Latest News from HP Developer's Journal

HP Offers Products & Services to Deal with Mobile Computing & Social Media

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:00:00 EDT

HP this week announced a suite of products and services aimed at overcoming the challenges presented by the convergence of some of today's hottest business trends, mobile computing and social media. The four software products and three services are designed to help enterprises leverage traditional systems of record, while creating an improved and extended presence and engaging better with customers, partners, and even employees. IT-driven systems of record, while they serve up useful information, are usually commodities and in themselves don't create business differentiation. The new offerings, however, provide systems of engagement, which change the way enterprises interact with those people now using tablets and smartphones in increasing numbers, as well as through social media.

Nirvanix Poaches HP’s LeftHand Man

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

HP has lost the head of engineering at its LeftHand storage acquisition Dave Barr to multi-petabyte start-up Nirvanix, where he’ll be VP of cloud storage engineering. The 130-strong worldwide engineering operation he ran at HP is credited with boosting LeftHand’s revenues to around $350 million, up 2,000% in less than four years.

Three Down: Another HP Director To Leave Board

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:30:00 EST

HP told the SEC Monday that long-time board member Lawrence Babbio won’t be standing for re-election at the stockholders meeting in March. Babbio’s been on the notoriously dysfunctional HP board since the divisive Compaq acquisition, made over accusations of vote-buying, there through the pretexting spying scandal, the fallout resignation of chairwoman Pat Dunn; the Mark Hurd ouster; the questionable Léo Apotheker hire, the Apotheker ouster 10 months later; the shopping of the HP PC unit; the repudiation of the $1.2 billion Palm acquisition; the unpopular ~$12 billion Autonomy acquisition and assorted other overpriced board-approved acquisitions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Perils and Joy of Technology Predictions

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 04:45:00 EDT

One of the most enthralling experiences of a tech blogger is when a non-obvious prediction comes true. Similarly, most dejected feeling comes when a prediction goes horribly wrong. So, I can empathize with Robert Cringely when he says: That’s what I expect will be my epitaph: “He was either brilliant or stupid.” If you read this NYT story about HP CEO Léo Apotheker and then read this post written in February, 2011 you will understand why he is brilliant.

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.

TouchPad Rises Like Lazarus from the Grave

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:57:00 EDT

HP's PSG chief Todd Bradley, who’s also responsible for webOS, told Reuters Tuesday in China that HP could resurrect the six-week-old TouchPad it just killed. “Tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant,” he’s quoted as saying. And if anybody’s still not utterly convinced that HP’s truly possessed, after the $99-apiece fire sale a few days ago that momentarily turned the TouchPad into one of the best-selling tablets ever – enough to have confused HP’s online ordering system – the company now says it’s gonna have one more go at the TouchPad and put out a “last run…to meet unfulfilled demand.” It has no idea when the widgets will be available or how many there’ll be or what the exact price will be only that it’ll take a few weeks but be before the end of HP’s fiscal year on Halloween. One might assume HP has some commitment it couldn’t get out of. Otherwise nobody could make this stuff up. Meanwhile, Samsung said last week that it didn’t want HP’s emotionally cut-adrift PC operation – which is just as well since HP has apparently figured out that it can’t get a decent price for the thing so it should be spun off into a standalone company despite the horrors of decoupling. DigiTimes, however, which at one point had Samsung taking over HP’s PC business, claims the Korean may be interested in buying HP’s webOS software. Obviously it could use it to mumble a hex on Googola and maybe even whisper a patent incantation against Apple’s multi-pronged litigation juggernaut. See http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/The-Next-Bench-Blog/More-TouchPads-on-the-W....

webOS Fate Dodgy

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:00:00 EDT

HP’s webOS chief Stephen DeWitt, a month in the job, told the AllThingsD blog Monday that the company still means to ship webOS on all its PCs and printers next year, which was its intention months ago before it killed off its app-starved webOS devices and decided it wanted out of the PC biz. Bloomberg, citing no sources, says the opposite. HP is supposedly entertaining some potentially large volume webOS licensing deals now that HP has pulled the plug on its webOS tablets and smartphones but apparently it doesn’t know whether to license the software to other device makers, partner with a single company, focus on non-device uses, or something else.

Huh? Leo Proves He's a Lousy Communicator

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:11:00 EDT

In New York to smooth the wildly bent-out-of-shape feathers of his investors, HP CEO Léo Apotheker Tuesday told the Wall Street Journal a different story about the potential fate of HP’s PC unit, the entity that makes HP the largest PC purveyor in the world, than was generally taken away from the conference call last Thursday that cost HP 20% of its market cap. Rather than sell the thing off for what one insider told us was a desired $32 billion – which has everyone conjuring who on earth might buy it – Léo seems to be telling the Journal in a Q&A that HP means to keep the thing and go down the Motorola route, splitting the company in two. “What we’re really doing,” he told the paper, “is creating two companies: One focused on the enterprise, and one which will be a highly-effective, end-user device business. It will be much more than PCs….Our default option is to see if we can spin this business off to our shareholders. That’s not the only option that we’re looking at. The board and management have been working on this for quite some time….We said it would take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to complete the spin, and it’s obvious that the decision will happen much sooner. The board will want to make the best decision for shareholders and our current hypothesis is that is by spinning the business to shareholders.” Léo also has a wildly different view of what he thought he communicated originally about the TouchPad. In answer to the Journal’s remark that “The TouchPad is an example of a place you invested considerable R&D and on Thursday you said you would discontinue it after a short amount of time,” he said, “No, that’s unfair. I was very clear on day one that we would have this project under very strict milestones and that if we didn’t meet them we would take decisions about the future of this business. That’s exactly what happened. If I wouldn’t have done this, we would have had the following conversation today: The TouchPad isn’t selling, why are you continuing to throw good money after bad? He did say he was better communicating one-on-one.

HP Reckoned as Sawed-Up Takeover Target for Oracle

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:04:00 EDT

The New York Post talked to people over the weekend who fanned speculation that Oracle could eventually put an end to the HP muddle with a hostile, grudge-settling bid for the joint. Its sources presume that HP’s stock price, off another $12 billion in market cap last Friday on its dump PCs/kill webOS widgets/make an overpriced acquisition news, doesn’t recover appreciably from the company’s latest “transformation” strategy and that HP can actually find a buyer for its PC unit, which Oracle wouldn’t want anyway. Picking up the chant, Bloomberg said that if Oracle got HP’s server business it would “help it become the biggest maker of the hardware” and compete with IBM, obviously an enticement. It even suggested IBM could bid. Wells Fargo analyst Jayson Maynard said, “We definitely think Oracle would be interested at the right price given HP’s enterprise assets, Mark Hurd’s experience, and the obvious turmoil at the company. If Oracle could grab just the enterprise business, we think it would be a huge benefit, as it would add significant account coverage, server and storage hardware depth, unique software assets (Mercury, Open View, Opsware, etc.), a better competitive position against IBM, and call options in product areas like networking and IT services.” Oracle would have to fight for it of course, but then HP has given up 43% of its value, more than $35 billion in market cap, since its last CEO Mark Hurd, now Oracle’s co-president, was ousted. The Post also said it heard that Autonomy, the UK software house HP’s proposing to buy for a fabulous 64% premium, was shopping for a buyer for months before HP arrived on the scene. It said an unidentified “rival tech company” was in talks to merge with Autonomy over the winter and valued the business at less than half the $42.11 a share cash HP put on the table.

Hey HP When You Have to Shoot...Shoot! Don't Talk

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:52:00 EDT

Apple really has nothing to do with the problems firms like RIM and HP face. I wrote a month ago that the move to the Cloud would result in major vendor extinction. While HP is building Next Generation Data Centers for some large enterprises, I’ve found it difficult to accept HP as an enterprise software company, a storage company, a networking company, or anything but a printer company. Granted the company has made some acquisitions over the years notably Compaq, Mercury, EDS, yet for each of these product lines I have tried really hard to see where HP has in any way added value to the business. Beyond placing the HP logo on the product these firms ship, I see HP as having done more harm than good. For example after acquiring Mercury, HP has essentially frozen research and development to the point that an entirely new generation of competitors has grown out of HP’s overarching need to milk as much cash as possible from that acquisition. Similarly, the server lines still use the same naming convention as that used by Compaq. I remember the Compaq server DL line from as far back as 2000. And I get the sense that HP relies more on its incumbent status as an enterprise vendor than it does on innovation, competitive products, or customer service. When I read that HP had purchased Palm and was going to market with a tablet based on “WebOS” I laughed aloud at the tunnel vision, reinforcing internal culture, and at the idea that after Palm had completely failed to thrive after the 3Com acquisition, that HP cloud piece together anything more elegant than a Frankenstein monster by combing some HP hardware and a WebOS. Who is supposed to use such a device? The consumers who HP cited as one its core competitive advantages? HP has no relationship with consumers other than to sell them expensive ink and toner cartridges. Nobody ever cared about HP PCs or would seek an HP brand product other than a printer. I’ve made rash predictions that HP will be one of the first casualties of the Cloud and I’m fascinated at just how large of a gaping hole and husky enterprise HP has just revealed.

RentTheCloud.com Debuts to Help CIOs Adopt Cloud Computing

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 07:15:00 EDT

A-Frame Technology Services on Thursday announced the availability of RentTheCloud.com, a brokerage service that matches companies seeking cloud services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) with cloud vendors. Unlike the uncertainties and risks of conventional approaches to evaluating, selecting, and implementing a cloud service, RentTheCloud.com is 100% success-based, like a realtor. Fees are based on a "cloud brokerage agreement" modeled after a standard realtor agreement and equal to one or two months of the cloud rental fee. The RentTheCloud.com website currently lists the profiles of more than 100 cloud vendors, like a realty website lists properties. IT executives can quickly search the market of quality cloud properties for their unique needs and IT environments.

HP Releases Networking Solutions

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:30:00 EDT

HP has announced new solutions and technology along with an expanded entrepreneur program to enable small and midsize businesses (SMBs) aimed at driving growth, improving employee productivity, and protecting assets. SMBs, a $234-billion market, face daily challenges that include controlling costs, managing employee productivity and gaining access to credit. HP says these new offerings are designed to address those challenges. HP also has expanded its investment with 40 new training centers in its global program, HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs (HP LIFE), which empowers SMBs to create new revenue streams. Since 2007, HP has invested more than $20 million into the program, resulting in the creation of more than an estimated 20,000 jobs and more than approximately 6,500 new businesses.

Seagate Ramps up Dev-ops Benefits with HP ALM Tools

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:00:00 EDT

This enterprise case study discussion focuses on Seagate Technology, where the application development teams are spanning the dev-ops divide and exploiting agile development methodologies. Seagate is one of the largest manufacturers of rotating media hard disks and we also are into the solid state [storage media] and hybrids. Last quarter, we shipped about 50 million drives. That continues to grow every quarter. As you can imagine, with that many products -- and we have a large product line and a large supply chain -- the complexities of making that happen, both from a supply chain perspective and also from a business perspective, are very complicated and get more complicated every day.

HP's New Converged Infrastructure, EcoPOD and AppSystem Releases

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:00:00 EDT

HP has updated and expanded its portfolio of infrastructure products and services, debuted a mini, mobile data center called the EcoPOD, unveiled a unique dual cloud bursting capability, and rolled out a family of AppSystems, appliances focused on specific IT solutions like big data analytics.

HP Releases Converged Infrastructure Products and Services

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:37:22 EDT

HP today at HP Discover announced several Converged Infrastructure solutions that improve enterprise agility by simplifying deployment and speeding IT delivery. Yet IT sprawl and outdated IT models and processes are causing enterprise complexity and crippling organizations’ abilities to keep pace with enterprise demands. Enterprises know they need to change, and they also have a pretty good idea of the IT operations and support they'd like to have. Now, it's a matter of getting there. To help mobilize IT for the new order, HP today at HP Discover announced several Converged Infrastructure solutions that improve enterprise agility by simplifying deployment and speeding IT delivery.

HP Rolls Out AppSystems Portfolio

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:08:46 EDT

As part of its new Converged Infrastructure offerings, HP has rolled out AppSystems Portfolio, which offers a fully integrated appliance-like technology stack that includes hardware, management software, applications, tailored consulting and HP Solution Support services. The new HP AppSystems portfolio is designed to improve application performance and reduce implementation from months to a matter of minutes. New application deployments can be complex, taking up to 18 months to roll out and optimize for the business. The complexity of maintaining and integrating these environments often results in missed deadlines, incomplete projects, increased costs and lost opportunities. In fact, only 32 percent of application deployments are rated as “successful” by organizations, in a recent HP survey.

HP Divests Video Conferencing Unit

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:00:00 EDT

HP is selling its video conferencing unit to Polycom for a that’s-not-much $89 million so Polycom can go off and do battle with Cisco if in fact Cisco stays in the business and so HP can focus on the cloud. HP’s high-end Halo widgetry never caught on. Maybe it was the $550,000-a-room price tag and the $18,000-a-month service fee or the fact that the guy at the other end had to have one too. Polycom, which told the Wall Street Journal there are all of 425 Halo rooms in the world, means to make Halo interoperate with its existing systems.

HP: Apotheker Sounding More & More Like Mark Hurd

Mon, 16 May 2011 20:54:00 EDT

So let me get this straight with two quarters of disappointing results at HP under his belt CEO Léo Apotheker finds that he needs to “minimize all hiring” because the company’s headcount plans are “unaffordable given the pressures on our business.” What a very Mark Hurd thing to say. Goodness me, next thing you know Léo will be regretting his decision to reinstate HP’s Hurd-halted wage increases and looking for unpromising things to cut in R&D. You see, a copy of a memo Apotheker wrote to senior HP staff May 4 – that CFO Cathie Lesjak co-signed – warning them that “we have absolutely no room for profitless revenue or any discretionary expenditures” happened to flutter onto desks at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal late Monday. That’s approximately 48 hours ahead of HP posting its second-quarter results, which Léo has already said won’t make the mark, suggesting it may be worse than Wall Street has subsequently modeled. The memo said the current third quarter is going to be “another tough quarter, one in which we will be driving hard for revenue and profit” and that “we must watch every penny. Lesjak and HR EVP Tracy Keough are now “driving a full headcount re-planning process,” it said, to reflect “the new realities of the market and our position.” Bloomberg thumbed back through HP’s filings to when Apotheker took over as CEO on November 1. HP then had 324,600 people. One would assume there are going to be less. Last week, the All Things Digital blog came by another couple of internal memos indicating that HP’s PC unit had instituted a hiring freeze in Asia-Pac/Japan and freeze on operating expenditures, including travel, in EMEA back in mid-March before the close of the first quarter. The blog said it was told other orders “like them went out around the same time in other divisions within HP.” In Q1 HP delivered better-than-expected earnings, up 16%, but its revenues fell short of the mark and it cut back its revenue guidance for this year by $2 billion, casting a shadow over its growth potential. Apotheker blamed weak consumer PC sales, including issues in China, and soft valued-added services contracts for his poor fiscal first quarter showing and the company’s limpness going forward. Both segments came in below HP’s projections. HP earned $1.36, or $2.6 billion, in the January quarter on revenues of $32.3 billion, up 4% year-over-year, but it was expected to make $1.29 on $32.96 billion based on its own projections. It said it expected revenues of $31.2 billion-$31.6 billion in Q2 against Wall Street expectations of $32.59 billion, and figured it should realize $1.19-$1.21 a share when $1.25 was expected. Wall Street is now expecting $1.21 on $31.5 billion. Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said it was HP’s lowest Q2 guidance sequentially in nine years except for the Great Recession of 2009 and that the back half was loaded above any normal range.

Did Exec Really Reveal HP's Cloud Computing Strategy?

Fri, 06 May 2011 05:32:00 EDT

This seems like a very high-level view of things, focused on storage (which makes sense given HP's recent 3Par acquisition), and revealing nothing that the Chinese or anyone else can or would be able to copy at a level to threaten the company. Nevertheless, here are the highlights of a story from the Times of India, which reports that HP VP of Cloud Services Scott McClellan posted these bullet points at his LinkedIn profile, before removing them. The original report comes from The Register. * HP "object storage service": built from scratch, distributed system, designed to solve for cost, scale, and reliability without compromise. * HP "compute", "networking" and "block storage" service: an innovative and highly differentiated approach to cloud computing -- a declarative/model-based approach where users often provide a specification and the system automates deployment and management. * Common/shared service: User management, key management, identity management & federation, authentication (inclu. multi-factor), authorization and auditing (AAA), billing/metering, alerting/logging, analytics. * Website and User/Developer Experience. Future HP "cloud" website including public content and authenticated user content. APIs and language bindings for Java, Ruby and other open source languages. Fully-functional GUI and CLI (both Unix and Windows). * Quality assuarance, code/design inspection processes, security and penetration testing.

HP Updates Information Management Portfolio with Holistic Approach

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:22:24 EDT

HP's Information Management Portfolio update aims to reduce risk, increase efficiency, and simplify business information management. “Three trends are driving how information is managed,” says June Manley, worldwide product marketing director for HP Information Management. She noted those three trends as the information growth, a lack of ownership around information management, and diverse policies. The results of a March survey Coleman Parkes conducted for HP amplifies those trends.

HP Buys Vertica

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:15:00 EST

In its first acquisition of the new Apotheker administration – which is expected to bulk up on enterprise software – HP is buying Vertica Systems, the six-year-old real-time analytic database start-up in Massachusetts begun by serial entrepreneur and database brand name Michael Stonebreaker. Its stuff analyzes massive amounts of columnar data, produces “just-in-time” business intelligence, supports Hadoop, and runs on commodity hardware in physical, virtual and cloud environments. HP, which will add its brand and global reach to the effort, expects to leap ahead in the race to analyze massive amounts of data. It will presumably replace the late NeoView in its affections.

Cloud Computing: HP Has Framework for One-Stop Data Center Transformation

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:00:00 EST

As more companies look toward building or expanding data centers, HP has announced a comprehensive service that simplifies the process of designing and building data centers by offering design, construction and project management from a single vendor. The new HP Critical Facilities Implementation service (CFI) enables clients to realize faster time-to-innovation and lower cost of ownership by providing a single integrator that delivers all the elements of a data center design-build project from start to finish. An extension of the HP Converged Infrastructure strategy, HP CFI is an architectural blueprint that allows clients to align and share pools of interoperable resources.

HP Has a webOS Tablet, You Just Can’t Buy It

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:00:00 EST

HP unveiled its expected Palm webOS 2.1-based tablet Wednesday but won’t be able to deliver the very Apple-y 9.7-inch “TouchPad” until summer sometime, putting HP and its ambitions that much behind the master, which should be delivering the iPad 2 by April, and behind the throngs that by then should be hawking Android 3.0 gismos, not to mention the RIM Playbook. HP wasn’t definite about pricing saying merely that it would be competitive with the iPad, which starts at $499. The TouchPad can do some cute tricks like syncing content with one of HP’s new webOS smartphones – which also aren’t available – just by touching, or answer a test message on the phone, but consumers are unlikely to buy it for those features. (Obviously HP is hoping to sell bundles.)

Cloud Computing: Score Media Drafts HP 3PAR Storage to Advance Its Game

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:00:00 EST

Score Media Inc. is the owner of “theScore” sports television network in Canada, theScore.com and theScore Satellite Radio, as well as the No. 1 sports app for BlackBerry, ScoreMobile, which is also available on the Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 platforms. As the media company’s digital network and online presence have grown, its data storage requirements also have increased. Score Media chose the HP 3PAR F-Class Storage System to replace existing network attached storage (NAS) devices that were inefficient and costly to scale. HP 3PAR F-Class Storage Systems are virtualized, multitenant storage arrays built for public and private cloud computing. As part of a Converged Infrastructure, HP 3PAR F-Class Storage Systems enable clients to service all of their data needs from a single storage platform. F-Class Storage Systems enable Score Media to meet the demands of multiple applications simultaneously, such as serving web content and streaming HD video together over the internet.

Court OKs HP Re-investigation of Hurd

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:45:00 EST

A federal judge told HP it could go ahead and re-investigate the circumstances surrounding the resignation of its former CEO Mark Hurd last August and the roughly $50 million paid him on leaving without apparently kowtowing to Hurd’s demand to see the shareholder “demand” that triggered the proposed board-level probe and the documents sealed in a related shareholder suit. HP argued that Hurd as the “potential subject of the inquiry” didn’t have a right to them. The decision wasn’t clear whether he could read them. The shareholders want the money back. The investigation is supposed to be overseen by directors new to HP’s board since Hurd’s departure and as of last week it had seven to choose from. HP has hired Andrew Levander of the New York law firm Dechert LLP to do the actual investigating.

HP To Join Cloud Flight

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 06:30:00 EST

Hewlett-Packard’s gonna do what it always swore it wasn’t gonna do and that’s wield its own multi-tenant and hybrid private clouds up against IBM, Amazon and Rackspace, but mostly IBM, expecting to attract the dev and test crowd at the top 2000 global accounts first. It says it will deliver “private cloud as a service” from its state-of-the-art data centers.

HP Proposes to Investigate Hurd’s Exit Again

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 07:00:00 EST

The word to describe Mark Hurd’s departure from HP is changing from head-scratching to investigated. In response to a shareholder suit complaining about his handsome $40 million-$50 million exit package when he could have simply been fired for cause, HP is proposing to have members of its board who weren’t there last August when Hurd was ousted hire a fresh crop of lawyers and open a new investigation. That’s on top of the SEC investigation now going on. Until HP overhauled its board Thursday, the only new directors were Hurd’s replacement CEO Léo Apotheker and non-executive chairman Ray Lane. Not exactly your most objective team of inquisitors. Lane has already called Hurd a liar in print and both men are nursing deep-seated grudges against Oracle, Hurd’s current place of employment.

Palm Apparently Can’t Keep a Secret

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 06:15:00 EST

It appears from what Engadget has heard – anonymously of course – that HP’s got two Palm webOS tablets: a seven-inch (180 x 144 x 13mm) model code named Opal and a bigger iPad-size nine-inch (241 x 190 x 13mm) model code named Topaz. Topaz may or may not be out in March and, if not, then, maybe June. Opal looks constrained until September. One might expect a 1.2GHz processor; “tens of gigabytes” of cloud storage for storing apps, apps states and documents; intimate call and content-sharing between Palm’s phones and tablets; an Apple AirPlay-like “Tap-to-share” feature that transfers files by bumping the devices together; HP Beats “professional-grade sound”; a Touchstone-style programmable wireless charging dock; un-Apple Adobe Flash support; front-facing camera and microUSB port; Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+3G (AT&T and Verizon versions eventually); and the ability to run “up to 20 applications simultaneously.” Remembering that Palm chief Jonathan Rubenstein just joined the Amazon board, PreCentral.net wades in to say that it’s heard that the widgets will be tightly integrated with Amazon services like its unbox movies, music store and Kindle.

HP Shuffles its Board

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:00:00 EST

If ever a board screamed to be overhauled, it’s been HP’s. The move finally came Thursday after the stock market closed only to be stepped on by Google’s news that it was moving one of its young founders into the CEO’s chair.

HP to Unveil webOS Widgetry Next Month

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:00:00 EST

Maybe HP couldn’t get its act together in time for the Consumer Electronics Show this week or maybe it just wants the stage to itself, because it sent out an invitation Tuesday to a webOS affair in San Francisco on Wednesday February 9, a date that falls within the halo of Apple’s alleged iPad 2 announcement later this month. Speculation has of course turned to the webOS tablet Palm is supposed to be concocting. The invite reads, “Think big. Think small. Think beyond.” There’s also talk of more smartphones or maybe webOS-based (ePrint) printers. The webOS tablet supposedly won’t be available until March.

HP Marketing Chief Out; Replaced by SAP Guy

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:45:00 EST

HP’s chief marketing officer and PR chief Michael Mendenhall is out, according to the Dow Jones blog All Things Digital. The blog said it got conflicting stories. Both that Mendenhall was leaving for a shiny new opportunity and that Apotheker, the ex-CEO of SAP, dumped him for an SAP guy – and apparently Bill Wohl, SAP’s VP of global field communications and head of integrated communications for current co-CEO Bill McDermott, is joining HP.

HP Offers New Energy-Efficient Ethernet Switches

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 07:00:00 EST

Many companies today are caught between competing pressures brought by data and power. Faced with moving ever-increasing data faster and faster, they find the power to do that, as well as deal with the associated cooling, expensive and increasingly unavailable. The modules, which fit into existing switches, address this by going into sleep mode, as will EEE-connected devices in the absence of traffic. Because most network traffic comes in bursts, these devices are good candidates for energy efficiency.

The Key Benefits of ALM

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:00:00 EST

For the first time, you have something that goes not just across the traditional software lifecycle, as we know it -- develop, test, deploy, and manage -- but across the entire lifecycle of an application. This includes one of those things that we don’t like to talk about in IT, which is retirement, when we actually get rid of something, because we are not real good at that in this industry. Of course, it is a key part as we go forward. One of the fundamental reasons organizations can’t reduce their data or application load is because they never get to the point of being able to retire anything. One of the key benefits of ALM is that we’ve unified a complete view, a single view, of that whole process.

HP Software GM Jonathan Rende on How ALM Enables IT

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:09:37 EST

It’s not really the case that the people building, provisioning, testing, and defining the applications are lacking or don’t know what they're doing. It’s mostly that the practices and processes they're engaged in are antiquated.

HP’s Application Life-Cycle Management

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:22:49 EST

We’ve been very focused on creating a single, unified system that scales to tens of thousands of users. And it’s a web-based system, so that wherever the team members are located, they can become a harmonious part of the overall team, 24-hour cycles around the globe. Welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series, coming to you from the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference in Barcelona the week of November 29, 2010. We're here to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations, making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers.

Automating Workflow Processes

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:57:04 EST

These tools work to help enterprises gain control over aging applications and inflexible processes that challenge innovation and agility -- by governing their responsiveness and pace of change. It’s all part of the Instant-On Enterprise that embeds technology into everything it does. ALM 11 essentially automates workflow processes across multiple teams. The ALM 11 platform and software solutions are part of that “new way.” Components of the HP Application Transformation solutions, these tools work to help enterprises gain control over aging applications and inflexible processes that challenge innovation and agility -- by governing their responsiveness and pace of change. It’s all part of the Instant-On Enterprise that embeds technology into everything it does. ALM 11 essentially automates workflow processes across multiple teams.

HP Keeps Ticking Despite Loss of Hurd

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:00:00 EST

HP’s performance in the October quarter under its interim CEO, CFO Cathie Lesjak, was slightly better than Wall Street thought it would be. Lesjak had to step in after Mark Hurd was forced to resign on August 6. The results have nothing to do with Hurd’s permanent replacement, the subpoena-dodging Léo Apotheker, who didn’t officially pick up the reins until November 1, the beginning of the company’s new fiscal year and the day the Oracle v SAP trial started. Oracle wanted the ex-SAP CEO for a witness but Apotheker stayed beyond the reach of Oracle’s process servers these last three weeks, reportedly flitting around the world meeting with employees, customers and partners.

Léo Sighted in the U.S.

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 07:30:00 EST

HP’s elusive new CEO Léo Apotheker, sought by Oracle process servers and private investigators, has reportedly been on HP premises in Massachusetts and Texas this week talking to HP employees, one of whom ratted him out to MarketWatch. Reuters tumbled to the fact that he was in Tokyo last Friday after the Nikkei published an interview with him in Japanese. MarketWatch claims he’s also been seen by HP people in Germany, the UK and France. He has to be in California for Oracle to subpoena him and get him on the stand in its SAP copyright trial now at the end of its second week.

Mark Hurd Had Affair with Sun VP: NY Post

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 14:00:00 EST

How in the world could we have missed this little gem? Back on October 19 the New York Post ran a little-noticed piece, presumably placed by HP, saying that before the reluctant Jodie, the one-time Playboy model and hired HP party greeter, ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd had a “consensual” fling with an unidentified Sun sales VP, when there was still a Sun and when HP and Sun were competitors. Both were married. The story anticipates the Wall Street Journal’s great revelation last Friday that Hurd allegedly told Jodie about the EDS acquisition before it gelled. The story doesn’t say it was EDS only that she said he told her something “she could have used to profit from trading in HP shares.”

HP Cares

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:00:05 EST

Charitable donations declined 11 percent in 2009, according to Corporate Philanthropy. That’s the largest dip in 20 years. As charities continue to struggle in a down economy, HP recently introduced a new program that shows the tech giant also has a giant heart. HP has begun offering a vehicle to raise donations for CARE, a humanitarian organization that fights global poverty. Charitable donations declined 11 percent in 2009, according to Corporate Philanthropy. That’s the largest dip in 20 years. Even some of the most well-recognized charities in the United States are suffering, as donors pull back and worldwide crises put new demands on already strained resources.

The Instant-On Enterprise

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:28:42 EST

The Instant-On Enterprise, as HP defines it, is a data-driven organization that leverages technology for everything — but specifically to better address the ever-evolving needs of end-users. customers in innovative ways -- has to mean more than business as usual from technology suppliers. While a majority of vendors seem to be hunkering down around an entrenched set of core products and aging IT approaches, HP this week shared a different vision, what it calls the "Instant-On Enterprise."

Oracle Private Eyes Hunt HP CEO, Says Reuters

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 08:45:00 EST

Oracle has yet to put a bounty on his head but it would likely pay to know definitely where HP’s out-of pocket new CEO is. According to Reuters, quoting an unidentified source, Oracle has hired private investigators to locate the man. It’s hoping to find him in the US so it can serve him with a subpoena and drag him into court to testify about what he knew and when he knew it about the large-scale theft of Oracle software by TomorrowNow, the SAP subsidiary.

Hurd Reportedly Leaked EDS Deal

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:30:00 EST

An allegation of disclosing inside information has now been added to the otherwise flimsy story of why the HP board asked for the resignation of its star CEO Mark Hurd in August. According to a story that appeared Friday night in the Wall Street Journal, the supposedly closely held letter sent to Hurd on June 29 by Gloria Allred, the celebrity lawyer hired by besmirched HP contractor Jodie Fisher, accused him not only of sexually harassing her client, it claimed that he told Fisher that HP planned to buy EDS weeks before the deal was locked and loaded.

HP Sends the First Win7 Slate Out to Battle iPad

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 08:15:00 EDT

Making no splash about it and apparently limiting sales to the U.S., Hewlett-Packard quietly introduced the first and only Windows 7-based tablet PC last Friday. The thing’s got a swipe-able touchscreen that can turn handwritten notes into legible text. Called the HP Slate 500 – no news there – the device is positioned as business’s alternative to Apple’s iPad although it has a smaller 8.9-inch screen compared to iPad’s 9.7 inches, which Steve Jobs claims is as small as you can get and still be practical. It still should be able to play high-def movies and supports the Apple-scorned Flash.

Oracle’s SAP-HP Media Circus Confined to One Ring

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:00:00 EDT

Oracle’s long-festering case against SAP for stealing Oracle IP will go to trial Monday despite the monkey wrench SAP suddenly threw into Oracle’s carefully laid and inflammatory prosecution plans. SAP Thursday capitulated and said it wouldn’t contest Oracle’s contention that SAP management knew all about and contributed to the theft of mountains of Oracle software and documentation by SAP’s now shuttered third-party maintenance subsidiary TomorrowNow.

HP Sets Up POD Assembly Line

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EDT

HP is sporting a new look in shipping containers and it’s not a racing stripe down the side. Henry Ford-esque – with visions of rapid deployments dancing in its head – it’s set up an assembly line to turn out seven different models of PODs, modular, turnkey Performance Optimized Datacenters. The 10,000-square-feet factory space it’s dedicated to assembling, configuring and testing the things in Houston – cheek by jowl with a labor-saving systems distribution center – is called POD-Works naturally enough.