HP closes curtain on sales chief Booth
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Americas overhaul underway Exclusive David Booth, one of HP's top sales executives, has left the company, The Register has learned.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Last year's HP Technology Forum was chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This year, storm clouds of a different sort hang over the event. As an estimated 6,000 attendees converge on Houston for the annual Hewlett-Packard user conference, the subject on many minds is the one the company is most loathe to discuss: theÂ shakeup of HP's boardÂ and theÂ prospect of criminal chargesÂ related to a spying scandal. The California Attorney General and a Congressional committee are among the institutions probing HP's possibly illegal methods of investigating news leaks from its board. HP has until Tuesday to respond to an invitation from the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee for HP's Chairman Patricia Dunn and General Counsel Ann Baskins to testify at a Sept. 28 hearing in Washington. But at the Technology Forum, a gathering of HP user groups, partners and other vendors, HP is focusing on its business success, which is considerable. With revenue, earnings and stock price all resurgent in the last year, HP CEO Mark Hurd could rightly say, "Pay no attention to that prosecutor behind the curtain," when he delivers a keynote address on Sept. 18. In the quarter ended July 31, HP's earnings-per-share (EPS) topped analysts' estimates at $0.52 on 5 percent revenue growth to $21.9 billion, compared to the year ago quarter. Across many of its business lines, HP, of Palo Alto, California, has gained on rivals, said industry analyst Rob Enderle. HP personal computer sales have grown with its "the computer is personal again" marketing campaign, Enderle noted. IBMÂ sold its personal computer businessÂ to Lenovo Group, in 2005, and Dell has suffered negative publicity from the AugustÂ recall of 4.1 million fire-prone batteriesÂ in Dell laptops. In storage, HP closed the market share gap with EMC in second quarter numbers released Aug. 29 by research firm IDC. With EMC's 20 percent share, based on unit sales, to HP's 19.3 percent, the two are in a "statistical tie" said Brad Nisbet, an analyst with IDC. "HP has been executing well under new management," Nisbet said, referring to Hurd, CEO since March 2005. In servers, HP is a strong second to IBM, according to IDC market share numbers, but has made some errors, said Enderle. It still is using Intel's Itanium processor in its high-end Integrity servers, which rivals aren't embracing. Gartner research shows that 90 percent of the Itanium chips shipped in the first quarter of this year ran on HP servers; neither Dell nor IBM build Itanium computers. Technology Forum organizers get tight-lipped when the conversation shifts to the board scandal. "That's HP's business," said Nina Buik, vice president of Encompass, one of the HP user groups planning the event. "We're not focused on those issues unless it impacts the technology." And as long as the scandal doesn't touch Hurd personally, the customer satisfaction should be unaffected, said Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president of research at IDC. . "I don't think [the scandal] is a drag on the company's success," he said. "I have not found one customer who said 'I'm not going to do business, or I am concerned about doing business, with Hewlett-Packard as a result of this.'" HP Technology forum runs from Sunday to Thursday this week.
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The chairman of Hewlett-Packard is stepping down amid controversy over a probe into leaks at the firm.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd's assessment of his company's storage sales organization was simple and blunt: "We just don't cover enough accounts," said Hurd on a conference call with analysts Tuesday discussing HP's latest quarterly earnings. Sales of storage products grew only 3 percent during the quarter ended Jan. 31, compared to a year ago, whileÂ HP's overall revenue grewÂ 11 percent, and revenue in the Technology Solutions Group, of which storage is a part, grew 40 percent. "We need to drive stronger top line results in the business," Hurd said. To do that HP will invest in improving sales coverage and hiring more storage sales specialists, he said, as well as better aligning the company with its value added resellers, independent companies that sell HP storage. In other words, HP has to do a better job of reaching out to customers like Gary McCready. McCready is a storage manager in the IT department of a major New York area financial institution, which he did not want identified, and a member of Encompass, an HP user group. Although he frequently receives invitations to HP technical forums or other events surrounding operating systems or servers, he sees very few invitations to HP storage events. "I'm not sure HP is really putting the emphasis on selling storage the same way it puts the emphasis on other areas. I think they figure that storage simply sells itself," McCready said. He also lamented that HP recently merged its StorageWorks convention into the HP Technology Forum, a show devoted to all HP systems. In fact, storage doesn't sell itself, says Rob Enderle, principal analyst with The Enderle Group, a market research firm. The enterprise storage buyer is a very conservative buyer who makes a decision only after careful consideration, which makes for long sales cycles, Enderle said. "If you don't have enough specialists you are not going to get the business." More to the point, a storage specialist needs to know about the specific storage issues facing different industries, said Andrew Reichman, a storage industry analyst at Forrester Research. Storage needs differ for financial institutions versus health care companies, for example, on what regulations companies have to obey, and the types of software they use, Reichman said. "It's hard for storage vendors in general, not just HP," he said, but added that some storage vendors are dealing with the challenge. EMC and Hitachi Data Systems, both solely storage vendors, are organized around sales account managers who are supported by sales specialists who can address specific needs in specific industries, Reichman said. But while Hurd thinks HP's storage sales operation needs attention, it is competitive. HP ranked second to EMC in storage sales worldwide market share in the third quarter of 2006, according to IDC's latest figures. HP's $760 million in revenue gave it a 17.6 percent share, while EMC's $927 million gave it a 21.4 percent share. But HP actually lost market share to EMC that quarter as its sales grew by only 1.8 percent, compared to the year ago quarter, while EMC's grew 18 percent. HP has a chance to improve its sales if it takes some simple advice from customers like McCready: Call me.
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Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn will remain in her post until January, when she will be succeeded by chief executive Mark Hurd, the computer maker said Tuesday.
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By Damon Darlin  Moving to quell its boardroom upheaval, Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that its chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, would step down in January and would be succeeded by Mark Hurd, the chief executive.
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HP (Quote, Chart) is dropping its efforts to port some Tru64 Unix products to HP-UX with the help of storage player Veritas . The two companies announced a multi-year agreement Thursday that finds HP&#39;s sales
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As it promised after closing the acquisition of Mercury Interactive Corp a month ago, Hewlett Packard Co is disclosing its plans for the software business at its European user conference in Vienna this week.
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HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) today announced that Mark Hurd, HP chief executive officer and president, has been appointed to the additional role of chairman, succeeding Patricia Dunn, who is leaving the company's board, effective immediately.
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Dunnygate The director fingered by HP as its boardroom leaker has agreed to abandon his post.â¦
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Several key executives in that group were fired during the quarter following a botched order-processing system migration. HP CEO Carly Fiorina said the problems with the system have been resolved.
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PALO ALTO, California  - Hewlett-Packard   Co.HPQ.N on Friday said Chairman Patricia Dunn had resigned   effective immediately as pressure on the computer maker mounts   over an internal investigation into boardroom leaks.
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By Jordan Robertson Associated Press  SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Hewlett-Packard is getting rid of one of its high-profile utility computing projects, although much of the technology will live on in other initiatives.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is getting out of the chip-making business. The Palo Alto, California, company on Thursday announced that it reached an agreement with Intel Corp.
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Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn will step down in January and be succeeded by CEO Mark Hurd
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Hewlett-Packard's executive vice president of global operations, Gilles Bouchard, will leave the company at the end of October. The news came Tuesday immediately before HP announced that ChairmanÂ Patricia Dunn will step down.