back to article Insiders BAFFLED: HP split-up inexplicably NOT a disaster

The separation of HP, the biggest ever of its kind in tech corporate history - with a similarly enormous potential for disaster - is going through without any operational explosions, dumfounded insiders familiar with the process have told the Register. From this month, the US monster split the PC and print business from the …

  1. Steve 114
    Coffee/keyboard

    Rational

    Didn't HP buy EDS? (no comment on that logic, or price). Did that ever seem rational? Does the split effectively reverse that? Might it seem natural? I'm too out of touch in retirement to know. 'Esc' because it might be a Great Escape.

    1. Big Wiggle

      Re: Rational

      EDS was a profitable company when HP bought it. Part of the problem was that the CEO of EDS had cut the company a lot so that it wasn't investing into many of its existing clients. I've found many accounts that were in disarray because they didn't have the people to properly service the account.

      IMO the biggest issue about the EDS acquisition is that Mark Hurd made little effort to integrate it into HP at large. They just tacked it on as HPES and left it to it's own devices. There was, and still is, a lot of overlap between HPES and other HP orgs like Technical Services.

      To Meg's credit, she actually got HPES integrated into HP. The pay tracking systems were finally merged. The travel req system has been merged. Meg started the whole term of OneHP to get the BUs to work together. However there is still quite a bit of duplication around the company IMO.

      A big part of the problem now, IMO, is that HPES leadership is pretty damn incompetent. They are much more process driven than revenue driven. I know several teams that have historically been revenue generating but they are now being used to support other organizations. In the past, they would add a margin to their work but now it is up to the team they are supporting to add that margin. However they don't have to and often they don't so they aren't raising costs for their customers. As a result, those formerly revenue generating teams are now viewed as an expense and they get more of the job cuts. Now they can't support anything. I got tired of being 150% billable I left.

      Meg hasn't helped things by killing telecommuting. That is raising expenses and throwing moral into the toilet. IMO she did that just to get people to quit so they don't have to pay any folks anything when they are laid off.

      After the split, I bet a lot of HPES leadership gets shown the door. I have no idea why Mike Nefkin's still has a job. ES has done nothing but decline under his management and a lack of leadership. The same is true for many under him. There is quite a bit of cronyism around ES. Meg should have started firing VPs last year but I think she wanted to avoid rocking the boat because of the split.

      Also, Meg is going to get a crap ton of cash after the split. just sayin'

      1. Preston Munchensonton

        Re: Rational

        EDS was a profitable company when HP bought it.

        To be fair, their Government accounts provided virtually all the profit earned, as the vast majority of accounts were not profitable.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ...not a disaster...

    Give it time, give it time.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    wish I could say the same

    They broke the b2b ordering portal repeatedly in the weeks leading up to the split. They didn't seem in any hurry to fix it either....

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Meh

    So in future

    We can avoid their printers and buy good stuff?

    I used an old DEC A3 printer back in the day and we clocked the page counter twice without killing it.

    Wonder how long the Printers & PC side stays independent?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe not from the inside...

    From the outside as a customer it's a nightmare! The website is now totally unusable,pdf links broken, impossible to find firmware, constantly being told that "please go to out enterprise site".

    On top of that, an hp service manager told me that they aren't holding replacement servers at the moment so a simple blade replacement had turned into a week's long nightmare that has probably cost them five times the cost of the server in the first place

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like