Consolidated Carlyways: the New HP

Re:
HP is a very big company indeed
Channel partners cool on the new HP
From H to P and back again
Sircampaq: The Winners and Losers
Don Capellas articulates HPaq's vision thing
Alphacide yesterday, Yamhill tomorrow: HP merger architect talks

HP dropping the names that formed their acronym was not at
all bright. Now they're just a two-letter company, with no
history, no traditions, no values customers might relate to.

The old Hewlett-Packard company had a personality, a pride
in smart, solid engineering and high quality products, with
integrity in its relations with both its own people and its
customers. It had a brand and a reputation to rival IBM's.
The "HP" was an acronym; one knew they stood for something.

They have (under winsome Carly), chosen to forsake all that.

The former HP culture of professional collegiality is gone, and with it some of the trust that leads exceptional people to give their best - and customers to rely on the products.

The transition to just another outsourced-offshore shifter of boxes with plastic nameplates slapped on generic innards and vanishing commitment to customers will be sad to watch.

The old HP culture of bottom-up, engineering driven design and attention to details and customer needs is going to be replaced with... what? A top-down, marketing driven regime that swings in the winds of quarterly sales, drops products leaving formerly loyal customers in the ditch, like Compaq?

Hells bells, she might have simply renamed it as "CF" - no? However, that's taken: Consolidated Freightways.

It's all some tragi-comic hubris joke, but I am afraid that joke will be on HP/Compaq employees first then HP customers and shareholders, long before New HP management understands.

Personally, I'm thinking of Carly Fiorina like a modern-day Joan of Arc - a valiant but failed witch who enemies torch, as I suspect they will after she fails in her big ambitions.

[Name withheld by request]

Discuss. ®