Whitman deletes another chapter in HP history as CSC and ES borg Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman is dismantling another legacy bequeathed to her by a predecessor as she waves goodbye to Enterprise Services. The first lady of Palo Alto has already closed the chapter opened by one-time CEO Carly Fiorina who had signed off the buy of Compaq, only for HP's PC business to be ejected …
I think you have to get rid of the units that were not producing growth, while at the same time consuming lots of management attention. I think this is probably the right move for HP, and it does allow them to rebuild relationships with their distribution partners.
Hopefully once they are focused on the partners and equipment customers, a new round of product improvements and innovation can occur.
"The only way they could be turned around is by being allowed to innovate again."
I think that's part of it. EDS may be or may have been a semi-reliable ATM for the rest of HP, but I doubt it. Any time I've ever had any dealings with the EDSes of the world, I've been amazed at just how many highly-paid project managers and account executives have been involved. So they may offshore the actual work to the cheapest, lowest quality place they can find, but they need to keep all those account executives, PMs, technical liaisons, escalation managers, senior escalation managers, VPs of service delivery, etc. paid well and flying around the world.
It's the consulting model -- Accenture, EDS, CSC, IBM, and all of them do it. Every engagement has three tiers:
- Insanely compensated senior management who sell the dream to the executives
- An army of new graduate, no-experience PowerPoint-wielding 24 year old analysts, consultants, PMs and what have you flying 48 weeks out of the year, billable to the client, to be the public face of the project
- Offshore minions in cheap country of the week doing any work that is necessary
The problem is that those top two tiers are expensive and I think companies aren't as willing as they were to pay for it anymore.
In a world where you have no integration but components on the cloud plugged together by people who can manage projects and understand business and technology. The coders would remain in the background and they would be culled -- only the truly gifted would survive.
In a world where you have no integration but components on the cloud plugged together by people who can manage projects and understand business and technology.
This world does not exist - and never will.
There's always integration - it's just not always as abvious in some cases. And if it's not obvioous, guess what happens? And when it gets forgotten, guess what happens?
Vic.
I'm sure this is just another bonehead move on the HP executives' part, or more likely their management consultants from McKinsey or similar. But...could it be that companies are starting to wake up and realize that deals with these mega-outsourcers never go as planned? Seriously, I've worked for providers as well as companies who partake in IT services outsourcing. The weird wall that builds up between the two companies causes IT progress to slow to a crawl. One side is trying to get away with as little work as they can for maximum cost, and the other is trying to minimize cost by refusing to pay higher rates for better service. This is always a recipe for disaster unless the company involved really has no interest in IT investment and just needs to keep the lights on.
HP never knew what to do with EDS. They used EDS to "stuff" unnecessary equipment and software into proposals. When that failed, they simply ignored ES. Now they are selling it to CSC, the "carneys" of government contracting.
I'm glad I've already found a way off a becalmed, and now sinking, ship.
"back in 2008 when HP paid $13.9bn for EDS - it would later write down the value of the business by $8bn in summer 2012"
Oh hang on. No they are not. They are incompetent vultures, filling their pockets with cash, whist fucking over anything and everything they can.
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