Monday, August 22, 2011

The Big Shift:Hewlett-Packard's Bet

CEO Leo Apotheker(pronounced "Ahpotayker")is moving Hewlett-Packard to an IBM model of software and services,says Scott Kessler,head of tech research at Standard&Poor's.It's gonna be uphill.It's gonna be very difficult to sell the pc business.Can they really be competitive in software?
HP is saying they don't want to be in pcs,tablets or smartphones.They are selling the Web OS operating system.HP is known at its core for its printer business.It's really gonna be a challenge to unload that.
This really is a sea change in tech.Google is getting into hardware,while HP is leaving it.These moves will have impacts for years to come,although attention has been focused on the financial markets recently,Mr.Kessler observed.
Carly Fiorina,who led HP from 1999-2005,thinks the current board has a lot of diverse experience and luminaries from the Silicon Valley.The board made a serious and substantial decision about the future.HP is a company with a very deep core competency in managing complexity.
HP is the largest tech company in the world,with more than 100,000 employees.The CEO is never the company;he is the leader of the company.It's all about the people and the systems and the culture of the company.Preparing a company for the future sometimes requires making a big bet.HP has been buying software companies.This isn't a totally new development,but they're making a big bet on unstructured data.
It's up to the people at HP to explain this and make it work.Anytime the stock drops like that,it places pressure on people-there's no question.They are doubling down in the enterprise space,former CEO Carly Fiorina pointed out.
UBS has cut its rating on HP from buy to neutral,lowering its price target to 26.00.
Hewlett-Packard(HPQ),International Business Machines(IBM)

No comments: