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Forbes Now Thinks Carly Saved HP
Justen writes "It's been nearly a year and a half since Carly Fiorina was fired as CEO and chairman at HP. Now, Forbes is saying Mark Hurd and HP today are reaping the success of the strategies she developed and decisions Carly made. 'Fiorina's demise was chalked up to bad execution of bad strategic moves, most notably the 2002 Compaq acquisition. But Hurd has always said there was nothing wrong with Fiorina's strategy. He seems to be hewing close to it. He rejiggered the org chart but said he'll keep the company together instead of breaking it up along premerger lines, as Fiorina's loudest critics suggested doing.' Forbes adds that HP's revenues, profit, and market share have held steady or improved since Hurd came aboard, but asks: 'Whose results are these? You could make a case that they are as much Fiorina's as Hurd's. The effects of strategic moves like buying Compaq stretch out over years.' So, which is it? Did Carly kill the HP way? Or did she save what was left of it?"
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/rejigger
Both the Enterprise Server Group at HP, responsible for HP9000 servers, and the DEC Alpha team, were completely decimated by Carly. I spent 7 years at HP, sadly 4 of which Fiorina was in charge. I have never seen such a mass exodus of top-level engineers leave a company. People with 20+ years (often more) IT and computer engineering experience, folks who had technology patents and some of the most novel thinking around computing, OS design, and engineering.
Now, the HP9000 servers are 3rd tier behind IBM and remarkably Sun (which regained marketshare and scrapped their way back into relevance soley because Carly fucked up HP's UNIX system strategy).
The only thing she did right was recognize the Imaging group as a cash cow and not screw with that. But that was because of total fear of the institutional investors backlashing and sending her packing (with her $MM golden parachute) sooner.
No, Forbes, you're wrong. Carly was the WORST thing that could have happened to HP, next to the Compaq acquisition itself. HP should have bought out the DEC division from Compaq and left the low-margin, low-cost PC business altoghether.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
At my previous employer, post-merger HP was our biggest customer; and you'd talk to HP Cupertino and HP Houston and be shocked at the confusion between the two divisions. We'd get answers like "uh, you don't need to talk to us (Houston) anymore because Cupertino's taking over that work" and 4 weeks later a conversation with the same person "help! we're back on again but now 4 weeks behind schedule".
And this wasn't a one-time incident. For years post-merger, it seemed everyone was constantly expecting that if they'd stick their neck out on even the most minor issue Carly would chop it off - which lead to years of confusion and noone within HP nor their suppliers knowing what the h*ll they were doing.
I'd certainly call the HP DL360 and 380 the most engineer friendly webserver hosts going.
Are you effing kidding me? The DL360? These completely non-redundant machines are the worst things you can use for a production server. I had four of them that I couldn't wait to get rid of - I'd have a machine go down without warning for a blown PSU or one of the fans stopping, RAID controllers gone haywire and all sorts of other hassles once every couple of months.
The darn things can't even support their own weight in the rack - they sag in the middle. This is seriously the saddest piece of garbage I've ever had the displeasure of deploying in the server room.
We're finally rid of ours, replaced with an IBM BladeCenter. Our problems disappeared as soon as we did that. Perhaps they're popular because they're relatively cheap. They're certainly not any good.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I had respect for HP. Their products USED to be good. Not perfect, but good and when you needed help, there was an engineer who knew that exact product inside-out and would honestly tell you what and how to solve.
Recently I had a nasty performance problem (especially writing) with the MSA500 external RAIDs from HP (should be old compaq stuff).
The first, second, third and forth thing I was told was that it is MY fault.
First firmware; then configuration; then drivers; at last, they said I had to use Kernel 2.6.9 and RHEL4 because anything else is NOT supported.
For 3 weeks I went thru all loops (they didn't exspect that) with people who would say "please try this-and-that". Quickly I would ask "Can you guarantee me, that this will help?".
The answers ranged from "maybe" to "one can try". Further, no one seemed to know whom to talk to for e.g. the Linux drivers and if there are any issues.
I have never spoken to more frustrating and technically inept people ever. Even upper sales people knew about my issue. After 3 weeks I was assigned a technical engineer.
After I did ANYTHING they told me, in the afternoon the very SAME technican would admit when there were simply no excuses left: "OK, this is highly inofficial. But your numbers are not unusual."
It turns out 1) they knew they have shitty hardware and 2) they are advised not to tell.
That is not what I call a "saved company".
I've looked after well over a hundred of them - and never known a dual PSU host go down because of a PSU failure, or a machine go down because of a single fan failure. The DL380 in particular has a redundant fan option - did you take it?
In fact I've only ever known 2 go down, because of M/B failures.
J
You were able to get yours mounted in a rack without it sitting on something else? On top of that, putting in a Dialogic T1 fax card disables the PS/2 keyboard on cold boots. I have to boot it, then remotely reboot it to be able to use the keyboard at the console. How great is that?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I don't know who saved what but I know that the modern generation-4 HP DL385 server (which borrows heavily from both HP and Compaq technologies) kicks the spit out of every comperable machine out there. Whoever came up with the physical design is an effing genius and I'd like to shake his hand.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The DL360? These completely non-redundant machines are the worst things you can use for a production server.
Sounds as though you've never had the pleasure of maintaining the DL380 (G3 and G4). I've got ~1,200 of them under my control and damn if they aren't crap; each and every last one of them. Nary a day goes by without losing a few DIMMS, disk controllers, backplanes, PSUs,... the list goes on. Our RedHat installs run fine, so it's not the OS.
I agree about the puppet bit, but there is more to it. The way I understand it was the board asked her to share power with someone competent, I forget who, and I am too lazy to look it up right now. It was basically she would be the name and the puppet, but they needed someone there to actually so the work she was supposed to.
Carly took a bit of umbrage at this, and the board insisted on it. She called their bluff but they were not bluffing. From what I gather, she found that bit out when they showed her the door.
-Charlie
Maybe you should look at who Hurd has worked for in the past and the legacy of his predecessor, Lars Nyberg. If you think Carly was bad, this guy may just bring the 1990's NCR disasters over to HP instead of bringing back the "HP Way". With the company gutted after Hurd and Nyberg, he's proven himself to have a worse reputation. He had a chance to prove himself different, but he failed in that respect up to this point.
He is not the "blue collar" person that you think he might be. He was one of those who helped destroy that part of NCR.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Carly axed HP's calculator division. The division now making their calculators is a completely different one. I sort of recall hearing it was one of their consumer laptop divisions, but I could be wrong. It's been a while.
What I can find is at http://www.hpcalc.org/hp49gplus.php, which implies that HP calculator development is now outsourced to a third party.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
... No matter how much Forbes is trying to rebrand her character.
As an employee of HP who got laid off last week, I can say that both Carly and Hurd are screwing the company. Carly did a lot of damage, but who says Hurd is improving things. Its a myth. HP is still a hire/fire shop. I am an engineer, they laid off my entire team and are just retaining the PHBs. The project is being offshored to India. Dont be fooled by the HP stock, some of the company's recent decisions seem ridiculous. Fundamentals will have to win at the end.
I understand that every company is moving projects to India to save on costs, but what I find idiotic is the way HP is doing it now. They first laid off all the engineers who know anything about the project. Then they put together a team in India. They are now working on training the team in India and getting them to continue product development. In the meantime, when the team in India has to learn, customers who are using the product are gonna get screwed, sales of the product is gonna get hit real hard. Its just ridiculous. When the rest of the world thinks that Hurd is saving a lost company, as an insider until a week ago, I can say that its hurtling down the drain on its way to decline.
Hey! I think you're being unfair to Caterpillar here. Maybe Whirlpool, too. There's still some tech in both their products.
Wish I could still say the same about HP.
That is all.
If all these politicians got paid off, why didn't they rescue him?
Back when Enron collapsed, The Left was saying that since W was Lay's big buddy, W do something sneaky to protect Lay. Lay even called up the Secretary of the Treasury, asking for regulatory help, to pull off the SEC "dogs". No dice.
Lay had 5 years to cut a deal with the government, and never took it.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Canon's printers are fantastic - the ink is cheaper, and the printers are more reliable than the crap from HP. True story: I bought one of HP's top of the line multifunction printers. It was nice, but I could not send a fax. Receiving a fax is trickier, but sending a fax should be straightforward. Besides, the old fax I had was able to send a fax with no problem. So I exchanged the HP, and the replacement didn't work either. I bought a refurbished canon for less than half the cost, and it was a workhorse. I can buy a 4 pack of Canon ink cartridges at Costco for $42. You probably will spend that much on one HP cartridge.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.