The Ne[w|utered] HP (was: RE: The effects of employment)

From: Fred N. van Kempen <Fred.van.Kempen_at_microwalt.nl>
Date: Thu Dec 12 08:33:00 2002

Hi all,

What stuns me about this what seems to be a national effort to wipe
out existing knowledge and experience in the various U.S. companies
trying to clean up their EOY numbers, is that they truly dont KNOW
what they're doing.

I did some asking around based on Megan's layoff, and the results are
stunning. HP really, deeply and truly has no idea of what they're
doing right now, let alone where they're going from here.

Corporate HQ announces that the numbers don't look [as] good, so we
have to cut on operational costs. And, HP being New (I'd call it
'brainless'- but then again, I'm not part of their staff ;-) they go
for the first possible solution: fire people.

What would that do in the long run?

Right now, their plan is to dump Tru64/Alpha, and to integrate that with
the HPSux/HPPA stuff. We'll see about that later (customers usually have
their own ideas about that- they forced MS into keeping Win2000 around for
much longer than they wanted to ...) but for now, exactly _HOW_ is HP
going to handle their support obligations to their enterprise customers?

I talked to the CTI of a _Major_ Dutch multinational this morning, which
I know uses truckloads of Alpha systems, with both VMS and Tru64. When I
told him about the layoffs in the UEG (Unix Engineering Group) task forces,
he said: "Oh. So, assuming they clean out most of their brains, which is
what this sounds like, HOW can they adhere to their claim to full support
until X years after EOL?"

Also- I can't speak for U.S. companies and their IT staffs, but in Europe,
HP/UX doesn't have such a grand name in Enterprise Computing. It's mostly
Sun Solaris on the Exxx boxes, and Tru64 UNIX on Alpha, as far as large
UNIX systems are concerned. HOW is HP going to sell this to their customers,
without those same customers running off to Sun or IBM, in search for some
stability?

Anyway. HP has lost its marbles. Cutting operational costs is a good thing,
and usually serves a purpose. Ripping off your own balls (I apologize for
any ladies reading this..) is not the best thing to do, and will probably
leave you without kids later on. Kids that feed you when you can no longer
do it yourself. Which might happen sooner than you think...

--fred (yes, pissed off, how'd ya guess?)
Received on Thu Dec 12 2002 - 08:33:00 GMT