Friday, February 11, 2005

What's to become of HP? Here's an article from the NY Times speculating on the future of post-Fiorina HP. I think that the speculation about Xerox or Kodak makes sense. Aside from the test instrumentation business that Carly spun off several years ago, the printer business has been the best known. I spent some time in the computer business in the late 1980s and sold and installed both HP and Compaq computers. Actually, I never sold any HP PCs. Even back then, HP could never figure out what they were doing with them. They never got any better. Buying Compaq was really a last gasp for the two of them. Compaq had a great model for the times, as well as unequalled quality. When I set up a marketing/sales arm for a little computer graphics company ca 1988, I modeled a lot of it on the Compaq distribution model. That was partly to leverage a sales and marketing staff of one (me). I figured going through full service CAD-oriented distributors would be a winner. 1989 was already too late for that model. By the mid- to late- 90s, Compaq's quality was suffering and the Dell direct sales model had scored big time. So both Compaq and HP were suffering. I'd throw my vote in with the analysts in this story. Sell off the PC business to someone whose corporate structure and overhead will permit them to make money. Emphasize what they do well--which happens to be what they stand the best chance to make money at. Choosing a New Chief and Pondering a Switch in Focus. No matter who succeeds Carleton Fiorina as chief of Hewlett-Packard, the challenge will be the same: to shift the company toward businesses with more ample profits. By By STEVE LOHR. [NYT > Technology] 9:33:12 AM    comment []

Pain of Adoption? Tony Perkins' belief in the big bucks to be made on Internet-based businesses didn't die with Red Herring--the famous magazine he founded that crashed with the burst of the dot com bubble. He came back a couple of years ago with AlwaysOn (http://www.alwayson-network.com)--a Web community of business types. The thing about reading Tony is that he is in love with the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Reporting from Davos, Switzerland and the World Economic Summit, he preferred talking about the wines served at receptions and comments of the famous after a few glasses of the stuff. One of his regular columnists/bloggers is Pip Coburn, a securities analyst with UBS Investment Bank. His latest comments on technology adoption sprang from a conversation with Research in Motion (Blackberry) CEO Mike Lazaridis. Called "A Vote for No Vision", he disses the Swiss Army Knife approach to tech products. http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=8424_0_11_0_C. He has a point that sometimes companies add lots of gizmos to their offering simply because they can. The product becomes so complex that no one, save the most dedicated geek, can use it. He writes this from the starting place of his formula for technology adoption, which is: technology change = f(user crisis vs. user's total perceived pain of adoption) http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P6142_0_14_0_C I think this works in the automation business as well. Some "integrated solutions" just aren't. And I have lived through the "user crisis vs perceived pain of adoption" more times than I'd like. The challenge for automation suppliers is to acknowledge this formula and do a better job of reducing that right hand term in the equation--the pain of adoption. I know that many try to do this, but I have a nagging feeling that too many are in love with the Swiss Army Knife approach. It makes better marketing brochures if you have lots of features. What's your experience? I'll have an article on this later this year at Automation World (http://www.automationworld.com). 5:40:21 AM    comment []