Carly's fail is getting pretty obvious

Poor Carly ;-)

Ever since The Merger, HP has been under the spotlight. Investors, analysts, clients, competitors ... and most of them who know what's going on at HP wouldn't like to be in Carly's shoes. Even if she doesn't wear high heels ... :-)

It's going down, that's for sure. But, unlike most think, we can't blame it all on merger with Compaq. Half we could. It was simply clash of two different worlds. -Can you imagine merging IBM and Dell? -Yeah, I thought so! It's simply unnatural. Sure, you can merge stocks, capital, maybe even products (although HP wasn't quite successful at this either), but you can't simply merge people's philosophy. The way they work. Their business-slang. All the 3-letter acronyms. Impossible.

Going further, I myself would compare this as merging USA and USSR. Get real. But it's comparable. Not by size, but by the way they live their workdays. We can just wait (and read) while things are getting worse - slowly, but certainly.

BUT! They still have time to change the pace. Before they collapse. But there is a big decission to be made. Sometimes, HP seems like that Polly girl from Along Came Polly - indecisive and uncertain. And that's VERY bad for corporation of HP's size. They have to decide, whether they'll go "Dell way or IBM way". Position themselves. Currently they're just trying to fight both fronts. And they're weak on both corners. They have to regroup and fight one front. I'd reccomend to Carly some Sun Tzu reading.

Dell winning from commodity side (PC's, printers, PDA's ...) and IBM winning on the other side (servers, consulting, software). They need a fast change in the way they operate and target groups, otherwise they're gonna collapse like a house of cards. I'm witnessing it every day.


IBM & Lenovo

I admit. IBM's deal with Lenovo was "punch under the belt" to HP. It doesn't represent just business, but also a fundamental change. There were a lot of emotions in us, when it was announced. Especialy in PC Division. But we quickly understood this is good. It's the best for all of us. And there was this sweet feeling that came with it: there wasn't so much panic around it (also tnx to great IBM execution and communication!) - the concerned public focus was mostly on HP - what will they do now. Hehe, we're good and SJP is God. TJ's would be proud of you, Sam! ;-)