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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.
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'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.
Don't forget Meg Whitman!
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.***
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?
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.
Companies are really missing the true hidden cost of offshoring labor. It appears in the near term to be cheaper, but they ignore all of the hidden costs like customer loyalty, customer experience, service quality, build quality, etc. It actually costs MORE to offshore when you factor in all of these costs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
I have a hypothesis that goes for any president and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" backs me up.
Yes, 10 years down the line the company goes to shit. Carly, Hurd, Apotheker, Dunn, Meg... they don't care, they got the business to not crash and burn on their watch so they're "successful" and got the bonuses when they left.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"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...
I have a hypothesis that goes for any president and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" backs me up.
And I agree with it. Basically, the less that the president, or congress is able to get done, the better it is for all of us citizens.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
Agreed about Leo.
I still use the Touchpad that I got when HP had their fire sale. The sad thing is, it's still pretty good, and could have been a unique and compelling entry in the tablet market before they decided to kill it. Granted, I don't know what HP's costs were, but, at the time it was released, the Touchpad, along with HP's phone, was well-regarded, and, I think, could have gone on to be a strong player. Just seems like a wasted opportunity and premature write-off... one of Leo's many blunders that not even Carly can approach.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
Loot and scoot CEOs.
If they paid as much effort inventing products as they did with acquisitions and "splits" it would be a successful company.
It's only the name of a once great company now.
Its soul has been removed.
Such a sad thing to witness. I keep hoping the ghosts of Hewlett and Packard will return to smite the assholes that have filed through it's corporate doors whilst stuffing their pockets full.
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.
The only reason Bush did any good at the Rangers is that daddy helped push for the new taxpayer funded stadium. Bush was brought in for political weight for the stadium, and was there for that and not much else. He did good, but not because he did anything, other than ask daddy for help.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
It looks like several have been 'verified' (assuming this is what you mean) since 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I've only seen PikeOS in the wild - that I know of. I may well have interfaced with others but not known it. Contrary to popular belief, I do not, in fact, dig into the guts of everything. It is possible that I have not noticed any encounters.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
Actually, if I recall correctly, the point Adams made was that anyone who is the sort of person capable of getting himself elected to office should, under no circumstances, be trusted or allowed to do the job.
Imagine all the people...
"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
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 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)
That CEO fired HP's R&D department during the 2001 recession because she thought that the R&D department was non-profitable!! And so HP had no choice but to become a "me too" organization.