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Michigan Sues HP Over Decade Long, $49 Million Incomplete Project
itwbennett writes: On Friday, embattled HP was hit with a new lawsuit filed by the state of Michigan over a 10-year-old, $49 million project that called for HP to replace a legacy mainframe-based system built in the 1960s. Through the suit filed in Kent County Circuit Court, the state seeks $11 million in damages along with attorney's fees and the funds needed to rebid and re-procure the contract.
Posting AC because I'm not fired yet. The Navy just moved up the recompete on NGEN, and the deal was one base year, 4 option years... what a joke. Meg knows this contract is losing money and wants to lose it to let go of all the US Citizens and their expensive security clearances. I'd be surprised if they even bother making a realistic bid for the USAF contract.
This is part of why my company pays only half of sales commissions up front and the rest on project completion. 100% at the end would be better, but then nobody would work for us.
Wow, the LAST thing I want to do is take HP's side in ANY argument. But (reluctantly...) in all fairness, getting off the mainframe is very VERY difficult, for a large number of reasons, not the least of which IBM's commitment to preventing that from happening.
In the decades I've been in IT, I've seen three fairly large companies make a concerted effort to get off the mainframe. All failed. One ended up upgrading the mainframe. One ended up renting mainframe time from ISSC. One is still trying, years later.
I don't know what happened in this particular case; maybe HP saw this as a cash cow they could milk for several years, due to the fact that the industry expectation of success is so low. But there is a possibility that HP saw this as a genuine business opportunity, and didn't realize until later that it just wasn't possible.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I wonder if Fiorina will use this in her bid for the Whitehouse... "I know the inner-workings of how badly government can run, in my time with HP I saw how Michigan wasted ten years in trying to implement a new computer system!"
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The distributor who actually sold the printers, won HP's "distributor of the year" award. HP had a 41% market share in a country where they were forbidden to do business. It's beyond incredible that nobody at HP wondered about where all those printers went to.