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HP Seals the Deal, Buys EDS For $14B
netbuzz writes "Following yesterday's spate of heated rumors, the announcement comes this morning that HP has completed a deal to buy EDS for just under $14 billion. The acquisition has been approved by the boards of both companies, according to HP. EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer has issued an e-mail to his employees promising that the company brand will continue and, "We are — and will remain — EDS."
I wonder if Digital's and Compaq's CEO's sent out a similar e-mail when they got bought out by HP :)
Look at the bright point, guys... at least you didn't get bought out by IBM. They would have completely turned the business on it's head in a manner of months!
As an HP employee I hope HP is smarter than GM was. Remember the GM bought EDS in the 80s and EDS milked GM for all it was worth. EDS did great; GM not so. Of course GM thought it was buying a company to outsource its IT to while HP is looking to merge outsourcing operations with EDS.
Yay! An alternative to IBM Global Services from the maker of some really good servers. Too bad it's EDS, well at least it's not Accenture!
Go Ross Perot!
Seeing as one contract of EDS's, NMCI, just finished (or is real damn close to finishing) a tech refresh of the computers they provide.
We all got new Dells.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
continue the outsourcing of jobs from older higher paid employees to lower wage grunts.
EDS is an anti-labor, low pay sweatshop.
Looks like HP is moving into IBM/DELL territory ( managed IT services ). I'm not too worried for IBM.
DELL, on the other hand, has a real fight on its hands. So.. umm... Mike.. why don't you forget about your small business services crap and go back to focus on making good machines and providing good customer service.
I don't know if EDS was the best vehicle to use, but its better than trying to setup something new.
I don't know who ED is, but dude just got rich!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
In related news, EDS brought in former chairman and CEO Ross Perot as a consultant on the deal, who thought it was a great idea.
Today, they asked Perot what he thought of the deal, and he said: "I think it's great they're buying HP!"
There was no one available for comment from large EDS customer General Motors.
My blog
"We are -- and will remain -- EDS."
Until the day after the merger, the execs cache out, and the infighting between the remaining managers starts. Executives on the bottom end of the merger always do one of two things:
- Cash out
- Try to outmaneuver the execs on the top end of the merger and take over the whole company, with a lot of bitter intrigue in the process
You have to wonder how current EDS customers who are attached to their non HP hardware and software will feel about this when EDS suddenly has a massive bias to drive every nail with an HP hammer.
@de_machina
After failing to negotiate a deal with HP two years ago to buy ACS, HP just said "Take That!" by buying a huge ACS competitor. ACS sucked and I hear EDS isn't any better.
If you'd ever worked for EDS then you know what those mean.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The NMCI contract for EDS had them rolling out a bizillion Dell-branded desktops and laptops to people in the Navy and Marine Corps. I wonder if Dell just saw a massive revenue stream get shifted to HP?
Very very sad.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
HP makes about $10B per year in profit from ink alone. They make another $6B or so from everything else so they could easily afford this transaction. It does raise some eyebrows though because EDS has IT support contracts with lots of big companies. If EDS starts exclusively providing/supporting HP products, competitors (think Dell) might have grounds to complain to the DOJ.
"We are -- and will remain -- EDS."
I don't know about elsewhere, but, EDS have a reputation for unrivaled incompetence in Australia. A better message would be: "Under new management - EDS will improve."
I think they could have paid Rosie O'Donnell a couple hundred bucks to pose nude... that would certainly get rid of my boner!
Might want to check in with Compaq and DEC about that. Maybe Agilent, too.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer said he is going to get a pair of over sized rubber earlobes to put on and print some pie charts on 8x10 paper. He hopes that would be enough to get 17% of the vote in the coming presidential election. If he could get a retired admiral who turns off the hearing aid during vice-presidential debate it would be a dream ticket!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ahh, I'm glad I left EDS earlier this year. Though I was a contractor to be fair, I could still smell the dead fish. And they never gave me my promised pay rise...
HP Buys Acronym For 14 Billion, Tells Sajak It Would Like To Solve The Puzzle.
HP Buys Other Acronym, Cites Insecurity Over Its Own 'Length.'
HP, EDS Fall In Love, Says It Was 'Meant To Be.'
HP's secret plan.
1. Buy ED's
2. ?
3. Profit
MAN, and EDS laid me off a few years ago. If they hadn't, I'd have still been there, and gathered some of the stocks they toss at every employee to make it seem like the crap wages that we got weren't as bad. Wouldn't everyone who currently has stocks in EDS have just gotten a healthy paycheque?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
as an employee, all i want to know is when we here at EDS will be able to buy HP gear with employee's discount...
20% off on a laser printer would be sweeeet!!!
What ? Me, worry ?
As someone who was an EDS employee for 10 years, I can confirm all the horror stories being mentioned here. The incompetence, shoddy work, laziness, bureaucratic bloat, utterly clueless management...it's all too true. Screw the customer, all anyone cares about there is CYA (cover your ass). I am so glad I left there.
HP took a chunk of EDS' GM business in '06, so GM probably likes this deal since it will make for a clean merger, probably not a lot of job cuts. But for EDS' non-GM business there will likely be some big job cuts.
EDS better not be like hp and up intel drivers on amd systems like how they did and it messed up XP sp3.
EDS: 16?
HP: No, how about 12?
EDS: 15?
HP: You're getting warmer, how about 13?
EDS: 14?
HP: Okay, that sounds good, but we don't have 14 ink cartridges here, how about 14 billion in cash?
EDS: Well, ok......
Not the $53 billion that Yahoo Yang wanted for his bonus, but still a good mansion. The more our CEO's make, the richer we feel. Meanwhile, get ready for another surge of unemployed Texasahans in Silicon Valley. Maybe they'll break the $6000 rent barrier.
We here at Xerox outsource our IT to EDS.
I for one welcome our new HP overlords.
Reminds me of what I said to my boss - don't give me that pay rise; get a cappuccino machine and free coffee and I'll be happy. He couldn't believe it - the fact I was happy to give up a pay rise for that. As I said to him, if I get free coffee at work, I don't have to pay for it, which means I come back better off in the end :D
Worked for EDS for 4.5 years in a Medicaid contract. Divorce rate is high, income is low, and you are expected to give your life for the company. I just hope for the few friends I still have there that HP actually improves the culture there.
%blow
%blow: No such job
^how did the sex change go?
Modifier failed
And last time I checked, Dell wasn't in trouble. Vista bombed, but Dell said that they would continue to see XP even if Microsoft says they can't anymore. Dell was happily selling Windows 2000 licenses well after Microsoft said everyone must go XP. What Dell sells to the average home PC buyer, and what Dell servers their corporate (read: money-making, important customers) customers is another thing altogether.
And Apple computers are no where competitive price wise. Most Apple systems I look at are $800 more than their counterparts. When looking for a monitor last year, someone mentioned how great the True Cinema displays are. I looked at one, and the cheapest one they offered was like $500-$600. I got a better monitor for $169, which was a 19 inch widescreen LCD with 2 ms response time and a fantastic contrast ratio.
Saying that Apple is price competitive on PC hardware is just a bold-faced lie. For Dell to remain, they have take some risks. Again, I'm not sure where you get this. When I worked for Harrahs, we had a contract that no matter what, we only purchased Dell hardware. We had all kinds of problems with their desktops. We had countless power supply and motherboard issues, and it didn't matter that they also over charged us. We were never going to look at anything else, because Dell is the big name.
I work for a newspaper company now, and it is the same story. We get tons of crappy Dell products, and we even replaced a bunch of working HP laser printers with crappy Dells, but we only buy Dell hardware, and likely always will.
Dell just keeps signing more and more exclusive contracts all the time. Let me know when Apple signs even one deal with a Fortune 500 company to go all Apple hardware, because I guarantee you almost every one of those companies is Dell exclusive right now.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Remember when HP used to be about quality equipment and scientific research and innovation? HP Labs?
Yeah, I miss those days. What's next, buying their way into the lucrative "Tickle me Elmo" market?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Has anyone here actually had the displeasure of working with EDS?
I worked with them on an NMCI project and the EDS manager's actions were laughable.
They had no clue what was going on, could not even define the requirements, and then when presented a solution did not even bother to notate anything except a dollar value.
Not exactly my idea of who I want helping the government define their intranet.
HP, it's time to set the Superbowl cat herding commercial free.
The good news is they'll give you a free ink jet printer! The bad news is they'll make you pay retail for the cartridges...
Look at what Perot got for selling EDS to GM, and look at whet GM is getting for selling EDS to HP. Adjust for inflation and EDS is worth less now.
Since I had never heard of EDS, I figure a lot of other Slashdot readers probably haven't, either. Here are some interesting tidbits about the company, courtesy of Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems
the JoshMeister on Security
I remember what HP's culture was from the perspective of a user of fine test equipment (spectrum-analyzers RF-generators logic-analyzers distortion-analyzers) including using the technical support provided by HP (after sales) and less frequently involved in the purchasing process with the sales force of HP. For me, most of this experience started in the late 70's and continues today. However what I call HP is now Agilent that in my IMHO was the stupidest spin-off in the electronics industry.
... including making documentation available. (service manuals with schematics may not have been free but you could get one and it was not outrageous.)
.. (shipping was included in the purchase price at the time of purchases). Turned into a major fiasco .
HP was a company that would support any thing it sold even real old stuff
There was always a voice at the end of the phone that was competent and could answer rather complex questions on the use and application of said equipment. (now, remember this is very post sale)
On the Sales side, equipment would be demo-ed and lent by the most competent and professional staff in the business. I never had any one in the pre-sales for and instrument LIE to me in any way. Would gladly inform me of the limitations of there products. (And in not a to boastful way would try to point out weakness in the competition but this was from pride and not BS. Never had an HP sales rep bad-mouth Tektronix for example.
I recently helped my wife purchase a multifunction printer from HP (LaserJet M3035 MFP). This is just big enough that these models are not stocked in stores like Best Buy, Microcenter, Frys and the like. We chose to purchase from the toll free phone number found on the HP website. The experience we had was appalling. I don't believe that I was ever told any truth about any thing during this experience. It started with slick double talk that would make a used car salesmen on the 3AM movie sick. (I already picked out the unit, and all that was needed to be done was to enter the job/sales order). The larger part of the stupidly encountered was that we were shipped 2 units (we only ordered 1). We refused delivery on the 2nd unit. Fortunately we use my wife's business American Express Card for this purchase, as far as the billing AMX fixed it. HP tried to bill us for both units, then backed off to the shipping costs
A friend shared with me that they believe that this is due to the Compaq sales culture that HP 'got' from the merger/acquisition. I do not know if this is true but it is a far cry from the HP of yester year.
My last dealings with Agilent have been still good but is has deteriorated from the slandered set by the old HP.
Someone call the FTC! There's no way a deal worth billions will be completely fair to everyone everywhere. This has to be anti-competitive in some respect. I don't know what, yet, but it's just gotta be.
Hope HP is better at 'herding cats' than they were..
I spent some time at an EDS office last year. Some of the PCs had a corporate EDS screensaver, which played a series of slides showing how EDS spring into action to solve problems.
The slides went like this:
Picture of a kitchen, with a chip-pan bursting into flames. Oh no!
But wait! You have EDS support. The EDS firemen are upstairs and on the way! Hurrah!
EDS firemen sliding down pole into the kitchen to save the day!
EDS firemen proceed to hose down the burning fat with water...
I hope it's not intended to be representative.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Why go through the trouble of writing "just under $14 billion" when "$13.9 billion" would do? Does word count matter in a post?
And as far as the 'just under' is concerned: 0.1 may be a small number, but when multiplied by $10^9 it's a sum that exceeds the GBP of about 70% of the world's nations... (do the math).
Stachel
I've had the privlage to work with both HP and EDS for various stuff within my organization. I can say if EDS adopts HP outsourcing style, I forsee big issues in the future. We do play the vendors against each other, however EDS has always been much more client centric, while HP has been complete dicks when it comes to servicing the client. They nickle and dime us on EVERYTHING! something simple as a firewall rule can cost upwards of 15k for something we already did the analysis on. Most of that cost is for a PM. A PM to implement a firewall rule, sure there, and not to mention you can wrap f/w rules in a simplified, repeatable process so there should be no need for a PM. Oh and that exact same request with EDS is done for free.
:)
In addition to that, we have dedicated resources @ EDS, while HP pulls from a pool. Have you ever tried implementing a large scale project with people who have no fucking clue about your infrastructure and internal processes. Complete nightmare, especially when they're on the other side of the world. Try organizing meetings with someone who is 12hrs ahead of you, or worse.
This better be the other way around, EDS teaching HP how to outsource because if they do that, I DO forsee a bright future for both companies.
And yes I'm posting anonymously, don't want this rant coming back to me
One day you might have an MBA and eat those very words, Grasshopper.
You DO NOT want to join me in the hell that is decaf-coffee, my friend. Not saying you should give it up, but consider cutting back. The caffeine forces your heart to work harder, while constricting your blood vessels at the same time. Heart gets tired, swells up, leaving less room for blood inside for each pump. You dont want this. Docs told me to give up bacon too, but I told them I would rather fucking die.
Cut back, my brother.
So does this mean when I need my cats herded, I'm going to have to worry that they'll use HP equipment?
To my understanding those were the 'Brown Years'. EDS would bring contracts on board left right and center without any sort of process for dealing with them and figuring out whether they can actually do the work after winning them. When Mike Jordan came on board the company's stocks went from a nosedive to the gentle incline it's enjoying today. This is before my time with EDS started, however.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
This should be enough to change their slogan from "invent" to "outsource". Given that Hurd has come from a similar (read:worker-hostile) climate at NCR, he's little different than Carly. Perhaps he should rediscover that bit of humanity once known to exist at HP and NCR.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
How much does your 17" Inspiron weigh ? Thinner and lighter leads to higher prices.
The standard monitor on the 17" Inspiron is 1440x900 ( MBP 17" 1920x1200 ). The hardware video option has how much memory?? In short, need to match up component to component in the base system. Otherwise comparing "grapefruits to oranges".
Try to configure a Vostro 1710 in the Large Business section (not the "Home and Home Office") side of the Dell store website. Match the MBP 17" specs (hight contract LCD panel, memory, bluetooth, network, dvd burner, high end graphics option, etc.) and then look again at the difference. The gap will have shrunk substantially. Still cheaper to buy Dell, but you also have two more pounds to carry.
If your looking for a desktop machine packaged as a laptop where weight and size don't matter then Apple doesn't make one of those.
Dell sells 4-5 different flavors of 17" laptops and Apple sells just one. For better or worse Apple doesn't try to fill all segments of the market.
Check out http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/EDS/05390c183c137e1e747b46
One happily ex-employee calls it a "cross between a military base and an insane asylum".
Do they still require new employees to sign promissory notes that require them to repay $10,000 in training costs if they quit?
EDS is an infamously bad place at which to work; check out http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/EDS/05390c183c137e1e747b46 Typical (pre-merger) quote: "My spouse was RIF'd at the end of January after 8 years of putting in overtime and everything. He hopes they go down the tubes, to be quite honest."
"We are - and will remain - EDS."
Like that's a good thing.
An EDS vice president once explained their business model to me. "We hire the middle third," summed it up. The top third (in terms of talent) are too expensive. The bottom third are too problematic. They hired the middle third and rely on a smaller subset of consultants to write expansive procedures and manuals that the bulk of their crew follow slavishly.
In my experience, EDS consultants are very poor at creative solutions. If you need someone to jumpstart 100 Sun servers, sure. If there is a problem with one of the jumpstarts and they need to tweak the image, they'll be on the phone back to home base. That's fine for some scenarios (that's pretty much the Satyam/Tata model), but not when you're paying EDS prices.
Advice: on VPS providers