I would just like to say thanks to JPM, TP and others who have expressed confidence in HP servers. Keep buying them. I work for HP as a Workforce Performance Consultant and I would rather like to keep working for them. As a pre-merger HP employee, I would say that the company lost it's way under Carly Fiorina's leadership particularly in it's strategic approach to resellers. Also, as somebody who spent 10 years as a senior account engineer in support I am also dissapointed that HP support no longer has the respect it had. During the years that I worked in support we were consistently voted number one. If I was being cynical, it may be no accident that, post-merger, the reseller and support models veered sharply towards the Compaq model? But, Carly has paid the price for her lack of competence and we now have a new CEO who has a much better track record (albeit with a 6 Bn company, not an 80 Bn one), is much more operationally focused and knows the storage business where we've been weak of late. Of course Mark Hurd has a huge task ahead of him, with Wall St putting intense pressure on to break the company up, spin off the printer business and slash operating costs (read organisational redesign and layoffs). Who knows, I might be one of the people laid off - after all I am 50 this year and therefore senile by definition. However, HP was a truly great company and has the right genes to be a great company again. I would love to see this just to spite the naysayers - even if it turns out that I'm not part of that revival. [Edited on 7-4-2005 by Jools] |