Hahahahoho
No, stop, please, my sides are aching too much. What a fantastic advert for the competency of HP and (ex) EDS management that they managed to get themselves into this position.
How can such ineptitude inspire any confidence from existing unaffected customers? How can it do anything than completely destroy their ongoing sales pitches?
As somebody who used to work for EDS I realised quite quickly that the company didn't give a jot for preserving and building on the skills of their engineering staff. All that mattered to senior (I stress senior) was meeting the next deadline and if it worked, so much the better. Middle management, good and bad, get trapped between impossible targets from on high and teams of people who know enough to realise that they're onto a loser, or know so little that thay didn't realise the job couldn't be done.
Remember, the lowest bid isn't always the best, contracts should specify minimum head count and require specific skills/qualifications/certifications to be held. No, you really shouldn't have to have this kind of thing in writing but in this day and age the bog corporates would offshore everything to a $1 a day workforce halfway around the world if they could get away with it. No ethics, no consideration for the workforce, just the end of quarter targets and absolutely nothing else matters. Your shareholders won't thank you for taking the cheapest bid when it all goes tits up like this...
EDS mainframe goes titsup, crashes RBS cheque system
