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HP Kills Off Utility Data Center
pacopico writes "HP's much hyped and highly-regarded UDC system has gone the way of the dodo. The Register charts the technology's demise and points to the few other reporters who covered UDC's end. Spent some time at HP checking out UDC and am sad to see it go. Ahead of its time to be sure."
While it may be gone, it won't ever be a total loss as long as HP learned something from it. Maybe something about more cost efficient technology, or maybe being more wary of the hype that comes with shiny new things.
HP is going down the tubes due to a combination of Carly and the Compaq merger. The Compaq managment mentality has certainly taken over.
If however you still want to work for a company where the HP idea and the HP way live on... head over to Agilent Technologies. They aren't perfect, but it's probably a good thing for everyone there that they were spun off. It's also clear to anyone that has to work with HPaq or Agilent on a daily basis that Agilent is the only one of the two retaining any of the things that made HP a decent company.
It's to bad to see technology like this die.
I know it's not going to happen, but it would be nice if HP would just release it as open source software instead of just letting it die off.
That way they could stick a couple designers on it, who would otherwise probably be fired, and see if anybody would like to pick it up. (hint hint Redhat)
The reason stuff like this tends to go, IMO, is that even though it's good software, nobody is in the position to pay for something that they don't need. However by letting people play around with it and modify it to suite their specific purposes there is a chance that new life could be breathed into it and then HP would be in a possition to benifit from it, since they are the people with the most expertise with the software.
Of course that sort of thing is very unlikely, but I am just sayin'. You know?
Not.
Seriously, these ideas made no sense, because good data management is a competitive advantage that good companies have over bad ones. If you had a company, why would you like to fund the datacenter your competitor is using. Duh.
Hmm,
I admit, I have yet to RTFA, but I am wondering if the cost of the people doing the research is whats so damned expensive, or is it some kind of government taxation that one must pay to do that kind of research, or is it the cost of the materials? Where does all the money go?
The reason I ask? We have no shortage of Free and Open Source Software developers, heck, one might say there are too many. Can't travel too far on the intarweb without running into one of those advocates. But, I haven't met anyone who does the hardware stuff with the hopes of making a low-cost, non-proprietary videocard or soundcard, or anything. Is there such a group with hardware in mind, like we have the FSF and all that?
I'd imagine that what makes a software project thrive the way it does, the ability to recruit and organize people from all over the world, would be a problem in the hardware field (you'd need to actually be there, in person for most of that stuff).
Now, like I said, I haven't RTFA, yet... maybe some of my questions are answered there, or in the "Similar Stories" links that all News Sites have...
Anyway,
Just a thought
X5
I was a big fan of the HP/Compaq merger. I still think it was a good idea. HP's management pre-Carly/Compaq was getting a little too entrenched in old habits. (Basically, just playing it too safe - not taking nessasary risks) When Carly came in, she shook this up a bit - as was needed - however, she shook it up too much. I also find it funny how, when HP's (internal) merger fight was going on, Hewlett (?) was fighting against it because he wanted HP to go in the printing and imaging direction (consumer electronics). Carly however saw past this. Now though, Carly is headed mostly in the CE direction (HPod, etc...)
I think its time we went back to Hewlett and told him that, while the Compaq merger was a good thing, we still need him and some of the older HP ways. (Well, ideally, just "The HP Way")
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
So this is what HP means by "Invent"? In just a few short years, I have waved sayonara to their medical instruments division, their measurements division, OpenMail, MPE/iX and the HP3000 line, and now UDC. Not to mention tens of thousands of people, many of whom I used to work with.
I'm too depressed to continue. I only wish our country had the balls to fight treason like this.
Several comments lamented the loss of a great technology. I couldn't care less. There are men and women behind this technology, several of them close friends of mine, and that's the real problem here. For them, obviously, but also for HP. HP loses a really large pool of talented engineers. That's another great blow to the morale of the engineering community at HP. If something like UDC can go belly up in a matter of weeks, who's next?
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
The first working silicon of this bleeding-edge R&D was the not-horrible-but-not-great Itanium/Itanic.
Just because that first implemention wasn't earth-shattering, it doesn't mean the whole concept was a failure. What this product family needs is R&D people with the vision that the old HP team once had to iterate on and refine the design. A HP dedicated to this cool architecture would go a long way to finally delivering on the benefits of VLIW. If left to intel, they'd happily kill it - why rock the x86 monopoly boat if they don't haave to.
I had a French computer magazine from 1985 that tested hardware ruggedness by dropping the computers off desks, and then off windows. The HP Vectra was the absolute winner. The baby would boot after being dropped from the 1st floor (without screen :) This is trivia, but it's useful trivia when you remember the "care" that some cleaning ladies put in their work...
I also want to add that my 181000 km Nissan Micra stills drives better than a Ford, and needs less maintenance.
Hey AuMatar,
It sounds like you are trying to hang in there. There is no disgrace in moving on. I was at HP for twelve years and thought I would be a lifer. I finally realized that enough is enough. I walked out the door and haven't looked back.
The "secret targets" for bonuses was absolutely mind-boggling. The only time I saw a bonus from that scheme was the quarter before the merger, when she tried to buy our votes.
Under Bill and Dave, profit sharing was "profit sharing". Any person with half a brain could look at a quarterly statement, pull out their calculator, and find out what there bonus would be to the penny.
I don't swear lightly, but Carly can rot in hell for what she has done to what was once a flagship of engineering capability. One has to wonder what she has on the board, because they should have cut her goldbricking ass free years ago.
To show how much concern the new HP has for the brand, it was announced just a few days ago that my new company has purchased the right to bring certain products to market and ship them under the HP name. We will design, manufacture, package, distribute, and market something that the consumer will only know as "HP". The old HP would have seen hell freeze over before selling the rigth to control of the quality of products bearing their name.
HP has often shipped third-party products under the HP brand, and has also manufactured products for third party (even rival) companies to ship under their own brands.