More about 'The Machine'

Just saw Bill Harrell's description for Digital Trends of HP's "Machine"     See it at:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-the-machine-hps-new-super-computer/#!94DVM

Might be worth considering how this timeline compares with Birnbaum's Spectrum from the '80's.

We hired Joel in January 81, and by 83 he had some nice prototypes running at HP Labs.  By fall '84, Birnbaum and Doyle moved to Cupertino to revamp the computer group leadership, a group which had been resistant to RISC ideas (and to HP Labs in general).

In May 1985, Bill Worley among others outlined HP/PA (HP Precision Architecture) in the HP Journal.  In February 1986, HP had a major press conference release to announce the machines.  In a stern voice at the end of the press meeting, Packard dolefully pointed out that the machine was not ready, pissing off everyone else on the dias.

In November 1986, the first machine shipped, not exactly a big hit, but at least 'on the street'

Between 1987 and 1989, the big news was that the new migration center was able to make the novel HP RISC architecture handle substitution into DEC and IBM bastions--not yet outperforming them, but at least able to offer an alternative, usually much cheaper and in places more reliable.

In Febrary 1991--yes, just ten years after starting--the Snakes project--the HP 700-- led by Denny Georg, was announced and delivered.  It was the first RISC machine with industry-leading performance.

Now, granted, things happen quicker these days, and designers and managers are smarter, right?

But, the HP plans for "the Machine" sound just a bit optimistic.  Hope they're right!

Another "BEST" list for HP

The Silicon Valley Business Journal yesterday ran a story entitled

Four Silicon Valley companies rank on best places for IT jobs (none of which are Google)

These are the kinds of lists that HP routinely used to be on, at or near the top, for forty years or so.  Hasn't been true in quite some time.  So, naturally, the title drew me in.  

It actually is a list compiled by the magazine ComputerWorld.  Here's the bullet lead: ComputerWorld just released its list of the 100 best places to work in IT for 2014, and only four Silicon Valley companies made the list: LinkedIn Corp., Informatica Corp., VMware Inc. and Hewlett Packard Co. — although South San Francisco's Genentechalso made the list.

The criteria?  salaries, bonuses, promotions, programs for recognizing excellence, flex-time policies, the number of women and minorities in IT, elder and child care, and reimbursement for education.

LinkedIn and Informatica made it for 'mid-sized' companies; HP and VMWare for 'large'.  Here's the HP story: 

VMware and Hewlett-Packard made the list among large companies, rating 26th and 28th, respectively, out of 55 companies with over 5,000 employees. VMware has flexible vacation time, on-site cafes and gyms, and the opportunity to work with customers.

HP looks like a good place for high pay. It scores for competitive pay and benefits, company-matched 401(k) plans, and stock purchase plans. It also offers on-site health clubs, concierge services and programs to promote healthy living and fun.

Quicken, by the way, is great at employee retention career development and benefits.

No Silicon Valley companies made the list of small employers.

The link, if you'd like to read the whole story: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/06/24/four-silicon-valley-companies-rank-on-best-places.html?ana=e_du_pub&s=article_du&ed=2014-06-24&u=p3hytg4uJDjp%20I5PDYTDxA08920494&t=1403699555&page=all 

The MACHINE

HP took the wraps off "the Machine" this week at Discover.  Julie Bort reports on it, with pix, in the Business Insider at http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-shows-off-new-kind-of-computer-2014-6

Martin Fink, head of HP Labs, with Meg Whitman's backing and blessing, revealed a WHOLE LOT MORE than ever before, about what all of this Memristor stuff of Stan Williams, HP's semi-famous Fellow.  See the story from 2008 at http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2008/apr-jun/memristor.html

Peter Bright also covered the Discover announcements... see http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-plans-to-launch-memristor-silicon-photonic-computer-within-the-decade/   He did s nice job of positioning some past announcements (e.g. Moonshot and Apollo, covered in this blog a couple years ago), with bits and pieces of current introductions.

The whole 'system' is not due for completion until, say, 2017 at the earliest, or 2020 more likely, but hey, this is indeed good stuff--the kind of stuff HP used to be known for, changing the playing field.

Meg Whitman, for her part, did a great job of noting that if all the Data Centers (read Cisco Systems and Intel servers and Google and eBay and Amazon concentrated collections of 100,000's of 'blades' were counted for their energy consumption, they'd match the 5th largest nation in the world.  Egad.

At a time when Cisco blade servers have just 'arrived' to challenge the x86 vendors (Cisco has a surprising 20% of that market in less than 3 years since entry), a revolutionary energy play could indeed have true value for HP's fortunes.

What is it they say?  Stay Tuned?

A true privilege

In the past eight months, I have had the unique privilege of working again with HP (even getting paid, which at this point in time is a pretty good metric).

The groups have included some Leadership Training seminars, some Leadership Team meetings, and some workshops co-sponsored with Stanford (and even one with Harvard, can you imagine?).

All told, a cross-section of several hundred senior folk from every major group of HP...

The points to make are several:

1. I was uniformly impressed by the MOOD and the OPTIMISM.  The outlook is a cautious, sober, clear-viewed appreciation of how difficult this modern world is--in terms of competition, dynamic product and services definition--but a belief that HP once again can be equal to that challenge.

THIS IS A VERY DIFFERENT and very POSITIVE MOOD and VIEW than the 2002-2012 samples

2. The attitude about, and evident support for, INNOVATION is DRAMATICALLY HIGHER.  This is the sine que non of future success.  Again, there was a perspective that this is IMP:RTANT, nay KEY, for HP to prevail, an attitude that was curiously absent for way too long.

3. The third thing to report is just the QUIET CONFIDENCE that HP is once again acting in a way that makes them PROUD to be part of it, instead of APOLOGETIC.

None of these solve issues like "How is your LapTop selling" or "Why did you miss the mobile phone biz and what are you going to do now?" but those issues were impossible to deal with in a constructive way with the mood and feeling that too long dogged this company.

So, I AM INSPIRED about the perceptions I report here.  Let's hope it translates.

update on "Old acquisitions"

A sharp-eyed reader, actually a true historian, Jon Johnston who founded the HP Computer Museum in Australia (a VERY NEAT SITE), kindly sent a note this weekend, saying my January 7, 2014 post about past HP acquisitions was a bit in error, leaving out Boonton Electronics in 1959.

Ah, why don't I read my own book?  pp. 117-119 of THE HP PHENOMENON chronicle part of the story here, but this includes a bit of 'new info'.  Incidentally, the book is now in second printing, and in the 'new digital age' Stanford says it will stay in print indefinitely, albeit missing the colorful jacket

Actually, there were three acquisitions for HP in 1959, all of them omitted from my blog post.

The first of the three was PAECO, which stood for Palo Alto Electronic Components Operation.  This was a partially-owned company started by Dave and Bill and several members of the Executive team prior to HP becoming a public company.  Thus, in effect, it was a way to get some ownership to others before they could have stock in HP.  PAECO built power transformers, kind of a commodity even then as part of a power supply, and a few other hard-to-find components (e.g. tight-spec wire wound resistors for voltmeters).  Some 30% of PAECO sales were to HP.

The second was DYMEC, formed as a separate company that bought HP equipment and assembled it into systems.  Again, partially owned by Dave and Bill and several exec committee members.  Both PAECO and DYMEC pulled execs from HP as their top mgmt.  DYMEC's logo was HP inverted.  The two shared a building at the 395 Page Mill site.  As you walked from Building 7B to 7C, the logo in the floor read "HP" -- waling the other way it read "DY"  (this used a stylish H and Y).

The third was Boonton Eledronics, in Boonton, NJ.  They built radio frequency signal generators and a few other RF equipments.  I did not tell the story in the book about Barney Oliver being a long-time consultant and part owner for Boonton, where he actually held a couple of patents on sweep linearity compensation for an X-Y display system they built (that didn't sell very well).

Thus in sharp contrast to the Moseley and the Sanborn acquisitions i referenced in the January 7 blog post, these were all somewhat different since they had HP ownership connections (entanglements?).

Four other sidebars on the Boonton acquisition
1. Bob Loughlin Sr. sold Boonton to HP, and served thereafter for many years on the Princeton group that sponsored Albert Einstein and John Nash
2. Bob Loughlin Jr. was the first transfer from an acquired company into a key role for the parent HP
3. Barney's X-Y Display predated mine by nearly a decade, though I still claim the HP 1300A was 'the first commercially successful X-Y Display for computer readouts'.  His knowledge of this arena led to a very critical project review once for me, that was truly unnerving.  Thus, the satisfaction of becoming barney's replacement for the development side of his job when he retired was wonderful
4. Years later, like thirty years later, Dialogic began its operation in the old Boonton facility.  I joined Dialogic as VP R&D five years later, but they had moved by then to a new place three miles away.

Why join HP now?

One of the recurrent themes for me in “certain circles” is “why do you stay in touch at HP?”   Usually coupled with that snarky comment is an implication of “why would anyone stay at such a large, slow-moving dinosaur when there are plenty of exciting new companies around?”   “Certain circles” include many HP old-timers, longing for ‘the good ole days’ and bemoaning the litany of ills that have befallen their favorite old mistress, HP.  

Note that to ask, “WHY do you stay involved” is different than “HOW do you stay involved?”  WHY is that I still have a love affair with this company, I believe in their values and their ethics (once again, after a brief lapse under ‘other mgmt’) and their products and services.  And mostly, I still am stimulated by the folk I encounter who work there daily, who try and try and try some more.  You know, like it always has been.

And periodically, I get involved again, via one venue or another, with HP folk in some meeting or another.  These venues often, almost always in fact, infuse me with great enthusiasm and perspective for the company HP has become, even recognizing the difficulties and challenges that it faces today.

No better example exists for me than when I get a chance to interview ‘new folk’ who have recently joined HP.  Why did they decide to do so?   I mentioned this in the entry a few days ago; several have asked me for more details….  Hopefully, this will not offend anyone (did I worry about that when Dave Packard gave his Medal of Defiance award?); all names cited below are ‘public record’ including on their Facobook and LinkedIn pages as well as the HP Exec bio page.

Let me first of all observe that Meg (I presume it is Meg driving this) is intent on bringing in ‘winners’ to help the turn-around.   And the evidence is mounting….

Here are some tangible examples of ‘NEW HP people’ I’ve met in recent months:

1.     Barbara Adey, a senior executive for years at Cisco HQ, joined HP as VP of Business Development, three months ago, citing their momentum and desire for bringing change to underserved communications areas in her view.

2.     Melanie Tinto, brought in from a key leadership role—Global Talent Mgmt at WalMart—to be HP’s new VP of the Executive and  Leadership Training group—a role served well in HP’s early days, but bereft until Meg infused this group with new energy.

3.     Robert Youngjohns, SVP of HP Business Software (e.g. Autonomy), joined from a SVP role at Microsoft.

4.     Brad Johnson, VP of Corporate Strategy, focused on the Enterprise Group, joined from a long career at McKinsey, followed by a VP slot for an IPO at Freescale Semiconductor.

5.     Art Gilliland, SVP for SW Security, joined from Symantec where he’d been for seven of his fifteen years in the software security business.

All of these folk are with HP less than two years now; each was a world expert prior to coming to HP (i.e. they could have stayed in their last job, and/or could have found a great new opportunity at lots of places), and EACH CAME TO HP.  WHY?

Some even had to hurdle the high costs of the Bay Area housing market vs. say, Bentonville, Arkansas.  But they’ve come.

I won’t tell stories about any of them, but I will share one story from another who came.  This man had been at a large firm for many years, then became a VP at a smaller ‘nimble’ firm in a highly competitive field, where he headed a $400M, quite profitable, 600 person division.  

A relatively young and low-paid subordinate unfortunately was struck by cancer.  The group wanted to do something to help; the meaningful conclusion was that a maid service during recuperation would be of value, both for the reduced energy level and the need for antiseptic surroundings.  The business leader’s thought was that $1,000 for three months of maid service would be a generous gift, not a lot of money, but high on specific, emotional and motivational value.

$1,000 is not a lot of money, but he didn’t have a discretionary account for “miscellaneous expense.”  Which in itself said something about the constraints at many companies even for high-level executives.

He asked his controller how to do this—line item expense, or ???   The reply was, “see the HR person” whose reply was “see the SVP” who said “we have to talk to he CEO” who said “we need to ask the Board” which said “NO”.   So, he put a “donations” box in the HQ anteroom, and they quickly collected well over $1,000, none of it from anyone who’d been asked, “how can we do this?” 

It is not easy for me to imagine why the CEO felt that he had to ask the Board for permission to do something so trivial; did they really weigh in on such matters?  What a powerless CEO, would be my take. 

It is easy to imagine the reasons each level had for “why not” including setting a precedent, fairness to others, use of company funds for private tragedy as opposed to “attaboy” rewards.  We could go on and on… and maybe the donations route was the wiser choice all along.  But the upshot was when the next headhunter called, this person answered the phone with a “what are you offering?” instead of hanging up.

HP, I think, still has a heart—faintly beating, perhaps, but there are worse places.  And there are folk who believe enough to JOIN the battle to regain momentum.  MORE POWER TO ‘EM, I say.

Back after going to sleep for a couple months

Wow, where does the time go?  My last post was nine weeks ago???  Doesn't seem possible, meanwhile the world kept going.  And so did HP.  The Keysight story, admittedly, is pretty far afield. What's going on at the big mothership, at least from my perspective?

The answer, I believe, is quite a lot.  Although you'd be hard pressed to know that from the trade press, sort of just like always.  So it's got to be "ear to the ground" kind of things.

The time sink for us was centered around another physical move.  Those who know my wife and I know that we are inveterately moving, for one reason or another (usually not because we can't pay the rent).  In this case, we have mostly relocated to the Central Valley of California, in a very small town called Elderwood, hardly visible on any map.  Where it is, is a mile north of the intersection of State Hiways 201 and 245.  201 is the main road into Sequoia National Park; 245 is the eastern-most road into Kings Canyon National Park.  So we're 30 air miles from Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, and the snow-capped Kaweah range, even in this drought year, frames our Sequoia Hills Stables setting.

The corollary is that we have also set up camp in, GASP, Palo Alto, for the first time actually living in HP's old stomping ground town in twenty-one years.  Our condo / apartment complex has few HPites, at least as we've discovered it so far, but is chock-full of Googlers and Facebook 'kids.'  And they are indeed kids, mostly, although some have kids of their own.

And in this setting, you just naturally hear about HP and all of the other 'stuff'-- differently than you'd hear at Buck's or the Wagon Wheel or Zot's.  Somehow Greer Park seems remote from the top echelons, closer to the 'action' in a way.

What we hear at the park is that HP is again hiring, purposefully, looking for innovative, aggressive, eager talent--and finding 'em, and attracting 'em.  We've talked to a number of these folk.  Why'd they come?  What attracted them?  Don't they know HP is old and tired, led by a plethora of CEOs (seven have managed the helm for a day or more in the past eight years, WHEW)?

And the answer, not just from the newbies, but from long-term colleagues and friends who are still there, is that the reign of terror is over, Robespierre was guillotined along with the rest, and sanity is prevailing.  Meg, it turns out, IS a devotee of the old HP Way, and people are feeling less fearful, more empowered, and hopeful.  One grizzled 24 year veteran yesterday told me: "The years from 2002 through 2011 were frightful; we're back believing again."

We're not seeing this in the products just yet, but I've never seen it miss--if the employees are jazzed, and empowered, good things happen.  Even at a big place like HP.

Stay tuned!