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HP Top Level Executive On Life After the Split (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a ZDNet report: George Brasher is a 26-year HP veteran who has worked in a variety of roles in the company's printer and PC divisions over the years and is now HP Inc's managing director for the UK and Ireland. We began by asking how the first fifteen 'post-split' months had gone. "If you go back to the genesis of the separation, what Meg [Whitman, CEO of HPE and chairwoman of HP Inc] said was that, by splitting into two businesses, we'd be able to have more focus -- and I think that's truly what's happened with HP Inc. What we wanted to get out of it was: could we be more focused on our markets; could we actually accelerate our pace of innovation and get closer to our customers? In general, I'd say the answer is a resounding 'yes'." [...] The second thing is -- and you can see examples around this room [the CWC] -- we're a technology company, and innovation is our lifeblood: if you look at PC and print, we've seen more significant high-quality introductions in the last 15 months than in any previous 15-month period." [...] "The proof is always in the pudding: I look at the Spectre x360, the Elite X3 and other devices -- and it's not just new devices, but also the quality of the new devices; being able to have a partnership with B&O and thinking about a new computing experience. On the print side, it's the same thing: in September we announced our single biggest rollout ever, with a set of 16 A3 multifunction devices starting in a couple of months and rolling out over the course of the year. I don't think that happens unless you have separation, because then you've got a management team and a board, and a group of employees, that are just laser-focused on driving against that."
" we're a technology company, and innovation is our lifeblood"
That was true of HP a long time ago.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Innovation is secondary. The whole advantage to HP was their service and that has been sacrificed since the HPE split.
We had a server whose RAID controller was throwing an NMI error and the support process was a nightmare. First level tech support never wanted to escalate to second level. When they finally stopped changing motherboards and Raid caches/batteries, the actual server replacement took two weeks because our 3 year old server was "too old" to keep in stock. Our parent company has been complaining about the same level of service reduction.
They guarunteed that the support contracts will not continue beyond this year and that the next servers will not be HP
Top level exec says things are going great and CEO's moves were right.
Americans won't pay for quality anymore.
They won't pay for quality that doesn't matter. Twenty years ago I had a $1000 HP printer that was built like a tank. Today I have a $50 HP printer made out of flimsy plastic. But it prints better than the old one. It is faster, quieter, and has way better resolution. It also has a built in scanner.
And if it's a $50 laser printer, undoubtedly it comes with a "starter" cartridge that will print a handful of pages, but you can buy a regular capacity cartridge for another $100. But don't worry about buying a second $100 cartridge because the printer won't last that long.
That's not because we won't pay for quality. It's because ink and toner have become the profit drivers. Buying a better printer doesn't make the ink cheaper. It costs less for an inkjet printer than it does for a package of ink.
20 years back manufacturing was in the dark ages. People really had no idea of how much material is needed to get a target life period. Since they didnt have good statistics, Quality teams or computers to simulate material fatigue they overbuilt evrything. This made stuff last for years and was a good thing if you were one of the few rich people who could afford overbuilt crap but it sucked for most of society who were locked out of having their own printer and had to go to printing shops to print. This would be like car manufacturers only selling Rolls Royces and if you cant afford a Rolls Royce you can travel on the Rolls Royce Bus.
Now with scientific manufacturing techniques manufacturers know exactly how much to spend on materials, training and QA to make sure 95% of the printers reach their guarantee date with no problems and the other 5% are covered under warranty. Prices are much lower as a result. Stuff dies when it is obsolete instead of hanging around like zombies and is cheap enough so that a larger section of society can use it.
Overbuilding is a waste of resources, a crime against the poor and a burden to technological progress.
**Life is too short to be serious**