HP News Desk

HP Announced a New Generation of Automated and Efficient Hardware

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

HP on Monday took direct aim at the ever-increasing costs of data centers and managing an explosion of data by announcing a new generation of automated and efficient hardware. The new generation of ProLiant servers includes better internal management, powerful automation features, and improved energy conservation. The ProLiant Gen8 servers are part HP's Converged Infrastructure strategy, and represent the first step in the company's Project Voyager, a two-year, $300-million effort to redefine the economics of the data center. At the heart of the new generation of servers is ProActive Insight architecture, which includes integrated lifecycle automation, dynamic workload acceleration, automated energy optimization, and proactive service and support. Data has become a differentiator in business, and with an ever-expanding growth in storage needs, enterprises are feeling the pinch in personnel costs, energy, and facilities. Supporting data as a lifecycle may be IT's fastest growing cost worldwide.

HP’s Voyager Project Bears Fruit

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

HP Monday claimed to have the most self-sufficient line of servers, the x86-based HP ProLiant Generation 8, the first fruits of a two-year Project Voyager meant to eliminate error-prone, downtime-creating manual tasks and cut data center costs. HP says it’s spent $300 million on Gen8, managing to automate 50% of a data center’s manual operations such as server administration, application deployment, and power and cooling management. On average that means it can save a 10,000-square-foot data center an estimated $20 million a year. It says the Gen8 servers, previewed late last year, adapt to their environment in real-time and by continuously analyzing thousands of system parameters, they optimize application performance and proactively improve uptime. Naturally the automation increases productivity, reduces errors, and simplifies operations for virtualized, cloud, and other dynamic computing models. (HP’s just gotta pray customers don’t forsake the bulk of their big on-premise boxes for the public cloud.)

HP Provides More Picks and Shovels to Cloud Miners

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

In two separate recent announcements, HP has affirmed its goal of being the neutral supplier of choice for all things cloud. Last week, HP delivered HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) Content Pack 10, bringing with the ability to better manage cloud instances across the enterprise-public cloud continuum, including deep discovery of virtualized workloads' performance inside of Amazon and VMware vCloud clouds. Then this week, HP on Tuesday further thrust its global market-leading LoadRunner performance testing suite -- via partners -- into development clouds, known as platform as a service (PaaS) providers. This is clearly aimed at the fast-growing mobile development and greenfield SMB development spaces.

HP LoadRunner Hits the Cloud

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

HP LoadRunner Hits the Cloud HP, HP reseller Orasi Software and Skytap have teamed up to offer HP’s LoadRunner software turnkey on Orasi new CloudPerform environment to do load and performance testing in Skytap’s hybrid cloud. It’s the first time LoadRunner has been available on-demand in the cloud and with CloudPerform, users can instantly create a test environment generating large loads that simulate hundreds or thousands of concurrent users. The widgetry is geared to a broad range of web applications. Skytap and Orasi, which worked on it for months, have reportedly fine-tuned the VMs to provide the best TrueClient performance out there. The cloud has been a God sent for test and dev teams and the companies that pay their bills, saving them the time and expense previously required to buy and install the hardware in-house, configure it, load it and set permissions. Skytap cut its teeth on the test and dev user case and CloudPerform eliminates the complexity and expense of building specialized test environments. The widgetry is supposed to be available for load testing in under an hour. Orasi has created a friendly point-and-click self-service portal for the stuff, which it will sell at the wave of a credit card, paying its two partners. It makes the HP LoadRunner application available on the Skytap cloud in as little as 24-hour licensed increments. Orasi will handle the support. CloudPerform customers can share environments and get assistance from Orasi engineers via the Skytap Cloud. Skytap was quick to point out that its customers to date have launched better than a million virtual machines using its cloud service.

Jon Rubinstein, Father of webOS, Leaves HP

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

HP has dispensed with the services of former Palm CEO and pivotal Apple graduate Jon Rubinstein, according to AllThingsDigital. Rubinstein has been like a man without a country since HP, after spending billions on the stuff decided it couldn’t go toe to toe with Apple and Google, and up and dumped Palm’s webOS-based phones and TouchPad last August then announced that by September it would open source the operating system on which Rubinstein spent four-and-a-half years of his life.

Apple Unseats HP in Client PCs: Canalys

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:45:00 EST

Apple was the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4, pushing HP off its perch, according to Canalys, which unlike Gartner and IDC, doesn’t hesitate to lump tablets in with desktops, netbooks and notebooks. It says that since Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs last quarter it did 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally, up 6% year-over-year. Canalys also figures that if tablets are thrown in, the total client PC market grew 16% year-on-year. If they aren’t, the client PC market declined 0.4%. Canalys predicts that “HP will struggle to compete with Apple following the end of its Touchpad” given doubts about how Windows 8 will do on HP tablets once it’s out.

HP Commits to webOS Release Schedule

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:00 EST

Seems just the other day – actually it was two weeks ago – that we divined that HP, imagining blowing Google away, would pull out the stops to get the webOS that it bought, put in a tablet that failed in the market, dropped, then open sourced – life’s funny like that – in shape to publish the code in stages. And what do you know – surprise, surprise – HP Wednesday committed to a timetable for getting the thing out in steps by September under the lenient Apache 2.0 license. HP is making much of the fact that it materialized the roadmap 47 days after it said it would open source webOS. God knows whether HP or anybody else will ever really exploit the thing. For HP it depends on the auspices – like two bald eagles seen circling Google or Apple talons extended.

HP Gets New Chief Strategist

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:45:00 EST

HP has named Bill Veghte its chief strategy officer, replacing CTO Shane Robison who was ousted three months ago. Veghte, who used to run the $15 billion Windows unit at Microsoft, joined HP in 2010 as head of software, a job he will keep. He is also supposed to head HP’s cloud and webOS open source initiatives. HP said that as chief strategy officer, Veghte’s supposed to “help define the IT industry’s future and make certain HP continues to lead the way,” adding that his “new role reaffirms HP’s commitment to providing customers with the latest platforms, products and services needed for success in a rapidly changing world.”

PCs Weak, HP Bleeds Share

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

Between unimaginative products, competition from tablets and smartphones, the flood-created squeeze on hard drives and high prices, PC shipments dropped somewhere between 0.2% and 1.4% in the fourth quarter compared to 4Q10 according to IDC and Gartner. IDC is the more optimistic one. And remember Q4 is usually strong because of the holidays. HP was the author of its own peculiar problems. Although still the sector’s leader it shipped 14.7 million boxes in Q4, 16% fewer units than the year before because of doubts over the fate of its PC unit.

HP Gets No Itanium Relief from the French

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:00:00 EST

France’s antitrust regulator Autorité de la Concurrence Tuesday refused to order Oracle to keep on supporting Itanium with its software on grounds there was no immediate threat to HP although it has clearly hurt its sales. However, the regulator promised HP it will continue investigating the complaint HP made last summer. The process is going to take way longer than HP can afford. The regulator also rejected HP’s request that it order Oracle to align the Itanium pricing on its database with x86 pricing. HP accused Oracle of discriminating.

webOS Doomed from Conception: NYT

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:15:00 EST

The TouchPad tablet that HP brought to market last year only to kill it a few weeks later for lack of sales was doomed to fail according a story in the New York Times Tuesday. HP subsequently wrote off a nasty $1.6 billion to cover the cost of its folly. It had paid $1.2 billion in mid-2010 to buy Palm and the webOS operating system running the tablet. The Times’ story, which quotes the former senior director of software at Palm Paul Mercer by name as well as several other anonymous ex-HP and Palm employees, claims the widget – like the Palm phones HP also discontinued – didn’t have a pray of cutting it against Apple and Android because webOS is based on WebKit, the open source rendering engine that browsers use to display web pages and WebKit, which was supposed to make writing apps easier, is just too slow to run applications on a par with iPad and iPhone.

HP Expands Its HANA Alliance with SAP

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:30:00 EST

HP is expanding its Big Data analytics appliance alliance with SAP, moving SAP’s HANA in-memory database widgetry to its BladeSystem. Used to query multiple types of SAP and non-SAP data sources in near-real-time or batch, HANA hasn’t been on blades before – unless you count Hitachi’s. HP is king of the blades but more importantly 47% of SAP’s applications run on HP hardware and this stuff is going to be targeted at SAP’s installed base. The new scale-out addition to the HP AppSystem for SAP HANA portfolio includes the HP X9300 IBRIX Network Storage System – expected in time to be the dominant storage type for HANA – with the HP P6500 Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), part of HP’s Converged Infrastructure. IBM prefers local storage, plus replication for HANA.

HP to Open Source webOS

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:15:00 EST

Unable to turn a buck on the thing after killing the tablet and smartphones it was meant to power, HP said Friday that it’s going to open source webOS, the mobile operating system it got last year when it bought Palm for a sweet $1.2 billion. It claims there is still an “opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.” It’s speculated that some Android OEMs might adopt it as a hedge against possible legal calamity since webOS is believed to have a stronger patent defense against Apple and Microsoft than Android, which is also open source, and because of Google’s impending $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a potentially Google-favored rival. Whether webOS could give Android a run for its money at this point is debatable.

Microsoft & HP Turn Cloud Buddies

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:15:00 EST

Microsoft and HP’s enterprise services arm have buddied up on the cloud for the next four years. HP’s Enterprise Cloud Services, the company’s IaaS widgetry, will host Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 and Lync Server 2010. HP will also host Office 365 for its private cloud customers and resell the stuff on Microsoft’s cloud. There will be a hybrid solution that lets companies access Microsoft’s public cloud through Office 365 and access a private cloud through HP Enterprise Cloud Services.

Oracle Amends Itanium Countersuit

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:15:00 EST

Last Friday Oracle amended its countersuit against HP over their Itanium flap claiming it was tricked into settling the suit HP filed over ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd joining Oracle a month after he was ousted from HP. Oracle wants the agreement canceled. HP claims the agreement includes a contractual stipulation binding Oracle to support HP’s Itanium machines with its software, which is what the ruckus is all about. Oracle claims it would never have come to terms over Hurd – let alone sign a partnership agreement unrelated to Hurd – if it knew HP was going to hire Oracle antagonists Léo Apotheker as CEO and make Ray Lane its chairman.

Last Call for TouchPads

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:00:00 EST

The last of the discontinued HP TouchPads, which created an unexpected feeding frenzy when retailers like Best Buy marked their inventory down to $99.99 in August, are supposed to go on sale this Sunday around 7pm ET on HP’s eBay store after HP employees have first crack at however many HP has. They’ll cost $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model. According to TechCrunch, which happened on an HP internal memo, all the units are refurbished with a 90-day limited warranty. Limit two to a customer. Accessories will cost $79 for the case, charging dock and wireless keyboard.

HP Buys German Cloud Printing Outfit

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:00:00 EST

HP – which, remember, was supposed to restrain its impulse to buy things except for maybe a few little acquisitions while it rebuilds its balance sheet – is buying 20-year-old HiFlex Software GmbH, which does web-to-print and management information systems. HP didn’t say what it’s paying, indicating it’s not spending a material amount of money. HP printer boss Vyomesh Josh said the German company’s platform would extend HP’s “overall cloud printing strategy” and technologies. HiFlex focuses on the commercial printing and graphics industry and its web site says it’s done more than 300 customer projects and over 100 successful JDF installations.

HP Hybrid Cloud to Enable Telcos and Service Providers

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:00:00 EST

HP at the Discover 2011 Conference in Vienna last week announced a wide range of new Cloud Solutions designed to advance deployment of private, public and hybrid clouds for enterprises, service providers, and governments. Based on HP Converged Infrastructure, the new and updated HP Cloud Solutions provide the hardware, software, services and programs rapidly and securely deliver IT as a service. I found these announcements a clearer indicator of HP's latest cloud strategy, with an emphasis on enabling a global, verticalized and marketplace-driven tier of cloud providers. I've been asked plenty about HP's public cloud roadmap, which has been murky. This now tells me that HP is going first to its key service provider customers for data center and infrastructure enablement for their clouds.

Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn Dies

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:50:00 EST

Former HP chairman Patricia Dunn, who resigned after being enveloped by the pretexting scandal in which private investigators Dunn hired obtained the phone records of journalists and its own board on the sly in an effort stop leaks from the boardroom to the press, has died according to the Wall Street Journal. She was 58 and apparently succumbed to the cancer that troubled her for at least the last 10 years. The pretexting incidents, which involved the PIs claiming to be the phones’ owners to get their billing records, also embroiled Mark Hurd, who was then a new CEO at HP, and led to a congressional inquiry with appearances by Hurd and Dunn. Dunn was ultimately cleared of criminal charges brought by California attorney general Bill Lockyer. Once a freelance journalist herself and eventually a director at HP, Dunn was CEO of Barclays Global Investors before taking the chair at HP in 2005.

HP Mates Autonomy and Vertica

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:45:00 EST

Autonomy’s new owner announced its first real-time Autonomy software, called Autonomy IDOL 10, available December 1, a surprisingly short eight weeks after the deal closed. It’s reportedly capable of integrating – as HP suggested it would be – with HP’s more conventional Vertica acquisition done in March. Together they’re supposed to handle 100% of a company’s data. Of course it’d not like the stuff is integrated with a more widely used RDBMS. However, IDOL 10 is supposed to provide a single processing layer so organizations can extract meaning and act on all forms of information, including audio, video, social media, e-mail and web content, as well as structured data such as customer transaction logs and machine-based sensor data.

HP Wants Third Parties Selling Its Cloudware

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:45:00 EST

Back in the olden days, when cloud was still a young thing and not everybody’s middle name, back before the Apotheker distractions and false trails, and before HP, in catch-up mode, started indiscriminately trying to be all things cloud to everybody, it simply wanted to sell its widgetry into the cloud. That still seemed to be the key takeaway from the jumble of programs and widgetry it announced in Vienna on Wednesday where at least part of its message was a come-on to service providers and resellers. It wants service providers using its stuff in public, private and hybrid deployments and is willing to educate third parties, even college kids, to help. Only the message gets watered down because HP talks in the same breath about enterprises and government like maybe they’re direct accounts and although it seemed to want to focus on hybrid clouds it couldn’t help throwing in public and private clouds too to make sure it’s touched all the bases.

HP’s Putting a Back Door in the Itanium Alamo

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:00:00 EST

Goosed by Oracle – which has refused to port any more of its software to the Itanium chip signally used by HP – HP announced an oddly named Odyssey Project that’s supposed to unify Unix and x86 server architectures. Oracle claims Itanium has reached the end of its life – although Intel and HP haven’t told customers that – and in fact deny it – and says HP should move to the x86. HP is suing Oracle to force it to support Itanium to protect its Itanium revenues, which are now shrinking in part because of the uncertainty Oracle has injected into the market, down ~23% last quarter. HP CFO Cathie Lesjak said just the other day that Oracle’s position has made it hard for HP to close Itanium deals. Evidently caught out by Oracle, HP is now suddenly saying that customers “need the availability and resilience of Unix-based platforms along with the familiarity and cost-efficiency of industry-standard platforms.”

Meg Lowers HP Expectations

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:35:00 EST

HP Monday reported a better-than-expected $1.17 a share excluding items, down 12% year-over year, on $32.3 billion in non-GAAP revenues, up 1%, in its closely watched fiscal fourth quarter ended on October 31. Wall Street only expected to see $1.13 on $32.05 billion. HP’s own guidance was for $1.12-$1.16 on revenues of $32.1 billion-$32.5 billion.

HP Puts Activist Shareholder on Board

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:45:00 EST

Activist investor Relational Investors LLC has reportedly taken a ~1% position in Hewlett-Packard and its co-founder Ralph Whitworth has gotten a seat on the inimitably dysfunctional HP board. His appointment will raise the number of seats to 14. According to Bloomberg Whitworth took advantage of the precipitous plunge in HP’s stock price on August 18 when former HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP was buying Autonomy for close to $10.3 billion, abandoning webOS devices and might dump its PC business, a move it nixed last month. Apparently he kept buying through September. He will reportedly join the board’s compensation committee and its finance and investment committee. Bloomberg says it contacted HP CEO Meg Whitman and chairman Ray Lane last month and told them “he’d bring credibility and focus Hewlett-Packard on using its cash to buy back shares, increase its dividend or put more money into research and development.” Apparently they folded like a house of cards a few weeks later.

Is Oracle Interested in HP's webOS?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:25:00 EST

HP is evaluating whether to keep its webOS software platform or sell it for what could be hundreds of millions of dollars according to what four people “close to the matter” told Reuters. One of them said Oracle might be interested. Oracle and HP aren’t exactly on the best of terms these days. Apparently several other “technology companies” have expressed interest in the division and its patents. Quoting industry sources, Reuters offers Amazon, RIM, IBM and Intel besides Oracle. It reports being told HP bought Palm for its patents. Back in September Byte thought that Samsung was likely to want the webOS patent portfolio to ward off Apple. It said the patents were broad and deep with fundamental claims that go back to the mid-90s and “reach far into the guts of most mobile tech in use today or on the horizon” including mobile multitasking, distributed networking, cloud computing, mobile user interface controls, telephony, visual search, 4G and touch. Byte said the portfolio was valued at $1.4 billion last year but Reuters was told by one of its sources that webOS wouldn’t fetch a high price at auction. HP spent $1.2 billion in cash buying Palm and its webOS last year and in August pulled the poorly selling webOS-based TouchPad tablet it created after six weeks on the market, firing its hardware people in the process. Reuters says HP is trying to figure out how to recoup its money. HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman has toyed with the idea fielding new webOS devices.

HP Starts the Wheels Spinning to Roll Out ARM Servers

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EDT

HP confirmed Tuesday that it’s going into the ARM microserver business starting with a development platform dubbed Redstone built around the quad-core 32-bit ARM chip developed by ARM-backed Texas start-up Calxeda. The secret that it will peddle ARM servers leaked last week. Calxeda calls its server-bent chip EnergyCore and can get 2,800 low-power servers in a 40U rack, promising to consume perhaps 89% less energy and 94% less space than the usual Intel servers while reducing overall costs by up to 63%. It’s supposed to be 97% less complex and reduce cabling, switching and peripheral devices. The Redstone initiative, designing for testing and proof of concept, is supposed to expand at some point to include servers built on Intel’s x86-based low-power Atom chip.

HP to Keep PC Division

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:00:00 EDT

HP has reversed the unpopular, hastily considered, board of directors-blessed decision to dump its $40 billion PC unit that its now purged CEO Leo Apotheker announced in August. The company said Thursday afternoon right after Wall Street closed that it would keep the business, expecting it to “deliver greater customer and shareholder value.” The new decision has the “full support of the board,” a statement that only gives HP’s much vilified board another black eye. Ostensibly HP did an “objective” evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG), an exercise that reportedly involved about 100 “subject matter experts across the businesses and functions,” 18 teams that supposedly looked at all the angles of spinning the unit off.

HP Reportedly Going with ARM Servers

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:15:00 EDT

Hewlett-Packard is planning to sell ARM-based servers and is working with Calxeda (née Smooth-Stone), the three-year-old Texas start-up partially owned by ARM, on the boxes, according to Bloomberg, which got it from “two people familiar with the matter.” The Dow Jones is saying the same thing. Obviously the unconfirmed but likely move represents a challenge to Intel, which depends on HP for almost 20% of its revenue. HP shifts about 30% of all servers, more than anybody else in the world, and all of them run on x86 or Itanium processors, which burn hot, a fact the energy-efficient, small-footprint ARM is seeking to exploit as clouds and their huge underlying server farms proliferate.

HP and Microsoft Take On Oracle

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:15:00 EDT

After getting bounced out of Exadata when Oracle bought Sun, HP has teamed up with Microsoft to bring out a co-engineered pre-configured Exadata-like appliance fitted with SQL Server. HP paired up with Microsoft earlier this year on the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, which runs Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse. This new HP Enterprise Database Consolidation Appliance for SQL Server is its transactional counterpart. Microsoft describes it as the first out-of-box data consolidation widget good for rapid virtualized private cloud deployment with no software changes. It should be out next month and is supposed to deploy new database instances in minutes, reduce operating costs by maybe 75%, simplify management, save floor space, energy and infrastructure, and ultimately handle thousands of database instances in a scalable virtualized private cloud environment.

HP Dumps Robison

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:15:00 EDT

HP said late Thursday that its chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison, regarded by many inside the company as a big part of its problems, would be retiring (read he was asked) come November 1. “In an effort to drive strategy, research and development closer to the company’s businesses,” HP said, he will not be replaced. HP inherited him from Compaq and, being good at politics, if little else, he came to control HP Labs and M&A and was on the company’s Executive Council. He’s credited with buying Mercury Interactive, Opsware, EDS and 3Com. He’s also believed to have played a part in HP’s decision to exit PCs, tablets and smartphones and buy Autonomy for over $10 billion.

HP PCs UP, Lenovo Moves to No 2 Position

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:00:00 EDT

Gartner says global PC shipments rose 3.2% in the third quarter to 91.8 million units, which is a lot given the deplorable world economy but the number doesn’t meet the researcher’s projection of 5.1%, suggesting that Gartner was overly exuberant. It probably won’t come as news to anybody that EMEA, particularly Western Europe at 26.6 million units, was a weak sister. Its shaken consumer confidence infected even netbooks. Lenovo got the upset it was angling for and displaced Dell as the world’s second-biggest PC vendor. Gartner figures it has 13.5% market share, up from 11.1% year-over-year passing Dell’s 11.6%, down from 12.2% on a shipment decline of 1.4%. Globally that puts Lenovo right behind HP and its 17.7%, up from 17.3%. Lenovo now means to put the squeeze on HP, which still holds the premier place. It seems to be threatening a price war, claiming more efficient production.

HP Reportedly Backtracking on PC Spin-Out

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:00:00 EDT

HP is poised to backtrack on the notion of spinning off its $40 billion PC business according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper heard that “recent analyses by Hewlett-Packard and its top advisers indicate that the costs of spinning off HP’s personal-computer business might outweigh the benefits,” if for no other reason than “separating the PC division would significantly diminish HP’s buying power with component makers, complicate its supply chain and reduce product margins on some products.” We heard – well, everybody’s got leaky HP sources – that HP was “surprised at the synergies,” like nobody’s been watching the store.

Whitman Promises Decision on HP PC Unit This Month

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:15:00 EDT

HP is going to decide whether it will spin off its giant PC unit by the end of the month according to what CEO Meg Whitman told a women’s leadership conference on Tuesday. “It’s a decision I want to make much faster than my predecessor,” Bloomberg reported her saying. “I want to make it before the end of October.” Her predecessor Léo Apotheker had given HP till the end of the calendar year, an untenable pain point for the company. Whitman is also hoping to meet the analysts’ reduced expectations at the end of the month, which is the end of its fiscal year. Consensus calls for $1.13 on $32.1 billion.

HP Takes Over Autonomy

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:30:00 EDT

HP went through with that surprise $10 billion-plus cash acquisition of British software company Autonomy on Monday after the requisite number of Autonomy’s hysterically happy shareholders pledged HP their shares. None of HP’s shareholders think the excessively expensive deal, which cost ex-HP CEO Léo Apotheker his job, is likely to bring HP much luck, but UK law would have made it nearly impossible for HP to back out. On her apotheosis HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman claimed Autonomy was key to HP’s software expansion and would strengthen its data analytics, cloud and workflow management capabilities.

Oracle Has Good Numbers

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:45:00 EDT

Oracle narrowly vaulted Wall Street’s expectations Tuesday when it reported its first fiscal quarter. Its results encouraged people to think budgets aren’t in lockdown mode. Revenues were up 12% to $8.37 billion returning a non-GAAP EPS of 48 cents a share, up 14%, against estimates of 46 cents on $8.35 billion. On a GAAP basis EPS was 36 cents, up 36%, for a total net of $1.84 billion. Although there were no large deals, new software license revenues, a key metric, were up 17% to $1.5 billion. Analysts had predicted a 15% rise. The company’s all-important software license updates and product support revenues were also up 17% to $4 billion. Oracle co-president Safra Catz claimed “company-specific momentum.” Despite the turmoil over there, European sales were up 60% in the quarter, an important number because Oracle gets 30% of its revenue from Europe. However, hardware sales slouched 5% to $1 billion. Oracle still has faith though; it said it hired 350 salespeople in the quarter. In a statement co-president Mark Hurd said, “Our high-end server business – Exadata, Exalogic and Sparc M-Series – delivered solid double-digit revenue growth in Q1. In contrast, revenue declined in our low-end server business. By moving away from low-margin commodity hardware and focusing on high-end servers, we increased our hardware gross margins from 48% to 54%. Our strategy to grow the profitable parts of our hardware business is paying off.” That means selling widgetry that’s based solely on Oracle IP and that won’t happen until fiscal year 2013, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, when hardware should start showing top-line growth. Meantime, he said, he doesn’t care if “our commodity x86 business goes to zero.” Oracle’s not making any money selling other people’s IP. He did not address Sun’s server losses to competitors. In a step towards Ellison’s nirvana Oracle next week is supposed to announce a new high-performance Sparc microprocessor and a new high-end, Solaris 11-run, fault-tolerant server called a Sparc SuperCluster. Ellison said the new Sparc T4 chip is up to five times faster than the T3 part it replaces, and the new all-Oracle SuperCluster, engineered to use the T4 along with Exadata’s flash and disk storage system, is supposed to be cheaper and faster than anything IBM’s got. It’ll apparently do data analysis in-memory. Evidently Oracle is about to put out three other purely Oracle “engineered systems” at OpenWorld in a couple of weeks. The issue of unstructured data came up during the conference call, which gave Larry the chance to take out his switch blade and go for HP. He said Autonomy, the unstructured data company HP is buying, was shopped to Oracle and he was “shocked” by HP’s “absurdly high” bid of $10.25 billion for the British software company. He then explained that the Oracle Database hadn’t been simply an RDBMS for 20 years and had absorbed object database methodology when it came along, then text search and XML, and now it’s supposed to integrate unstructured data too and process it as well as Autonomy. For its next trick the database will interface with anybody’s Hadoop appliance and process the Big Data that Hadoop feeds it. After starting the widgetry six years ago Oracle is supposed to go GA with its Fusion apps by Christmas. Evidently Fusion already has 200 customers. Oracle is also going to start pushing CRM cloud apps (SaaS stuff like Salesforce) this quarter. Oracle shares were tickled 3% after-hours after falling 2.3% during the day. It closed at $28.35. Nothing was said during the conference call about the court-ordered negotiations Ellison had Monday and Tuesday with Google CEO Larry Page to resolve Oracle’s Java infringement suit. Oracle guided to non-GAAP revenues up 4%-8% to $9 billion-$9.34 billion this quarter on new software license revenue up 6%-16% and hardware flat to down 5%. Non-GAAP profits should be 56 cents-58 cents a share. The Street figured revenues at $9.36 billion.

Leo's Out, Meg's In

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:00:00 EDT

The stock market in New York was closed all of five minutes Thursday when HP’s board announced that it had stripped Léo Apotheker of his epaulets and swagger stick and named Meg Whitman president and chief executive officer. Ray Lane, who put Whitman on the HP board in January, was named the company’s executive chairman. As non-executive chairman, Lane was very much the power behind Apotheker’s throne. Now apparently he will be Meg’s Gray Eminence. He said he was there “to support Meg,” the same thing he said about Apotheker. The two are close because Lane helped Whitman out when she ran into problems at eBay, according to what some Yale guy said on CNBC. At least they know each other as customer and vendor from the days when she was at eBay and he was at Oracle. The change in Lane’s status, which is likely to be remarked on at some point by Lane’s old boss, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, more closely resembles the speculation last week that Lane would get the CEO job when Léo fell and in fact Lane admitted during the conference call that followed the announcement that he had considered stepping into the slot on an interim basis. Lane said he had found “weaknesses in parts of the business” and that Léo was let go because of poor execution, failed leadership, lack of understanding HP’s various businesses except on a cursory level, and poor communications skills, which culminated in the disastrous August 18 announcement that HP would spin out or sell off its PC unit, abort its nascent drive into webOS-based tablets and smartphones, and buy Autonomy for a king’s ransom. Board Still Causing Angst Since the board blessed the plans, it’s not backing off them, which is why HP’s stock was down again after-hours to $22.60 after Wall Street plunged a very nasty 4% during the session. Investors don’t want to hear that the board is indecisive about what to do with the company’s giant $41 billion PC arm. Delay is losing business and HP CFO Cathie Lesjak got on the horn long enough to say revenues this quarter would be worse than the $32.1 billion-$32.5 billion Léo predicted in August when estimates were for $34 billion but by some financial gymnastics HP will still make his predicted ESP of $1.12 to $1.16 compared to estimates of $1.31. It's a Hardware Company, Is It? Although Lane has now decided that HP is a hardware company – something else he said Léo didn’t realize – the best he and Meg could do was promise a decision on the PC unit by the end of the calendar year. Betcha they decide to keep it. Betcha they say so in a few weeks. In another slap at Apotheker, Lane said he had banished the word “transform” from the HP lexicon. “We will have more services and software, but we’re a $120 billion hardware company.” Insiders claim the only reason HP is sticking by the fatal August 18 strategy is that Lane was part of the troika that included Léo and chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison that reportedly persuaded the board to rubberstamp the plan. Meanwhile, it’s still quite possible that dissonant shareholders who have lost half their money since HP tossed out Mark Hurd may make a bid to dump the whole board and substitute their own slate. That slate may then make some management changes. They’ll have to live with the Autonomy acquisition. HP can’t get out of it and it should close by the end of the calendar year. Whitman pledged to turn things around and mend fences with the investment community, but said it would take time to rebuild confidence. She has met with HP’s Executive Council to discuss how they will work together and boost employee morale. “The organization’s been through a lot,” she said. Doubts Continue There are of course widespread doubts about Meg’s skills and her purely consumer background, her inability to grow eBay passed the $7 billion mark, and her pricey acquisition of Skype for $2.5 billion. which ultimately forced eBay into a $1.4 billion write-off. Skype now belongs to Microsoft. Lane bushed aside the issue of Whitman’s hasty appointment and said he was acquainted with all the candidates and there’s none better. Possible insiders aren’t ready and Meg apparently presented him with a plan for the next six months and the next year. In answer to questions about the board itself he said it’s not the pretexting board or the board that fired Hurd or the board that hired Apotheker. He saw to that in January by bringing in five new people and getting rid of four troublemakers. He never dealt with the fact that it is the board that sanctioned the August 18 plan and okayed the Autonomy acquisition. Bloomberg claimed that Apotheker was blithely unaware that he was about to lose his job until Wednesday when the news broke. The notion that he hadn’t a clue seems a bit farfetched given that he was gagged last week and replaced by Lane at two outside meetings where he was expected to discuss HP’s strategic direction, but the man did seem to have a tin ear.

Léo’s Reign Has Minutes to Run

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:45:00 EDT

Léo Apotheker’s brief inglorious reign at HP only has hours left to run insiders say. He will be ousted in absentia since nobody seems to know – or care – where he is. He will be the third HP CEO in a row to be fired and the shortest lived. The board’s next available window to announce the coup is after the market closes today unless the crisis slops over into Friday. AllThingsD blogger Kara Switcher jumped the gun and said at noon Thursday ahead of a vote by the full HP board that one of its own, ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman, would replace Léo permanently, not as a placeholder for some looked-for messiah. Given her track record Whitman may have the stuff to turn HP around but like Léo doesn’t have credentials. The board’s other choices were reportedly insiders, PC chief Todd Bradley and printing chief Vyomesh I. Joshi.

HP Officially Dismissed Leo Apotheker and Appointed Whitman as CEO

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:16:00 EDT

According to the recent report of China-telecommunications.com, HP's board ousted CEO Leo Apotheker and appointed the former CEO of eBay Meg Whitman to succeed Apotheker. This is HP's third time to fire CEO in six years. HP's chairman Ray Ryan said, we are very grateful for Leo Apotheker's efforts and services since he became the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in the last year. HP requires immediate appointment of an independent director. China-telecommunications.com (http://www.china-telecommunications.com/products/) reports that HP's board of directors believes that HP's CEO position requires additional attributes to the successful implementation of the company's strategy. Whitman has the appropriate operational and communication skills and leadership to improve the implementation and financial results.

HP Reportedly Moving to Dump Léo

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:00:00 EDT

Bloomberg and the Dow Jones blog All Things Digital reported simultaneously Wednesday morning that the HP board was meeting – in an unscheduled two-day meeting, mind you – to consider dumping CEO Léo Apotheker. The New York Times quickly picked up the chant. HP’s poor abused stock, down about 47% in the last year, immediately spiked 8%, a reaction that may help persuade the board that it’s on the right track. We, however, hear it’s a fait accompli. The board reportedly decided it can’t wait until HP closes its year on October 31 and has to move now. A proposed class action suit and three other derivative lawsuits filed over the hash Léo’s made of things have supposedly put a gun to its head.

HP Gags Léo

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:45:00 EDT

Apparently HP doesn’t trust its own CEO to speak in public anymore. Not after his disastrous stock-crippling performance August 18 when he announced that HP would spin off its $41 billion PC unit, kill its newborn webOS devices and buy an unknown British software company for most of the money it has in the bank while cutting guidance for the third time in a row. Léo’s keynote appearance Monday at an InformationWeek 500 conference was cancelled at the last minute and he was replaced by HP’s non-executive chairman Ray Lane who brought along HP CTO Shane Robison for technical support.