Storage Toolkit

HP tries to have it both ways

Peter Judge AnchorDesk

Published: 09 May 2002 15:55 BST

Will the new HP be a "good thing"? Or will the colossal merger be a waste of time and energy? Frankly, at this stage we cannot possibly tell. I'd have to say that I would hesitate before telescoping two competing giants into one, with the corporate bloodshed and recriminations that will entail. Can it really produce something better than both? Have such mergers done so before?

I would not have taken the gamble. But then, I am not Carly Fiorina -- someone who clearly does not suffer from crushing self-doubt or self-deprecation.

What I am interested in is what is only just beginning to emerge from the clouds of dust -- the nuts and bolts of the deal. Just how are the HP and Compaq people going to squash two overlapping product ranges into one? Which products will go? Which brands will stay? Which people will be moved? And which will be removed?

It is these decisions that will determine the success or failure of the biggest gamble the IT industry has seen in my lifetime. On the people side, we can expect to see a fresh crop of Compaq (and some HP) alumni who take the money and run. These people have tied their careers to products that will live or die by a decision made in a remote room sometime in the last year.

I sometimes underestimate the emotional capital that people invest in the products they work on, but it was brought home to me by the touching song "OpenMail lament" (which I hope to include in our IT Anthems chart someday). When HP pulled the plug on its corporate email program, the product managers recorded a folk ballad about it, and took the product off to Samsung.