Hear that? It’s HP founders Bill and Dave spinning in their graves

 

Corporations, especially big American corporations, file lawsuits all the time for many reasons. Often they sue to force others to comply with agreements or to punish non-compliance with the law. But sometimes they sue, well, just because they can. I suspect that is what’s happening in Hewlett Packard’s current fight over Autonomy, the UK software company HP bought two years ago for $11.1 billion. The HP board seems determined to demonize Autonomy founder Mike Lynch for being smarter than they are.

Given the smarts that HP board has shown in recent years, we may all be at risk of being sued by the company.

HP, its business faltering with no mobile strategy to speak of and its stock dropping, has been looking like stupid-on-a-stick for years […]

By |November 28th, 2012|2012, Business, Companies, Computing, Industry, Technology, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Hear that? It’s HP founders Bill and Dave spinning in their graves
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The once and future WebOS

WebOS, first from Palm and then from Hewlett Packard, came and went so fast most mobile software developers never even got a chance to play with it. Now HP has declared WebOS to be Open Source, placing the project (it’s really not a product anymore) under CEO Meg Whitman to show they haven’t totally given up on the mobile OS. But what is WebOS, really, in this new incarnation? Its potential is enormous — far greater than most people realize — but I simply don’t see HP and Whitman as being able to execute on the plan, if there really is one.

WebOS and its Enyo application framework are clever and elegant and have one important […]

By |December 14th, 2011|2011|55 Comments
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Meg's Revenge

There is no joy in Round Rock.

Early this morning the database servers at Dell Computer went down hard. The company is unable to accept orders on its web site and almost 5000 Dell sales reps trying to meet their quotas in the last week of the quarter are unable to book sales. Today’s loss for the company is already over $50 million and rising.

The database system in question is Oracle running atop NonStop Unix on a Tandem NonStop (now stopped — what an irony) system made, of course, by Hewlett Packard. So Michael Dell is pulling his hair out at this moment while he waits to be saved by HP.

It could be a long wait.

I […]

By |October 27th, 2011|2011|87 Comments
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Brian Utley (not Meg Whitman) for HP Interim CEO

 

Since the consensus view seems to be that Hewlett Packard will today replace CEO Leo Apotheker with board member Meg Whitman, let’s just assume that’s what will happen. Now I’ll explain why it is a bad idea.

Oh getting rid of Leo (or not hiring him in the first place) is a fine idea. Leo didn’t fit the culture or the industry and he arrived with way too much baggage from SAP. Hiring Apotheker was an example of the HP board trying to get ahead of the Mark Hurd scandal by making what it hoped would be a brilliant hire in Apotheker that would silence Wall Street criticism. The problem with that last sentence is the word hoped: hiring Apotheker was actually a giant crap […]

By |September 22nd, 2011|2011|29 Comments
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Apple's Money

All of us were reminded over and over and over during the last few days that Apple has more cash on hand than does the U.S. government. This coincidence means precisely nothing to either outfit.  We won’t see President Obama asking Steve Jobs for a loan, nor will we see Steve Jobs offering one. Yes, the government is broke and yes, Apple has a lot of cash. But GE has almost $50 billion more than Apple, so where are all the GE stories?

There’s a mystery about Apple’s cash and that mystery has to do with Steve’s strategy for holding all that money.  What’s it for? The predominant theory seems to be that Apple intends to make a huge acquisition and […]

By |August 1st, 2011|2011|158 Comments
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