http://mobile.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/emc-vs.-hpe-the-difference-between-customer-and-revenue-focus.html
9 replies (most recent on top)
Did you guys the gr8 Dell fans read about where the financial partner of it is going. I won't post the link...you genius people find it yourself and enjoy reading.
Great post, I think this started just after 2000, there was a noticeable shift to services being a commodity rather than a valued skill.
How does the author come to a conclusion and gives negative comments on HPE. Just another Sh-- talk. Breaking the crisis is not new for the HPE and we will go ways ....
Dell has done a deal with OpenText to take over their EMC piece.http://www.opentext.com/who-we-are/press-releases?id=51B5E97A2C384D1DBCD94180192DB53A
Excellent Post! One of the best summations of Big IT that I've seen. I'm currently with CSC and have no idea whether I'll be around post-merger. All of what you described applies directly to CSC. Perhaps that's the real synergy between these two outdated and struggling organizations.
Contract I work on is reaching end of contract. I am very much looking forward to being TUPEd back inhouse. *&€£ HPE. EDS was good to work for. HP and its greedy CEOs destryed it.
I fully agree with you @mwt. the Company I'm with now, did exactly that. They still subcontract the SAP and infrastructure maintenance and support, but the rest of the IT functions have been brought back in-house.
Excellent post
To some degree, but EMC has caught the "bait and switch" bug too. It's a problem with Big IT and MBAs educated through the 80s and 90s where capitalism was unbounded and has grown to be unchecked by government - they are taking experienced professionals and replacing them with inexperienced workers from cultures that do not comprehend western business. Customers are sold on what companies like EDS used to provide, and getting something of far less value. This happens because:
1) Big IT can keep a lot of this hidden from customers by managing what is customer facing.
2) Engineering rates don't change for the customer, even if the underlying cost are dropped 80~90%. That's what executives call "gravy". Every engineer on a contract makes a gross profit after their salary and benefits are considered, but net profit is, of course, affected by overhead from elsewhere, like paying managers, execs, sales, promotion, etc... Big IT is very top heavy, the only way to feed this beast is to try and drop the original engineer's cost to as close to zero as possible.
3) Executives don't value technical skills or experience. Good engineers and support people make it look easy. MBAs don't have time to study "nerd skills" (witness Meg's clearly stilted understanding of tech in her town halls) because they are too busy with governance. They figure it should be just as easy for cheaper "resources" to pick up those skills - in fact, they really clump engineers and support personnel as basically unskilled labor.
4) Executives have no ownership of the resulting work, which means they have no sense of responsibility, or pride. Ultimately, it means they just want their money for providing a service, whether that service has actually achieved the customer's goals.
5) Executives have long operated on the "Old Boys Network" principle. You rub my back, I'll rub yours.. and the deal is sealed over a golf game at a resort, all paid for by sales. That's changing, but as we can see, MBAs might not always be the quickest minds in play; it will take a while for them to see the damage being done and loss of business.
EMC might be trying to salvage its business and build something, but HPE is not. Meg at least knows Big IT isn't going to recover, and she's simply breaking up the assets to maximize the stock until she can dump it in the laps of others. If she was trying to save HP she would made Helion Cloud services competitive and leveraged that asset, instead of shutting it down.
Customers are dumping Enterprise Services for in house IT backed with cloud services, which can provide most of what Enterprise does without the bloat, and employing those engineers directly (who will have ownership/pride/responsibility for their work). The Cloud is basically removing the last reasons companies have had to pay Big IT to run their iron.
There is no future in Big IT. If you are working in Big IT like HPE, and are looking for work elsewhere, at least do yourself a favor: avoid any company listed on this site. ;) If they are laying off people, it means they are a company in decline, and lack vision.