will NOT be able to write stuff in VS.NET and run them on Linux, because very little of the framework classes are "open", for instance Mono uses its own gui framework based on GTK.