Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Whitman slams EMC/Dell deal

Methinks the Lady doth protest too much.

No surprises here. The overlaps in Storage are going to be the make or break for Dell+EMC. Otherwise, it's normal channel stuff that Dell seems to do fairly well. Other than that, we are running the HP+X as one of our historical model of deals in this category and we all know how well HP executes mergers. Oracle+Sun is a better historical model and Larry's approach is to throw enough money at it that you can't ignore the results. May not be able to afford it, but damn it sure is slick. Seems like Dell has enough cash flow for the job. Pricing of the results? <Shrug>

"Empty vessels make the most noise".

It would appear that Ms Whitman is using this acquisition to try and build up some credit with her shareholders by going on the offensive against the competition.

However, as far as I can see from talking within their own vendor channel, HP's plans for change are still incomplete and there is little evidence that they will actually deliver any real benefit to anyone other than the board. Not a position from which to be predicting failure for someone else; and she might be better off trying to fix the problems within her own business first.

Yes, Dell and EMC have some major work ahead, but they haven't had a decade of poor decision making behind them. It's early days; they may well find it challenging (I'd be very surprised if they didn't), but I think that it's a bit too early to be gloating over their sudden demise.

Hmm ...... In other news

Poundland is taking over Harrods, well not, but EMC likes to be a premium supplier and Dell, not so much. It does seem a strange marriage, but then if EMC needs to be bought, who else, Cisco?, Lenovo?

Maybe a bit of commoditization of the high end storage market will be no bad thing.

Lets not forget Palm!

By far the easiest comparison was their re-venture into the handheld market. In which they bought a dying Palm and heamoraged money trying to force that to work, wasting tonnes of time on WebOs. After a couple of weeks of selling which. They abandoned the palm hardware and gave away WebOs.

I'm starting to see a pattern in the leadership of HP.

They appoint somebody who seems to be "safe" and then they go batshit within about 8 months. Every time. Quicker if you happen to be Leo Apotheker.

I can't even blame them anymore. It looks to me like Carly Fiorina left the company as a huge poisoned chalice, a root of infection that just won't go away. All we can do is watch it eat itself away and destroy people who might have been perfectly sane and maybe even competent if only they worked somewhere else.

MW management style

Having read some of the various claim/counter-claim documents in the HP vs. Autonomy spat I still can't get over the description of the high level "Executive Committee" meetings: "Ms Whitman ... repeatedly adopted the management approach of ... playing country music to the meeting instructing the senior executives attending to take the meaning of the country music songs and apply them to their own management methods".

Sounds like HP is in safe hands ...

A woman scorned it would seem as she couldn't close the EMC/HP merger last year.

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish. - Marcus Aurelius (Meditations Book VI)

The thing is, HP buyz stuff and then drops it, every other player in the market tries to make the best out of an acquisition. Even Oracle is not doing that bad after their Sun acquisition...

Horrible

Is that what we may now expect from the head of a renowned company with impeccable provenance? Not only obnoxious but I have known interns who could write a more perceptive rally-the-troops memo than this.

Ugh!

Interest?

Is the interest really that big a charge?

The deal was bankrolled by Dell himself, who's not going to charge himself interest, and Silver Lake, who has a sweetheart relationship already. Since they're already making the big bucks, they might not want to hobble their racehorse.

HP has a vested interest in spinning that number as large as possible, and I wouldn't trust Meggie baby if she said the Atlantic was wet.

Of course, Dell is private and doesn't have to tell anyone.

One critical point of the Dell/EMC merger not mentioned by Whitman is the VMWare component - worth $30 plus billion dollars by most credible estimates - and an entity that competes 'tooth and nail' with Microsoft Virtualization and Cloud Offerings.

Just how Dell - as a purported concubine of Microsoft (Microsoft has more than $4 billion stake and significant influence and some control in Dell), will handle this dilemma is anyone's guess. I suspect that Microsoft may 'force' Dell to sell off VMWare or sell VmWare to them (Microsoft) for peanuts, so that Microsoft can force feed all their Virtualization and Cloud Computing clients (VMWare users) a diet that is considerably more expensive and provides significant indigestion.

Either way, Dell is unlikely to be the winner, with most current VMWare clients hosted on UNIX/Linux foundation, which is a No-No to Microsoft, who will almost guarantee considerably poor performance and reliabiliy of Microsoft- VMWare on UNIX/Linux than on Windows.

If owned by Microsoft, all software and contract license fees of VMWare are sure to double and triple compared to similar services of native Microsoft. Dell, as owner of VMWare may be forced by Microsoft to escalate all VMWare client fees and services.

Why does HP hire these sad dried up husks.

The founders must be rolling in their graves. Both were gifted graduate electrical engineers who started literally in a garage.

Now its ya granny who does an excellent apple crumble is CEO.

Not forgetting that other mad tart Fiorina or whatever.

Bah!

Yep, shareholder value once again front and center in this vapid cheerleading exercise.

Or did I miss the bit where Ms Whitman detailed (as far as she could without breaking confidentiality or compromising cutting-edge IP in progress) the exciting new game-changing technologies that HP will be revealing to the world soon?

Meg is probably correct

Meg is indirectly highlighting a common senior management/investor fallacy of merging for the sake of merging. The Dell/EMC merger does not appear to really fit either company. It seems to be pushed by a need to do something grand to make Wall Street happy. Meg has some bad, hard won experience at such things.

Interest vs buyback FUD

EMC is already making $3BB (2014) worth of stock buybacks per year (to keep wallstreet happy). That will stop if it goes private. This the interest payments actually leave ~$500M MORE per year for R&D (which EMC already massively invests in). This interest conversation is just FUD and she knows it.

http://marketrealist.com/2014/08/why-emc-accelerates-share-buyback-plan-3-billion-2014/

The VMWare portion ofDell/ EMC merger is a non-go for Microsoft.

DougS and the other yokels on TheRegister forums who are quick to defend Microsoft and it's slavish partners like Dell never explain - if Dell is not a Microsoft minion, why does the company not manufacture any "non-Windows" products that are significant sales channels in the technology marketplace? ChromeBooks, Android tablets and/or smartphones sales, when combines with those of Apple constitute approximately 93% of the Mobile ecosystem (compared to Microsoft Windows measly 4% -5 %) that is overwhelming the Windows Desktop PC and mobile market.

Therefore it is rational and understandable, given Microsoft's $4 plus billion investment in Dell that the VMWare portion of EMC acquisition - that competes aggressively and dominates Virtualization space over Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization, presents a conundrum for Dell as Microsoft's concubine.

Dell even antagonizes and strongly discourages Linux implementations on their Server system, other than very profitable agreements with companies like Oracle, whose enterprise customers Dell cannot afford to anger. The vast majority of Social Media infrastructure and Cloud Computing Services in USA and Internationally are Linux based (read every, repeat every Gartner, Forrester, IDC and other credible reports on this issue), so Dell has proven to be a Microsoft dupe.

And her opinion matters?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services floats off from HP Inc in two weeks with none of the recognised logos and all wrapped and ready to be bought up and swallowed. No-one left here seriously expects to be working for an independent company six months from now. 30,000 of us definately wont be around as the perennial axe continues to swing.

Whitman, like all the rest with their snouts in the trough, will take her obscene payoff and run. She can take her sour grapes about EMC with her.

Me? I'm waiting for whoever takes over to end the final salary pension of the few of us still on them then I'll take the payoff and go and work for a company that isn't rendered incompetant by its own bureaucracy, obsession with headcount and overall inability to let managers manage and techies tech.