HP tells Sun to get its facts straight
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Sun execs say they're telling it like it is: HP's Unix offering is on its last legs. HP says they're flat-out wrong.
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(InfoWorld) - Like a good friend who has just gotten out of a terrible relationship, Hewlett-Packard seemed to be on the rebound and all the happier for it in recent months. After the departure of controversial CEO Carly Fiorina, the company has as of late shown newfound confidence and focus under new CEO Mark Hurd. But allâs still not well in the higher echelons of HP, as revealed in a filing the company made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The sudden and unexpected resignation of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins from HPâs board of directors in May turned into a full-blown scandal last week, spawning law enforcement and SEC investigations and a PR nightmare for HP. At the center of the controversy is a legally and ethically questionable internal investigation of leaks of confidential company information to the media dating back to 2005. According to a copy of a letter from Perkins to the HP board explaining his sudden resignation, and republished on thesmokinggun.comâs Web site (a sure sign, if ever there was one, that youâre in the PR doghouse), HP hired outside companies to obtain personal phone records of board members using âpretextingâ (thatâs âsocial engineeringâ to you and me), in which a private investigator impersonated board members to obtain details of private phone company billing statements. In his letter, Perkins says he has proof that his own phone records were âhackedâ in the investigation. Those investigations ultimately fingered George Keyworth, an HP director since 1986, as the source of information about board deliberations and other confidential information, which were leaked to the media without authorization. Keyworth acknowledged he had leaked information at a board meeting on May 18 but refused the boardâs request to step down. Perkins announced his own resignation at that meeting, citing âpersonal frustrationâ with board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn over the handling of the leak investigation. In the meantime, the dispute has spilled over into the public domain. The attorney general of California asked HP to supply information about the leak investigation. The SEC has also been in touch over the 8-K filing HP made when Perkins resigned. HP believes its disclosures in May were âaccurate and complete.â In an Aug. 31 meeting, HPâs board of directors determined that Keyworth shouldnât be nominated for another term on the board.
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Pretexting now part of the HP Way Put the cheery comeback stories on hold. HP has a boardroom scandal that deserves some attention.â¦
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Software giant's deal with Sun has raised some questions.
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An executive said laptop sales are on track, despite a report that HP is reigning in PC orders.
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The man bought from Europe to the US to help fix Hewlett-Packard's storage sales problems has issued a thinly disguised warning to HP's OEM supplier Hitachi to stop poaching its customers. "There's room for improvement in one area of our relationship with Hitachi, and it is in go-to-market.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ is introducing a long-awaited upgrade to its Unix operating systemÂ and launching new, affordable Integrity servers in a direct challenge to rival products from IBM and Sun Microsystems. HP Thursday is introducing an Integrity rack server with a starting price below $5,000 and an Integrity blade server below $4,000. Integrity servers, powered by Intel's Itanium processors, have been traditionally sold as high-end products used for mission-critical business applications. By offering Integrity servers at these prices, HP is aiming at entry-level servers from Sun, HP executives said. "We believe, with our entry class servers, it's very much targeted at taking that away," said Nick van der Zweep, director of Business Critical Systems at HP. "We think Sun's in a vulnerable position in the entry class right now." The new HP-UX 11i v3 features enhanced virtualization management capabilities, which should give it an advantage over IBM, said van der Zweep. IBM often touts its legacy in virtualization dating back to its mainframe computers, but van der Zweep said HP has been more adept at bringing virtualization to the server platform. The Unix operating system is a standards-based OS, but IBM, HP and Sun each add unique features to differentiate their products. HP has encountered delays in the development of HP-UX v3, which was originally scheduled for release as far back as late 2004. But HP, instead, focused on adding new features as they became available to HP-UX 11i v2 rather than hold them for version 3. "HP has deliberately not made this a 'must upgrade to today' release," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst at the research firm Illuminata. "The case here is that upgrade when you're ready." HP-UX 11i v3, shipping now at a list price of $150 per core, does have enhanced features over v2, such as running software applications 20 percent to as 30 percent faster than on version 2, HP claims. Notably, it runs Java applications faster, another dig at Sun, which developed the Java programming language. "It's not really clear what's new here," said Tom Goguen, vice president of Sun's Unix operating system, Solaris. Solaris 10 is a free download that can run on 735 different brands of servers, including HP, while HP-UX only runs on HP servers, Goguen said. Solaris 10 already includes a virtualization manager called Containers, and has security features he considers "second to none." HP, IBM, and Sun are close competitors in the $17 billion Unix server market and, combined, control about 80 percent of it, said Jean Bozman, an analyst at IDC Research. "Every time there is a major Unix bid out there from the government or some big business, all three of them are in there pitching their products and it gets very intense at times," said Bozman. However, what makes HP's latest Unix release significant is that HP actually went into the operating system kernel and made changes that are part of the reason they achieved an increase in application performance, she said. The introduction of the new $4,931 rx2660 rack server, shipping now, and the $3,827 BL860c blade server, shipping in March, should also put to rest questions about the viability of the Itanium processor platform, said Markus Berber, HP's Integrity Blades Strategist. Itanium has been slow to catch on in the market because relatively few software products were certified to run on it. Today, 10,500 applications can run on Itanium, more than double the amount of just a year ago, said Berber. "It is self evident that there are many OEMs who are voting with their dollars or yen or Deutsche marks or French francs in support of [Itanium]," he said.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer Mark Hurd blamedÂ the scandalÂ that has besieged his company on "a rogue investigation" that got out of hand, in an advance copy of his Congressional testimony released by a House Subcommittee on Wednesday. "How did such an abuse of privacy occur in a company renowned for its privacy? The end came to justify the means," Hurd wrote. "The investigation team became so focused on finding the source of the leaks that they lost sight of the privacy of reporters and others. They lost sight of the values HP has always represented." Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn,Â forced to resignÂ Sept. 21 because of the scandal, defended in her testimony her decision toÂ investigate the leaksÂ of confidential board discussions to the news media. In her testimony, Dunn wrote that she knew investigators were obtaining the phone records of people it was investigating. Lawyers for HP and for an investigation firm carrying out the probe assured her the tactics were legal, she wrote. "I was fully convinced that HP would never engage in anything illegal," she wrote. "Given that attorneys were unambiguously overseeing the investigation ... reinforced my understanding that the investigations were being handled appropriately." Both are among severalÂ witnesses expected at a hearingÂ before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday in Washington. The committee is looking into the practice of "pretexting," or using false pretenses to gain access to confidential records. Investigators hired by HP to find the source of leaks engaged in pretexting to get hold of the phone records of directors, HP employees and reporters who cover the Palo Alto, California, technology company. Hurd, echoing comments he made in a news conference last Friday at HP's headquarters, said he was determined to get to the bottom of this episode and to try to restore HP's image. "I pledge that HP will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure nothing like this ever happens again," he wrote, "and that this company will regain not just its reputation ... but its pride." Although much of the criticism of the scandal surrounds the tactics used by the investigators, Dunn wrote in her testimony that equal consideration should be given to the leaks from within the company that damaged HP. HP's board was notorious for its leaks to news media and such disclosures made it difficult for the board to deal with important issues candidly, she wrote. Dunn explained that board deliberations on the selection of a replacement for former CEO Carly Fiorina in 2005 were leaked. She cited a BusinessWeek magazine story "disclosing opinions about various candidates and revealing details about ... the search process." "If you were a top CEO candidate, would you want to work for a company whose board could not be trusted to keep such information confidential? HP is very lucky to have been able to recruit Mark Hurd under such circumstances," Dunn wrote. "I wish fervently that none of this had ever happened," Dunn continued. "But boards have an unquestionable obligation to take steps to prevent [leaks]. That certain steps taken during the investigation went well beyond what was appropriate does not undermine the importance of the board's mission in this matter." Hurd also outlined several steps the company is taking internally to clarify its privacy policy for employees and to emphasize it in employee training programs.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ):  What:     HP will conduct a press briefing to discuss the actions HP           is taking to address issues regarding the investigation of            leaks from its boardroom.
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Revelations that HP supervised an extensive investigation of some of its directors, journalists and a few employees have blemished its reputation. The New York Times
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Hewlett-Packard says it discussed allegations that employees spied on rival, but Dell wants more thorough investigation.
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Also: Sun CEO among the few chiefs who blog
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No sense pointing the finger at Hewlett-Packard anymore; we have Congress and the FBI to do that. But I did want to discuss the âI didnât know what my employees/vendors/executive staff were doingâ defense -- which was, of course, made famous by Enron , so you have to know it just wonât do. Instead of looking backward, I spoke with a couple of experts on governance, privacy, risk, and compliance assessment about how companies can do the right thing in the future.
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If you had any doubts about Sun Microsystems' commitment to open source, it's time to set them aside.
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A photo featuring Mark Hurd, HP chairman, chief executive officer and president, as he updates media today on the actions HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) is taking to address issues regarding the investigation of leaks from HP's boardroom, is available on Business Wire's web site and AP PhotoExpress.
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34,600 staff take a deep breath Sun Microsystems has given the official word â its employees can hold their heads high.â¦
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Embattled Hewlett-Packard chairman Patricia Dunn told an appreciative audience in San Francisco Wednesday night that she looks forward to the opportunity to "set the record straight" regarding allegations that she oversaw anÂ internal investigation of the companyÂ which may have broken the law.