HP Head’s Push May be what the Company Needs, Though Investors Remain Doubtful
Hewlett-Packard chairman and venture capitalist Ray Lane sat down for an interview with Reuters, and discussed how chief executive Leo Apotheker’s push into the cloud may be just what’s needed to “return the former Silicon Valley icon to stability.”
Lane said that Apotheker’s first and foremost foremost duty is to tackle the excessive cost cutting of the former HP CEO, Mark Hurd, who both left the company facing allegations of inappropriate conduct.
“It’s not a three-month job,” Lane said, adding that Apotheker is focused on HP’s long-term growth.
“Mark Hurd did not invest,” said Lane, who is also a former top executive at Oracle Corp. “He burned the furniture to please Wall Street,” he said.”
One of the things Hurd and Carly Fiorina slashed was the company’s research budget, though it seems Apotheker is not following this trend. The former head of software maker SAP is expanding the company beyond hardware with mobile, cloud and big data initiatives – something competitor Dell has also been doing as a part of an effort to stay relevant to the market, and increase its margins.
On the short-run, HP will be buying back another $10 billion its own stock on top of $10 billion it has already announced to restore investor confidence. The company also declared a cash dividend of 12 cents per share, and Apotoker is thinking ahead as well, where cloud and mobile come into play.
The electronics giant announced this week that it will launch a new thin client in August: the t5570e Thin Client will be running Windows Embedded Standard 7. Closer to the consumer end, there are some rumors bubbling that HP may roll out a cloud storage service of its own for webOS devices.
It’s a multi-pronged approach Apotheker is pushing, with his experience in software providing insight and innovation to revive HP’s new direction.
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
