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HP Is Now Two Companies. How Did It Get Here? (cio.com)
New submitter joshroberts3388 writes: If Hollywood wanted a script about the inexorable decline of a corporate icon, it might look to Hewlett-Packard for inspiration. Once one of Silicon Valley's most respected companies, HP officially split itself in two on Sunday, betting that the smaller parts will be nimbler and more able to reverse four years of declining sales. HP fell victim to huge shifts in the computer industry that also forced Dell to go private and have knocked IBM on its heels. Pressure from investors compelled it to act. But there are dramatic twists in HP's story, including scandals, a revolving door for CEOs and one of the most ill-fated mergers in tech history, that make HP more than a victim of changing times.
And after buggering up HP so bad as to cause this split, that CEO is now running for president.
... one Carly Fiorina.
Especially with Carly as "CEO".
Sometimes, things just get too big.
Palm?
3Com?
Compaq?
Ericsson?
Apollo Computer?
Snapfish?
Mercury Interactive?
EDS?
I'm guessing they won't call it Autonomy.
maybe they won't recycle a merger name, and go with "Agilent II"?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
That's not the important question. The interesting question is, "Where is it going . . . ?" I don't think HP's senior management can answer that question.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
HP doesn't own Ericsson, nor do they have any relationship with them other than an IT outsourcing contract. Maybe you are thinking of Sony, which merged their handset business with Ericssons?
By all accounts things only started to go south when Bill and Dave left and were replaced by a series of bean counters with no sense for what gives a tech company positive buzz and positive sales growth. Carly being example 1. Meg being example 2.
And there is also the Avago spin-off. How many other splits has HP gone through?
HP sold off the original HP as Agilent.
It got here because Meg wanted to spin EDS back off.
Or course, this brilliant move is from the idiots who kept calling the original HP garage a "two car garage" every couple of days, while featuring a picture of that garage, which was clearly only big enough for one car.
.
Once Agilent was split off, HP started its downward spiral.
I called this a long time ago.
Carly Fiorina ruined HP.
I'm less interested in the past. I'm far more interested in the future.
What does this mean for HP-UX? That's what I am interested in knowing!
Will we see a future open source release of HP-UX, perhaps? Will we see HP-UX return to the former glory it once had?
Keysight Technologies?
Seeing as they spun off the test instrument business (The part of HP many people really liked) as Agilent in 99
Maybe the should sell/spinoff the calculator division to Agilent and re-name it HP-Classic.
H and P
lose != loose
This, exactly. Silly Valley and the business press blundered along with the charade that the sad dregs left after Agilent split off were in any way related to the real HP.
Yes Carly made things even worse (and of course she would be disastrous as POTUS) but all she had left to work with was bullshit and hubris.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
Mitosis.
Why not solve some problems that no one else has been able to solve?
-Keyboard/mouse interface alternatives for wearable computing
-Something something artificial intelligence
-Something something quantum computing
They should go back to thinking about things from a "DARPA Hard"/"Moonshot thinking" perspective instead of being another "me too" corporation chasing wearables/"mobile"/tablets/cloud services/3d printers(-WTF were they thinking BTW? Talk about late to your own party!)/etc.
These fads are all obviously saturated and a company of HPs size can't survive as a "me too". They either distinguish themselves in a new market or decline. This is why Amazon/Google/Apple are so determined to be the "first to market" on everything Media Retail 2.0. The "Desktop Publishing" fad has come and gone leaving HP overly invested in an out of fashion Ink cartel.
Google and Microsoft(to some extent Apple and Amazon) are already in the race on artificial intelligence... is HP? Why not?
Maybe HP just needs to give up on consumer products in general and focus on biomedical/impantables. If they "disrupted" the prosthetics/human augmentation/trans-humanism scene that could be their competitive edge.
Instead: their risk-adverse CEO(s) will continue to lead the company in aimless directions with no convictions as they continue to lose talent until they get bought up by TI or some similar company looking to expand in to servers(for god knows what reason).
Of all tech companies: I think NVIDIA is the one demonstrating the most "vision" right now.
Remember that HP (The real HP that made electronic test equipment) was spun off into Agilent which was recently spun off again into Keysight Technoogies.
(2009)
HP -> HP (Computers, Printers etc)
-> Agilent (Life Sciences, Electronic Test)
(2014)
Agilent -> Agilent (Life Sciences etc)
-> Keysight Technologies (Electronic Test)
So when you talk to engineers about HP, we think Agilent and now Keysight as having the original DNA of HP
46137
HP is now H ... and ... P ??
*** Don't be dull.***
HPs list of CEOs since 2000 looks like a clown parade compared to other companies.
Although Fiorina started the downward spiral, and Meg sealed the fate, Apotheker made the biggest blunder of them all. Marks sexual harassment should of course not go unnoticed either.
It's a zombie company, run by people who want to drain its lifeblood for their own personal gain.
Not one person who ran HP in recent years gave a shit about HPs long term future.
HP's list of CEOs since 2000 looks like a clown parade compared to other companies. Although Fiorina started the downward spiral, and Meg sealed the fate, Apotheker made the biggest blunder of them all. Marks sexual harassment should of course not go unnoticed either.
Why the long face?
You are welcome on my lawn.
HP, the upcoming new one, Agilent, and Keysight.
Have you read my blog lately?
See subject: Afaik, it's the ONLY Operating System that has "verified design" status (could be wrong, mind's a junkyard of trivia in computing) & not many, IF ANY OTHERS, have that status.
* It's thus MORE than worthy intellectual property so they'd more than likely always have a buyer for it IF necessary... imo @ least.
Personally, I think this 'downturn' in PC sales is not only due to the economy sagging, but also the fact MANY FOLKS are aware of how to pop together computers & their constituent component parts - so more folks do what bikers do, & "build their own harley from the ground up" - it's a different generation out there now who for @ least 25++ yrs. or so have grown up around these things & are not 'scared they will break them' anymore OR get electrocuted etc. is why!
APK
P.S.=> - feel free to correct me where & if I am incorrect... apk
No wonder they are in decline. I tried three times the other day to buy a computer from them. The first time when I submitted my order, the website told me it couldn't process my purchase, please try back later. When I tried again, it froze up with an infinitely spinning gif saying it was processing, but after several minutes of waiting it became clear that it wasn't still processing. I thought the third time was a charm because they processed my order, reserved the funds on my credit card with a pending charge, and emailed me a confirmation. Then the next day I received an email telling me that they had declined my order (no reason given), and informed me that I would not be charged, but the pending charge would remain on my card until the bank cleared it in several days. I called to find out why they cancelled the order, and of course talked to someone who had a really thick foreign accent. Apparently the automatic system couldn't process it, but if I still wanted the computer they could try to process it manually. Two days later I have received no confirmation of my call, no confirmation that they were going to process the order manually, nor any notice of them cancelling it again. I may or may not have a computer being charged to my credit card and may or may not have a computer being shipped to me. I'm guessing probably not, but don't want to order from somewhere else and get surprised by an extra computer that I didn't think was coming.
If Hollywood wanted a script about the inexorable decline of a corporate icon, it might look to Hewlett-Packard for inspiration.
Ok so Hollywood inspiration.
that make HP more than a victim of changing times.
The victims.
https://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=HPQ
https://www.sec.gov/answers/qadded.htm
They have been not-the-best-choice for a long time already. They are kind of like corn flakes. Money trap investment at best, selling electronic basics for whatever margins they can get off of chinese imports. Also, knowing that Windows is looking permanently stupid right now, trying something different is sink or swim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-UX
^looking very weak now. Linux is already the norm in cyberspace.
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/19/9356637/carly-fiorina-iran-hp-printers
Whatever about Carly blahblah blah that was a long time ago. Obviously zero chance of being Commander in Chief of the world's foremost military superpower in the history of Earth.
I agree with this AC http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8260393&cid=50844043
The good parts of HP have been gone for a long time.
The Corvalis Group was pretty much just dismantled.
The Instruments group became Agilent.
The part that is left is a bunch of ink grifters in the printing division and a bunch of shitty clone sellers in the computer division.
It's not at all the same company that it was. And it has nothing to do with Carly, she only became CEO years after the decline. The Cold War killed HP. They couldn't continue to sell instruments and equipment to the Military at sky-high prices, the business they were doing in the 60's became comodified. The back labs at HP filled up with boomers who though they could ride the gravy train to retirement but it wasn't going to happen.
That would be a great name for a PC company...
HP Inc. - printer, consumer electronics and low end servers. Basically unraveling the Compaq deal.
HP Ent - disk arrays, high end servers, Open VMS (and therefore a lineage to DEC), Open Stack, Saas, and services. Services was once EDS and management is slowly and quietly putting a knife to it, thereby unraveling another deal made by Carly and the clowns.
Agilent - split into Avago and Keysight.
As far as services goes, other companies are having problems with a dying service part of the business. Probably due to the cloud convincing people they do not need IT services. That includes Oracle and IBM.
So when you discuss HP please specify.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Even worst example of decline of a corporate icon: Digital. Once suppier of leading technologies such as the Alpha CPU, it was bought by a PC maker, Compaq. And Compaq merged with HP. Oh, wait...
They spun off Agilent in 2002.
HP's had some great stuff in their day, but for all the able management they used to have, they also had their share of myopia, missing out on the birth of the consumer PC and other developments. Reminds me a lot of Ken Olsen's DEC in that regard. HP may be destined to be a takeover target/subsidiary of Apple or some other sugar daddy, have the marrow of its IP sucked out and tossed aside like so many other former greats.
> Very similar to our current president.
Don't you mean our previous president? Oh, wait, Cheney didn't actually let Bush control things until he and his cronies had f*cked things beyond recognition. Say what you want about Obama, he's fresh air and sunshine compared to Cheney/Bush. Before W., no deficit, great economy, no Iraq war. After W., record deficit, tax-payer bank bailouts, job losses, total Iraq quagmire. And one other thing, like Fiorina, Bush was a business failure (excepting only as managing general partner of a baseball team) before the GOP came calling. With Fiorina, the GOP is following the exact same playbook.
"HP fell victim to huge shifts in the computer industry...."
No, not really.
What they fell victim to was Carly Fiorina, who skillfully drove a once-vibrant company into the ground and then walked away with millions, laughing at the suckers who got laid off as a result of her ham-handed management.
It's no secret what ruined HP, and the thing that ruined HP is now running for president of the country. Fortunately she has ZERO chance of ever sitting in the White House, but it's an insult to everyone that this greedy, viscous bitch would dare to present herself as a viable candidate for the most powerful office in the land.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It could be called "Bungled"
And some people want Carly for president?
Like Pavlov ringing his bell, a bunch of Hillary lovers saw the headline and went straight to bashing Carly Fiorina. Hello, Hillary lovers.
HP went to hell in a basket because the board of directors keeps hiring McKinsey style business idiots to run the company. As a result, they by or merge with company after company and with the exception of their 20 year forey into the memristor which even today has yet to happen, they have absolutely no concept of innovation or market leadership. They for lack of a better term are a huge beige box vendor which tries to beige box everything they touch.
I think the biggest and most impressive effort they've made in a really long time to be part of something bigger was the Itanium processor project with Intel. But sadly, whether it was them, Intel or both, Itanium failed because developers couldn't afford to get one.
If you look closely at the list of CEOs that HP has had over the past 15 years, every one of them is someone that loves the word "synergize" and was hired by the board of directors to increase the value of their shares with absolutely no respect for the company itself. They probably all hang out on yachts filled with hookers talking about how great HP is without having the first clue as to what HP actually makes.
HP hasn't had interesting product in living memory. The closest they came was buying WebOS and making a tablet, but they couldn't even follow through on that one. I'm not sure there was a future in that anyway, but at least if they'd followed through it would be something to move forward with.
Face it, it's not easy to run a tech company. Things always change in unpredictable ways. If it were easy, everybody would do it. Apple is one of the few strong survivors of time, and they've had lean times also.
Apple's success is a narrow focus, being cutting edge, and making hardware relatively simple to use.
I've used both iPhone and Android, and iPhone overall has a more polished, intuitive and integrated user interface for most every-day tasks. It ain't perfect, but does more things cleaner, at least for the bread-and-butter tools.
Table-ized A.I.
Yes well it seems to be happening (or happened) to many a good engieering company.
I still like their servers.
HP = Has Problem HP = Hardly Perfect HP = Horrendous Products HP = Horse Puckey
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
When HP refused to upgrade its driver for one of its printers so that it would work on my new version of Windows, I said screw you, HP, I'll never again buy one of your products. So I bought a Canon printer and yelled "SCREW YOU, HP" in the general direction of HP's grave.
See subject: I haven't paid attention to these types of things in many years because they change so fast & so much.
Another one I used to pay a bit of attention to was Orange Book ratings (C2, etc.) & that iirc, has also been replaced.
* Once they get "replaced", I pretty much stop paying attention... what's the point then, you know?
(Then the "new hotness" will be replaced by "another new hotness" & another, ad infinitum...)
APK
P.S.=> When standardized ratings get replaced by "new standardized ratings" there's no consistency & it's been YEARS since I looked into it - & what do I see (much as with the orange book ratings?): Yet another rating system - "will wonders NEVER cease"... apk
"HP Is Now Two Companies. How Did It Get Here?"
Two words: Carly Fiorina.
I know people throw around the term psychopath in connection with CEO character a lot but in this case, she absolutely ticks off the boxes, including :
PATHOLOGICAL LYING
Carly Fiorina Makes a Lot of Stuff Up About Everything
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS
"..the thing that comes through clearest is this almost, if we werenâ(TM)t on TV, Iâ(TM)d say almost psychopathic denial of reality. As you saw, even the creators of that hoax Planned Parenthood video, that even they say that this is not the footage that she says it isâ¦when she was national finance chairman for McCain, she was jousting with him, what his positions are on contraceptives, trying to contradict him in real time. It was very bizarre.
Or saying that he is not equipped to be the CEO of a corporation, but he could be the commander in chief while sheâ(TM)s helping to run his campaign, and then denying she said it when it was on tapes everywhere.
This is like, she stomps her feet and demands that black is white, hot is cold, and rich is poor and wins are losses.â
âoeâ¦Many great leaders failed. but their resilience came from exoneration or contrition. She just stomps her feet and demands redemption. You have to earn redemption.â
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/is-...
LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT
Wallace: âoeWhat about the 30,000 American jobs that you laid off?â
Fiorina: âoeYou know, every family and every business in California knows what it means to go through tough times. And every family is cutting back, and every business is laying off right now. I donâ(TM)t say that with delight. I say that with sorrow. But yes, it is true that jobs are being taken out of California. By the way, China fights harder for our jobs than we do.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/is-...
SHALLOW AFFECT / CALLOUSNESS / LACK OF EMPATHY
As CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina laid off 18,000 workers. When reflecting on her tenure, she admitted she wished she had "done them all faster."
Fiorina Fired At Least 18,000 HP Employees
POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS / IMPULSIVITY
According to those who work with her, she has a barely stifled impulsivity towards make deeply personal and alienating remarks to others, and for no real reason :
She once ridiculed the music interests and appearance of a dissenting board member Walter Hewitt, son of HPâ(TM)s co-founderâ"as well as the allegedly dowdy look of rival Senate candidate Barbara Boxer.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazi...
a trait she *barely* has under control as evidenced by this live mic "accident" .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
IRRESPONSIBILITY
"....She makes irresponsible decisions. At HP, Fiorina abruptly pivoted from a strategy of chasing IT services to a splashier, but less sound strategy of ramping up in device manufacturing.
While her predecessor, revered HP CEO Lew Platt, traveled coach in commercial planes, she demanded the company buy her a Gulfstream IV. More recently, her service on the Taiwan Semiconductor board indicates continued irresponsibility. Financial disclosures at the time Fiorina left the board in 2009 show that she attended just 17 percent of the companyâ(TM)s board meetings."
The acquisition might have been a problem financially, but it brought a lot of good people in to HP, including many DEC veterans from Compaq's takeover of them. In the past I've seen HP staffers confuse bad corporate policy with bad people or bad technology.
HP's Server business was a joke before they acquired the Proliant line, and their Storage business model was to resell Hitachi. If HP is an Enterprise player at all today, it;s thanks to Compaq (and, by extension, DEC).
(this is not a
In the 1990s every engineering student bought an HP 48. Finance students owned an HP 12.
Ten years later, you couldn't find an HP calculator on campus.
Somewhere in between is the second story of HP. Just as stellar as the first story of HP.
Wanted to be the largest PC hardware company just as the mobile wave was hitting. IBM sould their PC hardware to Lenevo in time.
Wanted to be a services company, buying up DEC and EDS. I havent heard how that half is faring. They get the brunt of layoffs.
I think it's less about shifts in the industry and more that publicly-traded companies are forced into certain behaviors. Publicly-traded companies have to please a mob of investors. Some people use bad news (and possibly help spread it) to short a stock. Others are always chasing the hype train.
I think a lot of investors are leeches. They wouldn't know a good idea if it hit them like a freight train. (If anyone gives you a line about investors being logical, just look up any time the words "stock market" and "panic" appear.)
Going private may allow Dell to focus on its core competencies and not act like a crazy person.
I think you mean four companies.
Hewlett-Packard -- whatever they are spinning off into -- maybe computers and printers/ink
Agilent Technology (life science)
Keysight (electronics test equipment)
Certainly HPUX has never been validated at EAL7. Because that would imply mathematical correctness proofs of EVERYTHING. This is already hard to do for a few thousands line of code. L4 might qualify for this, but just the kernel !
HPUX is a buggy crappile like Linux and Windows and MacOS. HPUX Ping of Death for starters.
But if you do not connect it to the internet, it is quite ok and stable... Like all the other major crappiles we call operating systems.
Wanna know the essentials ? youtube for the NSA technical director who spills the beans.
The fat, middle aged, bald, white, male engineer knew his shit and designed electronics in an honest way. Then came the progressive folks who wanted GIRL AT ALL COST.
Now, we have Girly HP tech, while all the evil white guys are now at places like Google and run circles around the communist girls who hijacked HP.
"we are discriminated when we fuck up a wonderful corporation which was invented by these evil, evil, white men !!!!" Boooohhooo.
FUCK THAT. Become Kindergardeners and do not fuck up our activities. Thank you very much, commies and commie-femi-Nazis.
Real entrepreneuers like Ellison, Hewlett and the Google Boys KNOW THEIR TECHNOLOGY SHIT. Yeah, I am shouting, because it is important. They are not beancounters, they invest in things which they understand and care about. Something which they think about for hours and days in lots of dimensions, only one of which is $$$. Compare that to the MBA, who can think in one dimension mostly.
Which division gets the Prime? Wish Agilent (now Keysight) had gotten the rights. Maybe they'd keep it up to day.
"Class A1: Verified design: Systems in class A1 are functionally equivalent to those in class B3 in that no additional architectural features or policy requirements are added. The distinguishing feature of systems in this class is the analysis derived from formal design specification and verification techniques and the resulting high degree of assurance that the TCB is correctly implemented. This assurance is developmental in nature, starting with a formal model of the security policy and a formal top-level specification (FTLS) of the design. In keeping with the extensive design and development analysis of the TCB required of systems in class A1, more stringent configuration management is required and procedures are established for securely distributing the system to sites. A system security administrator is supported."
FROM -> http://book.soundonair.ru/hall...
It's older "Orange Book" ratings as I mention in the next link below, since I know that Windows NT received C2 ratings from that very source!
So, like I said in the next link - these 'ratings' change & I haven't paid attention to them for these reasons in ages -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & thus, ORIGINALLY, I WAS RIGHT ON THE SOURCE "Orange Book" earlier
(... Too much 'trivia' in my brain is all... personally, I largely think they're bullshit cuz there's SO many diff. ones now, I could care less - especially 'outta the box' MINUS hand-done security hardening yourself...)
APK
P.S.=> There's a LOT more backing it too if you wish to see it, here -> http://www.bing.com/search?q=%... ... apk
I've had two HP PCs, both of outstanding quality, no problems whatsoever. I've given them away when they've gotten old, and they still work perfectly for their new owners, after all these years. Great stuff.
I certainly hope that HP survives.
PS. I've never owned Compaq. Only HP Pavillions.