As a long time observer, admirer, and former employee, it's a shame to see HPE in the current situation. Is there any bright spot that HPE can build on for long-term growth?
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Thanks to no long term strategy, HPE is a slowly sinking ship. COVID-19 seems to have accelerated this process. The employees who are left will really suffer the loss of engineering talent. Don’t expect any help or support from overseas.
HPE is done. No one is going to buy into their SaaS bs plan, much less their stock. AWS started in 2006 and was created inadvertently before that to support a company with exponential growth. Amazon has been working on AWS for 2 decades. They have 57% of the market, add in Azure and Google cloud, those 3 own 97% of the SaaS market.
Remember Cray is golden. It has been bought (by SGI), sold to TeraData or similar name, rebranded, bought by HPE.... the government cannot afford to lose the IP of Cray, they will be thrown a bone once in awhile to the tune of $10 million 3 year contracts. Because the three letter agencies which cannot be named expect great things.
HPE has never wanted to compete against anyone. Proof of this is when our CEO canceled any RnD towards quantum computing and has literally told that our strategy against Google and AWS for cloud software solutions is that we won’t have a strategy. We’re also pretty late to the party when it comes to providing “as a service”, which makes me curious who thought about that business model like, “Hmmm how can we make ourselves very competitive to force everyone to eventually do the same all the while shooting ourselves in the foot for short term margin goals?”
We have been “okay” for far too long and now we’re doing bad... very very bad. We don’t take risks and often follow what our competitors do. Me and my friend from HP Inc. were joking around where HPE and HP Inc. would re-merge into one company again, the “Un-Meg”.
I remember my former VP told our group that our company never tries to invent new technologies. Instead, we just buy companies to do that for us, i.e. 3Par, Nimble, Cray, etc. Hell, you can argue that ProLiant wasn’t even HPE’s.
I also agree with some comments here about us practically outsourcing our business operations to other countries. Hardware engineering is going to Taiwan or Singapore. Software engineering is going to India. Do we really think this will benefit American and European innovation? I think it’s okay to expand these engineering services to these countries but the real reason that’s happening is saving money. It’s great to give these countries these opportunities. The Western World is evolving to where we will be selling what the Eastern World is making. It’s essentially corporate slavery. You make, we sell, you make 20% of what we sold it for. I’ve been told by some Indian friends that they don’t mind lower pay which is fine but not good if global CPI increases massively.
It’s time for Antonio Neri to step down from being CEO. As soon as I saw Phil Davis and Mark Potter leaving the company, two of our chief officers in two months, I could tell something was very wrong. Back in January, Archie Deskus left. Seriously, what is going on with our leadership?
I’m just here wondering what Compaq would be like if it still existed today. Curses, Carla...
As an engineering director I can say the quality of engineering we recruit today is much lower than a decade ago. Without talent it is impossible to ‘reinvent’.
I have heard rumblings that H1B numbers will be reduced. I welcome this. H1B has been used to keep engineer salaries down. It's why tech CEOs are billionaires. H1B further erodes engineering talent in this country. Why would you choose a more challenging major like computer engineering if the salaries are kept low by importing talent (that is often not as good)?
HPE is a sinking ship. Laying off engineers who will likely never want to work there again. There only option will be H1B which is probably the plan.
Innovate or Perish
If HPE doesn't want to be in the hardware business, what business do they want to be in? They already spun off software and services.
I believe HPE will follow IBM and sell off their low end servers. It wouldn't surprise me if Pointnext spun off from HPE. HPE does not want to be in the hardware business.
They have been beating around the bush for so many years, without a long term growth strategy.
Anything is possible but it's unlikely. Being bought or a break up is more likely.