Essay talk:HP's Terrible Business Decisions

This is adapted from a journal project I wrote for business class. I'll add sources as soon as school's out. 22:46, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I can gripe about computers too? *pst, asus is too expensive*RandonGeneration (talk) 22:48, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Especially funny given HP's reaction to the Apple I. Тyrannis Plead 22:55, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Disagree
The consumer PC market is a low margin, commoditised business. If you think that is "what HP is known for" - you are forgetting about HPs enterprise software and hardware business, built on a long history of HP and its predecessor companies (Digital, Tandem, etc.) - HP9000, PA-RISC, MPEix, HP/UX, VAX, Alpha, OpenVMS, Tru64, NonStop, etc. The desktop PC stuff is mostly just Compaq. It is their enterprise hardware and software business which drives their services business, not their consumer PC sales. You also ignore that they purchased EDS, so they have a large independent services business. In my previous working experience (in the IT industry), I've seen HP get involved in projects where there was no HP hardware or software involved - one place I worked, we had HP advising on architectural design for AD (at Microsoft's suggestion), but we were going to use Dell hardware to do it (we did buy some HP desktops, but I tell you the decision them to hire them to do this consulting gig had absolutely nothing to do with that). If you ask me what are HP's terrible business decisions, they come down to (1) clinging to Itanium - they should have ported HP/UX to x86 years ago - now is probably too late - if they had HP/UX migrating to x86 before Oracle bought Sun, it would have been harder for Larry Ellison to kill Oracle Database on HP/UX (2) poor leadership (nothing against Meg Whitman, but some of her predecessors have been pretty hopeless). (3) a dysfunctional board of directors, consumed with infighting (from what I've read in the press). I think it would be wise for HP to follow IBM's example and spinoff the PC business, and concentrate on enterprise software, enterprise hardware, enterprise services, and the synergies between the three. Unless your name happens to be Apple, B2B is where the real money's at, not B2C, so HP should stick to the former and forget about the later. (Full Disclosure: I work for one of HP's competitors, so I am scarcely a neutral observer, although I try to be.) 13:26, 8 June 2012 (UTC)