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

What do you mean, "lately"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I worked at HP during the early and mid 90's. Let me tell you, cozying up to Microsoft is nothing new. Investing in Microsoft has been the stealth initiative of MANY of the ladder-climbers at HP. During my stay at HP, Rick Beluzzo was the big Microsoft pusher (ask me if I'm surprised he ended up WORKING for Microsoft in the end).

HP's downward slide didn't start with Carly, nor did it start with the merger--it started a LONG time ago, when the upper eschelons were taken over by MBA-types who thought that, instead of HP innovating, it would be MUCH easier to cozy up to the dominant monopoly.

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: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.

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.

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.

HP's new marketing line...

[supabeast!]

We are supporting Microsoft! We are supporting Linux! We are going to move forward with HP-UX and Tru-64! Compaq hardware will keep on truckin! We love AMD and Hammer! We love intel and Itanium!

We will say anything to try and keep our stockholders from noticing that we made a former Lucent exec our CEO and are letting her run one of the most wacked-out mergers ever seen!