Hewlett-Packard is undergoing some major changes at the top. Earlier this week, the firm announced that its Chief Information Officer Randy Mott was leaving the company, while Ann Livermore, the executive vice president of HP’s enterprise operation, had been elected to its board of directors. The company also announced that some of its executive vice presidents will report directly to CEO Leo Apotheker to help streamline HP’s chain of command. For his part, Apotheker said in a statement that the changes will have a profound (and beneficial) impact on his company’s operation going forward. He also indicated that HP will continue to make changes to ensure its operation falls in line with its long-term strategy. But HP’s decision to undergo a major shakeup at the upper-level-management area says quite a bit about what the company is looking to achieve, and where it’s heading in order to get there. Here’s a deeper look at HP’s decisions and what the recent changes say about its current state and where it’s headed.
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1. Leo Apotheker Wants More Oversight As part of HP’s management shakeup, the company said that more top-level managers would be answering to CEO Leo Apotheker. In fact, executive vice president for enterprise servers, storage, networking, and technology services, Dave Donatelli, will report to Apotheker, along with executive vice presidents of software and global sales, respectively, Bill Veghte and Jan Zadak. It seems that Apotheker wants more oversight of his top-level management.
2. Things Aren’t Necessarily Going Well When things are going well at a company, there is rarely any change in top-level management. After all, how long has the same cast of characters at Apple been running things? HP’s decision to switch things up indicates that there might be troublesome times ahead, and it wants to react to that as quickly as possible.
3. Software Is Even More Important When Leo Apotheker took over at HP, many believed that software would take center stage in his plans. After he took over, that was made clear. And now, with this latest management shakeup, the company is now decidedly more software-focused than ever before. Look for software to be integral to HP’s success or failure in the coming years.
4. Computers Are Less Important When Mark Hurd was running HP, computers were integral to his company’s strategy. Now, PCs just aren’t as important any longer. Apotheker has proven once again that software, cloud services, and the enterprise mean more to the firm than computers.
5. It’s Willing to Change Though some investors weren’t too pleased to see such a major shakeup at the top of HP, it’s a sign of one good thing: HP is willing to change things up. Too often, companies become crippled by their inability or unwillingness to change. But HP has proven that it’s different, and Apotheker will do what he must to make it work. Though investors don’t like to see major changes, they do like when CEOs are willing to make tough decisions. And Apotheker is making tough decisions.
6. It Doesn’t Want to Be Dell Several years ago, Dell was atop its game, and many wondered if any other PC vendor would be able to catch up. But as Dell’s business started going awry, the company didn’t respond in time. And now, it’s still trying to dig out from the mistakes it made years ago. HP, on the other hand, seemingly doesn’t want to be another Dell. And the company’s sweeping changes show that it wants to react before things get too bad.
7. It’ll Look Much Different In A Few Years When Leo Apotheker took over at HP, the company was a decidedly PC-focused company with some enterprise services that, depending on the solution, were doing well in some cases, and poorly in others. But in the next few years, HP will be a much different firm. Expect the company’s cloud and enterprise solutions to be much more important. And at the same time, expect software to play an integral role in its operation.
8. The Cloud, The Cloud, The Cloud The cloud is becoming increasingly important across industry. And HP is doubling down in the cloud with the Internet-focused WebOS, but you can also expect the firm to deliver a host of cloud solutions to the enterprise to continue its charge in that marketplace. Apotheker said that the cloud would be important to HP’s operation, and his latest decisions have made that abundantly clear.
9. More Changes Are Afoot After announcing HP’s management changes, Apotheker insisted that HP will continue to make changes as it sees fit to ensure the company is on the right path to success. Looking ahead, expect HP to make several more strategic decisions that could have a profound impact on its current state.
10. Mark Hurd’s Influence Has Been Eliminated When Mark Hurd left HP, some wondered how long his legacy at the company would last. Now, just months after Apotheker has taken over it’s clear that Hurd’s legacy has been eliminated. And HP investors, employees, and stakeholders are firmly aware that the company is under the leadership of a person that has a much different philosophy on running the organization. So long, Mark Hurd. There’s a new CEO running HP, and he has a much different strategy.
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