The board sealed the fate of HP's personal systems group when it hired the CEO of SAP
What the hell happened to Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) last week?
The simplest explanation is the one suggested Thursday by Techcrunch's MG Siegler and picked up Sunday by Daring Fireball's John Gruber: HP's board put an enterprise software guy in charge of a low-margin PC business and a high-risk play to outflank Apple (AAPL) in smartphones and tablets. When PC sales slowed and the tablet bombed, the enterprise guy stuck a fork in both divisions and announced that he was spending $11.7 billion on a British enterprise software company nobody in America had ever heard of.
The Street didn't take it well. It lopped $16 billion off HP's market cap. By Sunday analysts were openly calling for CEO Léo Apotheker's head.
In retrospect, however, nobody who had read Apotheker's bio should have been surprised. Enterprise software is what he knows. Just look at his resume (below): 20 years at SAP (SAP) preceded by stints at Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), EDS and Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH).
"The tablet effect is real," said HP's CEO, as he killed the TouchPad & orphaned his PCs
Steve Jobs at All Things D8
You don't have to look very hard to find the Apple (AAPL) angle in Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) August surprise: The announcement Thursday that it is pulling the plug on its tablets and smartphones and preparing to abandon the personal computer market altogether.
This is Steve Jobs' post-PC era writ large.
"I'm MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 19, 2011 6:06 AM ET
The original enterprise tech company has been using social tools for years, says its new CIO.
IBM CIO Jeanette Horan
FORTUNE --Business software makers -- from SAP (SAP) to Microsoft (MSFT) -- are in a race to make their products more "social." IBM (IBM) is no exception. The New York-based company says its social media roots date back to the 1970s, when its mainframe programmers started discussion forums (on System/370 consoles). MORE
Michal Lev-Ram, writer - May 31, 2011 2:55 PM ETOracle and NetSuite go after customers with the same kinds of needs, but they've carved out their own turfs, and are about to get even cozier.
Image by Oracle_Photos_Screenshots via Flickr
FORTUNE -- Larry Ellison is cheering for Oracle and NetSuite. Not surprising, considering the billionaire tech mogul (and Oracle founder and CEO) is a major shareholder in both companies. But now Oracle (ORCL) and NetSuite (N) have more than Ellison's MORE
Michal Lev-Ram, writer - May 16, 2011 2:34 PM ET
Hewlett Packard's CEO plans to kick the company and its flagging stock back into gear in part by selling apps and services via a new public cloud.
HP CEO Leo Apotheker
It's been just over eight months since Mark Hurd left HP (HPQ) beneath an avalanche of tabloid covers. In that time, HP's stock has slid just over 10%, leaving investors wondering when and how the world's largest tech company can MORE
Michael V. Copeland, Senior Writer - Mar 15, 2011 11:36 AM ETHP's five new directors will have little to do with this quarter's likely solid earnings, but they will shape the company for decades to come.
By Ram Charan, contributor
HP CEO Leo Apotheker and Chairman Ray Lane
In order to reboot for 2011, Hewlett Packard announced in January that it was bringing on five new members to its board of directors, replacing four others who wouldn't stand for re-election. The move came MORE
Fortune - Feb 22, 2011 5:00 AM ET
Social, the cloud, gamification -- it all sounds like consumer-enterprise convergence. It's not, exactly, but these trends are a sign that enterprise has some catching up to do after a year of massive evolution in consumer gadgets.
Gamification of enterprise apps running on tablets? In 2011, you bet.
With only a day to go until the end of 2010, the lists predicting which technologies will dominate the headlines next year are MORE
Michal Lev-Ram, writer - Dec 31, 2010 5:00 AM ET
Leo Apotheker is barnstorming the world as he embarks on fixing the culture and focus of the huge technology company. One to-do stands out above all the rest.
Here's what new Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker's to-do list might look like:
Move to Palo Alto
Increase investment in research and development
Build a "strong and viable" software business
The first two tasks should be easy enough to cross off the list. MORE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
| Nasdaq | 2,933.17 | -15.40 | -0.52% |
| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
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