Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Apotheker and future of HP

On November 1st, 2010 Léo Apotheker took the reigns of HP. The man has some big plans; webOS on every HP, increase HP's software profile, and bring back innovation that Mark Hurd chucked. But not all is sunny in HP land, today Bloombergs Carol Hymowitz and Douglas MacMillan note Apotheker's involvement in some shady dealings regarding HP's Board.

Over all I hope the best for HP. Hurd helped the money line but only helped in bringing down the business. The HP employee's started to remind me of Sprint folks because they didn't know when the axe would fall. Mark Hurd took to acquiring new things but cut off that which made HP great, namely it's people. If Apotheker's rehtoric can be believed then he is at least looking to bring back HP's innovative spirit. Which they will need. Dell has been making inroads in the server space, and personally I like Dell enclosures and servers better than HP's. We have notorious firmware issues with HP, where as our Dell systems don't have to be patched unless something is broke. HP Blade's are a different beast.

NOTE: Word to the wise, if you buy an C7000 fill the bays and then don't touch it if at all possible. Otherwise a firmware update on one blade may cause you to have to update everything on the other blades and the enclosure.

On the software end Oracle and HP have been beating on each other for a while but HP is falling behind. Frankly I think HP needs to capitalize on Oracle's bad blood in the FOSS community. Apotheker would be wise to encourage HP to back the disgruntled players in MySQL and the Java space.

In the end only time will tell. Apotheker has said he has learned from his mistakes and SAP and  "The one thing I've learned is to try to manage my temper better and get rid of cynics sooner." (see "Apotheker seeks to save hp's lost soul with software").


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