From the previous post, "at a conference examining the explosive growth of traffic on the Internet and future technology requirements. HP Labs notably absent - no longer even taken seriously in such circles."
I had dinner with an "old" HP Labs crony Tuesday evening in Menlo Park. He chronicled the numbers --in 1990, with sales of $15B, HP Labs (the research teams that got HP into computing, and later did RISC architectures so well, and now 'of course' "THE MACHINE" which is eagerly anticipated by some, and scorned as 'so much hype' by others) had 1200 staff, in Palo Alto and Bristol, England.
In 2010, after Carly and Hurd collectively (but with Lew Platt's help also), the employee count was down to 400, in five world-wide locations (outposts only in three of them). Revenues were $127B. And Hurd was caught 'pants-down' so to speak. Wonder if he's got friends at Stanford Biz School (wasn't that sad about Garth Saloner's shenanigans, vehemently denied)?
Today, after the Martin Fink arrival replacing Prith Banerjee three years ago, the Labs is down to 250 folk, while HP chugs along, pre-split, at $111 Billion
HP Labs of course was "the renewal engine" for HP for decades, providing most of the impetus for (1) leadership in scientific computing; (2) leadership in mobile computing (the HP 35 and other handhelds); (3) leadership in department business computing; (4) leadership in peripherals, esp. printers and imaging
Not to mention leadership in integrated circuits (building and shipping 75,000 16-bit microcomputer chips before Intel delivered its first 16-bit sample chips; 90% of the world's Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for two decades; 90%+ of the Gallium-Arsenide devices that today power the satellite communications systems of the world), medical diagnostics, and analytical chemistry.
What, you might ask, has HP Labs done for renewal for HP since 1990? Hard to specify? Hard to decide? Hard to know?
What IS the cross-product of 250 researchers divided by $110B vs. 1200 researchers divided by $15B?
The answer is a shocking 1 researcher today for every 106 researchers twenty-five years ago per revenue dollar. A bet of 1% of what it used to be on interesting forward-looking research. Whew
And in 1990, HP had 16 members of the National Academy of Engineering; today my sources indicate that they have only one. For two decades from the start as a public company in 1957, HP had a Nobel Prize-winner (Luis Alvarez) from Berkeley and the Dean of Engineering from Stanford, Fred Terman, on the Board of Directors. Quite a vote for Engineering Excellence--for a long time. Not so evident today?
To be sure, many of the 'big labs'--Bell Labs, XeroxPARC, MCC among them--have dwindled.
But gosh... innovation seems still pretty important for leadership in this crazy competitive world.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Oracle buying HP?
The San Jose Merc is having a field day with the HP stories this week
Yesterday's report, acc. to analyst Rob Enderle (an Oregon pundit often commenting re HP), is that Larry Ellison would love to buy HP, just to "take them out". Mark Hurd might even be behind such a move, although he wasn't mentioned in the story.
On of my readers sent along the following yesterday: Always consider the source in any news article! Enderle has no in depth understanding (weak background) - easy to do hip shooting comments.
Yesterday's report, acc. to analyst Rob Enderle (an Oregon pundit often commenting re HP), is that Larry Ellison would love to buy HP, just to "take them out". Mark Hurd might even be behind such a move, although he wasn't mentioned in the story.
On of my readers sent along the following yesterday: Always consider the source in any news article! Enderle has no in depth understanding (weak background) - easy to do hip shooting comments.
There are options for Oracle other than the two he proposes, and I think that these are more likely; e.g. cherry pick HP Enterprise for good people in this time of confusion and uncertainty at HP E.
Incidentally I spent Monday on the Stanford campus at a conference examining the explosive growth of traffic on the Internet and future technology requirements. HP Labs notably absent - no longer even taken seriously in such circles.
***********
Today (9-17), the same reader sent a follow-up note: Further thoughts:
HP's mkt cap is $48B.
Oracle mkt cap is $165B, with $54B in cash and short term investments.
Oracle could easily buy all of HP today pre-split.
Oracle mkt cap is $165B, with $54B in cash and short term investments.
Oracle could easily buy all of HP today pre-split.
But why would they want to?
*************
And yet more, from the same observer (9-18):
more thoughts:
Why would Oracle want even the Enterprise side?
Oracle already has a competent full-stack offering -- Processor, Storage, Operating
System, Database, languages (Java), Services and Consulting.
HP Enterprise doesn't add much to any of these areas. If Oracle owned HPE, they'd need to kill SPARC
or Itanium, need to cut an overstaffed services group, etc, etc. Perhaps they'd pick up some storage technology,
but this isn't worth the bother. It isn't clear what "The Machine" adds, or how memristors are going to compete with
Intel/Micron's "Optane" memory.
*************
And yet more, from the same observer (9-18):
more thoughts:
Why would Oracle want even the Enterprise side?
Oracle already has a competent full-stack offering -- Processor, Storage, Operating
System, Database, languages (Java), Services and Consulting.
HP Enterprise doesn't add much to any of these areas. If Oracle owned HPE, they'd need to kill SPARC
or Itanium, need to cut an overstaffed services group, etc, etc. Perhaps they'd pick up some storage technology,
but this isn't worth the bother. It isn't clear what "The Machine" adds, or how memristors are going to compete with
Intel/Micron's "Optane" memory.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Fiorina--Outta the park?
On a national stage, in Ronnie Reagan's library with a 747 fuselage backdrop, ten erstwhile Republican male candidates faced off with Carly Fiorina now included with some late-stage negotiations.
How'd she do?
Pundits--both CNN and MS/NBC gave her the top billing--"she hit it outta the park" even as they said, "She has to, to become viable."
Fiorina proved equal to the occasion, far more than most others, and as indeed she did at HP (Walt's comments in the previous post notwithstanding), her quick wit was in full display. This gal is smart, no question about it, and she was studied and ready for the show.
I personally loved her succinct answer re Donald Trump's snide remarks a week ago about her looks, and I also thought she deftly served up a credible story about her HP time, vis-a-vis the dot.com meltdown and the competitive situations. She even remarked on Sonnenfeld's personal distaste for her, and why he did the hatchet job with his wrong analysis--I especially enjoyed that little tete-a-tete!
And her put-down of Trump's snotty "Killed HP" comments, for which he blamed how difficult it has been for Meg, poor gal a decade later, with her observation about his four bankruptcies (which he felt obliged to say, "No, my timing was adroit (as always) and I left others holding the bag.")
Her forthcoming story about losing a child to drug abuse was new to me, and it put a more human side on display than she typically does. A couple of commentators felt she'd benefit to smile at least once; one rejoinder was that Marco Rubio didn't either, and no one bashes men for not smiling. Score one!
Her too well-rehearsed and uninvited military build-up 30 second spot was detailed and inappropriate where she did it; the energy about how deceitful Hillary Clinton has been seemed somehow like "don't throw stones if you live in a glass-house" I mean, someone may just dredge up that Iran story next time, and say "uhh, please do explain..."
Our entire extended family was distressed and discouraged by her major error on citing "harvesting body parts" from a purported Planned Parenthood video. She can't resist the bait still of camera-grabbing
As they say, GREAT THEATRE.
One might conclude, though, that the country is in trouble, if these seventeen (fifteen) cnadidates are the best we can find.
How'd she do?
Pundits--both CNN and MS/NBC gave her the top billing--"she hit it outta the park" even as they said, "She has to, to become viable."
Fiorina proved equal to the occasion, far more than most others, and as indeed she did at HP (Walt's comments in the previous post notwithstanding), her quick wit was in full display. This gal is smart, no question about it, and she was studied and ready for the show.
I personally loved her succinct answer re Donald Trump's snide remarks a week ago about her looks, and I also thought she deftly served up a credible story about her HP time, vis-a-vis the dot.com meltdown and the competitive situations. She even remarked on Sonnenfeld's personal distaste for her, and why he did the hatchet job with his wrong analysis--I especially enjoyed that little tete-a-tete!
And her put-down of Trump's snotty "Killed HP" comments, for which he blamed how difficult it has been for Meg, poor gal a decade later, with her observation about his four bankruptcies (which he felt obliged to say, "No, my timing was adroit (as always) and I left others holding the bag.")
Her forthcoming story about losing a child to drug abuse was new to me, and it put a more human side on display than she typically does. A couple of commentators felt she'd benefit to smile at least once; one rejoinder was that Marco Rubio didn't either, and no one bashes men for not smiling. Score one!
Her too well-rehearsed and uninvited military build-up 30 second spot was detailed and inappropriate where she did it; the energy about how deceitful Hillary Clinton has been seemed somehow like "don't throw stones if you live in a glass-house" I mean, someone may just dredge up that Iran story next time, and say "uhh, please do explain..."
Our entire extended family was distressed and discouraged by her major error on citing "harvesting body parts" from a purported Planned Parenthood video. She can't resist the bait still of camera-grabbing
As they say, GREAT THEATRE.
One might conclude, though, that the country is in trouble, if these seventeen (fifteen) cnadidates are the best we can find.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Jeff Sonnenfeld the Yale idiot-savant
I just had occasion to watch Jeff Sonnenfeld, Yale's primo Business School professor, who slammed Carly Fiorina on Squawk Box last month http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000405612
What a pompous clown. This is the kind of guy who has helped lead American businesses into distress all over America with such notions as Core Competence and Outsourcing, and Operational Excellence. He masquerades as one of the top professors in America about CEO's and their performance. And he has it all wrong about Carly. She is plenty assailable, but he curiously uses wrong claims.
I have had more than my fill of these bozos.
Carly, he says, is great on TV, but obviously "THE WORST CEO IN HISTORY"
OH, REALLY?
The problem with clowns like this is that they get listened to. He is so full of himself, and so wrong on his facts about her, that it really must be construed as a hatchet job in my view.
I am not a Carly fan, although my long-time HP buddies think I "sold out" when I did the book. What I did was use the data of the day--things like, revenue, profit, stock price, market share--and compared HP to Intel, Cisco, Sun, IBM, and Microsoft. Guess what--Fiorina on virtually all measures was in the top half of that group for the fateful 2000-2004 scenario. She, quicker than anyone, perceived the depth and reality of the dot.com meltdown. Sonnenfeld doesn't believe it mattered--he only knows of the Lehman Brothers issues seven years later (guess where his money was parked).
Carly was--is--ego-driven. Ever meant a Presidential candidate who wasn't? Ever met a CEO who wasn't? This is pretty standard territory. The issue in part at HP was HP had, for historic reasons, never enjoyed such a CEO. The Board picked her partially for those reasons, not to continue the HP 'nice-guy' facade. This was Silicon Valley, and HP under Lew Platt had completely forfeited the dot.com excitement, whereas Scott McNealy, John Chambers, and Larry Ellison saw it clearly.
Carly, according to her critics--including most recently Jeff Sonnenfeld and Scott Herhold-- botched things by buying Compaq instead of a Services company. Earlier of course others slammed her for trying to buy a Services company (Price Waterhouse) and offering too miuch money, pointing out that IBM bought PWC for 19% of what Carly offered. Those critics forgot to check the relative stock values of all three companies for when the respective deals were proferred. Seems IBM paid almost exactly what Carly offered, in 'real dollars' when all was said and done.
So, she was slammed for what she did and what she didn't do, strategically, and in every case, history in my view has proven her right.
It'd be fun to see her make something of this campaign. And then the knives about her TERRIBLE HP PERFORMANCE will sharpen even more. Meanwhile, enjoy Jeffrey's harangue.
Fiorina revisited
So, today's news is an interesting summary of Fiorina:
1. Failed at HP
2. Failed at Congressional seat
3. Failed to make the top Ten for the CBS 'show' of front-runners
4. Succeeded at the "Second Summit" of the also-ran Seven
5. Succeeded in getting CBS to 'change the rules' to allow her into the "Top Ten"
6. Succeeded in pissing off Donald Trump, enough that he 'shot at her face'
Then there is the Bloomberg article that came out today, claiming that Fiorina not only knew about, but abetted the illegal HP-Iran sales during her tenure at HP. Josh Rogin did a credible job analyzing all of this sordid deal, claiming that HP knowingly skirted the law through a loophole. Essentially true, and as Rogin concludes, it hardly reconciles with her strong words right now, righteously, about what she'd do as President re the Iran 'deal' on the table today.
And for burying the hatchet in the lady, how about Scott Herhold's San Jose Merc article last month, entitled "Grading Carly Fiorina's tenure at HP." Herhold, admittedly a journalist and not an HP employee, trotted out a number of gripes (seems he had to eat his words when he publicly claimed in 2002 she'd not get the Compaq deal done). Carly, he wrote, gave him a "a real stomach ache, rooted in memory."
Most of the gripes are legitimate, on the surface. Such as "Compared to the S and P 500, shareholder wealth was sliced by 52 percent during her 1999-2005 tenure." Fiorina has been tarred with this beef ever since she was fired. What it leaves out is how badly the Silicon Valley teams all did in the same interval. Cisco and Intel were down (AND STILL ARE) by 70+%, not 52%. Sun disappeared. No one writes that Barrett, Chambers and McNealy were dumber than a post; Carly seems to draw every spear.
It is significant that Tom Perkins two weeks ago took out a praiseworthy ad in the New York Times for Carly, even apologizing for firing her.
I have first-hand experience with the press vis-a-vis Carly--Channel 7 called when she announced, becuase of my HP book, would I comment? Sure, I said. I gave four solid positive remarks, one negative, and one caveat. The evening news featured ONLY the negative--the press doesn't look for the truth, they look for the supporting story for their belief. Such are Herhold's beefs, on almost every score. Ah, well....
Yes, she is a bit vain-glorious. Ever met Hillary? Ever met Bill Clinton? Ever met Ronald Reagan? Or, who's this new guy, Trump? Carly is more substance than almost any politician we've had in years, smarter than most as well, and yes, her HP tenure was flawed, but she out-performed nearly every other CEO in Silicon Valley during that period--check the stock market charts in my book if you don't believe that.
Ciao
1. Failed at HP
2. Failed at Congressional seat
3. Failed to make the top Ten for the CBS 'show' of front-runners
4. Succeeded at the "Second Summit" of the also-ran Seven
5. Succeeded in getting CBS to 'change the rules' to allow her into the "Top Ten"
6. Succeeded in pissing off Donald Trump, enough that he 'shot at her face'
Then there is the Bloomberg article that came out today, claiming that Fiorina not only knew about, but abetted the illegal HP-Iran sales during her tenure at HP. Josh Rogin did a credible job analyzing all of this sordid deal, claiming that HP knowingly skirted the law through a loophole. Essentially true, and as Rogin concludes, it hardly reconciles with her strong words right now, righteously, about what she'd do as President re the Iran 'deal' on the table today.
And for burying the hatchet in the lady, how about Scott Herhold's San Jose Merc article last month, entitled "Grading Carly Fiorina's tenure at HP." Herhold, admittedly a journalist and not an HP employee, trotted out a number of gripes (seems he had to eat his words when he publicly claimed in 2002 she'd not get the Compaq deal done). Carly, he wrote, gave him a "a real stomach ache, rooted in memory."
Most of the gripes are legitimate, on the surface. Such as "Compared to the S and P 500, shareholder wealth was sliced by 52 percent during her 1999-2005 tenure." Fiorina has been tarred with this beef ever since she was fired. What it leaves out is how badly the Silicon Valley teams all did in the same interval. Cisco and Intel were down (AND STILL ARE) by 70+%, not 52%. Sun disappeared. No one writes that Barrett, Chambers and McNealy were dumber than a post; Carly seems to draw every spear.
It is significant that Tom Perkins two weeks ago took out a praiseworthy ad in the New York Times for Carly, even apologizing for firing her.
I have first-hand experience with the press vis-a-vis Carly--Channel 7 called when she announced, becuase of my HP book, would I comment? Sure, I said. I gave four solid positive remarks, one negative, and one caveat. The evening news featured ONLY the negative--the press doesn't look for the truth, they look for the supporting story for their belief. Such are Herhold's beefs, on almost every score. Ah, well....
Yes, she is a bit vain-glorious. Ever met Hillary? Ever met Bill Clinton? Ever met Ronald Reagan? Or, who's this new guy, Trump? Carly is more substance than almost any politician we've had in years, smarter than most as well, and yes, her HP tenure was flawed, but she out-performed nearly every other CEO in Silicon Valley during that period--check the stock market charts in my book if you don't believe that.
Ciao
Monday, August 31, 2015
HPE will focus "FORWARD" not Backward
We are in receipt of "the Answer"--not the one we sought, but sometimes ambiguity is the worst thing. Here is the response to a proposal to stage a Celebration Day for the 50th anniversary of the first HP computer, the HP 2116A, launched on November 7, 1966 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (sigh, and a moment of silence to honor the dead)....
The proposal was to have the IEEE Silicon Valley History Committee combine with HP at the Computer History Museum to fete the first computer along with five or six key milestones for HP computing along the way--this to be timed with the anticipated HP CEO biographical book by Burgelman and McKinney next year, and the assention of the Hewlett papers at Stanford Library.
The reply, sent to Ned Barnholt, CEO emeritus for Agilent, when it spun out of HP in 1999:
Ned, as you're aware, we're in the middle of separating HP into two companies. With my crazy workload, I sometimes have trouble responding to emails as fast as I'd like.
The proposal was to have the IEEE Silicon Valley History Committee combine with HP at the Computer History Museum to fete the first computer along with five or six key milestones for HP computing along the way--this to be timed with the anticipated HP CEO biographical book by Burgelman and McKinney next year, and the assention of the Hewlett papers at Stanford Library.
The reply, sent to Ned Barnholt, CEO emeritus for Agilent, when it spun out of HP in 1999:
Ned, as you're aware, we're in the middle of separating HP into two companies. With my crazy workload, I sometimes have trouble responding to emails as fast as I'd like.
I took a look at your original message to Meg. While the idea is
intriguing, Hewlett Packard Enterprise will focus its marketing and PR
efforts on the company's future (in particular, products, services and
especially, customer solutions).
While acknowledging HP's history is always important (we celebrated HP's 75th anniversary last year), the push in 2016 will be forward looking, so I don't believe a larger 50th celebration of HP computers would be a good fit next year. We're going to pass on the opportunity....
I hope you're doing well.
Best regards,
Henry
---
Henry Gomez
Executive Vice President,
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Hewlett-Packard Company
Friday, August 21, 2015
a long hiatus for personal reasons
A number (admittedly smaller than I might hope) of readers have asked over the past few months--'Where'd you go? Haven't seen any updates to what once was a regular blog about HP happenings."
Right....
Well, personal life sometimes intrudes on the best of intentions. And HP seems to have gotten by just fine without my witty, trenchant advice.
But... here I am, ready to sally forth and slay dragons again.
Well, maybe not quite dragons, but at least some scurrying lizards here and there.
What's on YOUR mind about HP, HPE, HPI, Agilent, Keysight, etc?
What's on my mind is just how transitory all of these concerns can seem on occasion.
I just finished reviewing again the "Secret History of Silicon Valley" that Steve Blank did so well a couple of years ago, coupled with re-reading several books about 'the Valley' and its famous folk. And I was struck by how differently it gets played by various folk.
The "big three" for Intel--Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, and Andy Grove--were treated (if that's the right phrase) to a troika biography from Michael Malone, our self-styled Valley historian, in his 2014 book, The Intel Trinity. And more recently, Arnold Thackray (now a transplanted Englishman via Philadelphia resides here in Menlo Park) finished his tome about Moore's Law: Gordon Moore--Quiet Revolutionary, just in time for the 50th anniversary of that "Law" that has described a ten-million fold increase in device density on micro-computer chips.
Moore's co-author is David Brock, now a research historian at the Philadelphia-based Chemical Heritage Foundation. Brock and Christophe Lécuyer (a Stanford grad, and Berkeley prof) co-authored and edited the Fairchild papers a few years back, and Lécuyer a decade ago published "Making of Silicon Valley: 1930-1970" so this is an esteemed group working on "our history" right here in "our spot on the globe."
I felt compelled to write an Amazon review for Thackray's new book this morning. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/review/R2Z837PQOY7X95/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0465055648&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books which is probably hopeless to put in your browser. You can also get it by typing Thackray Moore Amazon and then going to the review section, where my very laudatory comments are maybe 2nd or 3rd in the "5" category.
Why do I write all of this here?
Well, it is stunning to me how little interest all of this history seems to generate. One of the famous Traitorous Eight, Jay Last, provided nearly all of the material for the Brock/Lécuyer book out of a cardboard box of stuff he filched when he left Fairchild 46 years ago. He is quoted as saying "no one cared for years; it was only when Bell Labs' 50th anniversary of the transistor did anyone realize that this stuff had value."
Thackray's book has endorsements from "everybody" including Walt Isaacson, Clay Christensen, John Hollar (the CEO of the Computer History Museum), Arthur Rock, George Dyson, George Schultz, Carver Mead, Craig Barrett, the Wall St. Journal--and almost no notice on the Amazon reviews page, and minimal sales here in our Valley. Why?
Steve Blank has an answer--the "kids" think Silicon Valley started with Google and Facebook. One of his students (Berkeley, wouldn't you know) thought maybe Apple was here earlier. Asked about Intel, they drew a blank.
I did nineteen focus groups in the Bay area in 2013, asking four questions about the rapid rise of Internet connectivity and usage. I got 32 companies and 57 people named by 211 people. Only one named Cisco as one of the top three contributing companies, and when asked who at Cisco, the sober reply was "a married couple from 'here' at Stanford, I don't remember their names, but she was always grumpy." Cisco, you might recall, built $500 Million dollars worth of routers, something like 60% of all routers in the world. They are THE reason the Internet happened so fast. But no one has written that story.
Walt Isaacson's book properly lauds Steve Jobs but ignores the 'lean years' from 1997-2003 when Apple missed the dot.com boom (and bust) and Steve's leadership for his first seven years back from exile cut Apple revenue in half and profits to zero. Any board that wasn't fully controlled would have fired him long since. There are lessons in these stories but the stories aren't being told, or read when they are told.
So what are the personal reasons I stopped posting for awhile? Some of you might care....
We moved, to a bucolic horse ranch near the entrance to Sequoia National Park, once we were able to get terrestrial microwave connectivity instead of satellite beams only. Now we can have a Zoom or Vidyo or Skype conversation with full lip-sync with anyone anywhere on the globe (if they have the same low-latency connection). Amazing.
We're a little lean on water down here, though. One of our two wells failed last month--not good for 35 horses drinking an average of 20 gallons per day in hot weather (and 109 degrees qualifies as 'hot' in my book).
The other reason is I've been trying to put a foundation on InnovaScapes Institute for more history and more legacy studies, and it has been a classic set of start-up issues. But we're now making good strides, and able to talk about some progress.
And GUESS WHAT. HPE launches November 1, 2015 and HPE Computing @ 50 happens on November 7, 2016. That is the anniversary of the launch of the HP2116A at the Fall Joint Computer Conference--and there is a monumentally interesting set of stories to tell about that.
More about that later. Tease, tease....
Good to be back
Chuck
Right....
Well, personal life sometimes intrudes on the best of intentions. And HP seems to have gotten by just fine without my witty, trenchant advice.
But... here I am, ready to sally forth and slay dragons again.
Well, maybe not quite dragons, but at least some scurrying lizards here and there.
What's on YOUR mind about HP, HPE, HPI, Agilent, Keysight, etc?
What's on my mind is just how transitory all of these concerns can seem on occasion.
I just finished reviewing again the "Secret History of Silicon Valley" that Steve Blank did so well a couple of years ago, coupled with re-reading several books about 'the Valley' and its famous folk. And I was struck by how differently it gets played by various folk.
The "big three" for Intel--Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, and Andy Grove--were treated (if that's the right phrase) to a troika biography from Michael Malone, our self-styled Valley historian, in his 2014 book, The Intel Trinity. And more recently, Arnold Thackray (now a transplanted Englishman via Philadelphia resides here in Menlo Park) finished his tome about Moore's Law: Gordon Moore--Quiet Revolutionary, just in time for the 50th anniversary of that "Law" that has described a ten-million fold increase in device density on micro-computer chips.
Moore's co-author is David Brock, now a research historian at the Philadelphia-based Chemical Heritage Foundation. Brock and Christophe Lécuyer (a Stanford grad, and Berkeley prof) co-authored and edited the Fairchild papers a few years back, and Lécuyer a decade ago published "Making of Silicon Valley: 1930-1970" so this is an esteemed group working on "our history" right here in "our spot on the globe."
I felt compelled to write an Amazon review for Thackray's new book this morning. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/review/R2Z837PQOY7X95/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0465055648&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books which is probably hopeless to put in your browser. You can also get it by typing Thackray Moore Amazon and then going to the review section, where my very laudatory comments are maybe 2nd or 3rd in the "5" category.
Why do I write all of this here?
Well, it is stunning to me how little interest all of this history seems to generate. One of the famous Traitorous Eight, Jay Last, provided nearly all of the material for the Brock/Lécuyer book out of a cardboard box of stuff he filched when he left Fairchild 46 years ago. He is quoted as saying "no one cared for years; it was only when Bell Labs' 50th anniversary of the transistor did anyone realize that this stuff had value."
Thackray's book has endorsements from "everybody" including Walt Isaacson, Clay Christensen, John Hollar (the CEO of the Computer History Museum), Arthur Rock, George Dyson, George Schultz, Carver Mead, Craig Barrett, the Wall St. Journal--and almost no notice on the Amazon reviews page, and minimal sales here in our Valley. Why?
Steve Blank has an answer--the "kids" think Silicon Valley started with Google and Facebook. One of his students (Berkeley, wouldn't you know) thought maybe Apple was here earlier. Asked about Intel, they drew a blank.
I did nineteen focus groups in the Bay area in 2013, asking four questions about the rapid rise of Internet connectivity and usage. I got 32 companies and 57 people named by 211 people. Only one named Cisco as one of the top three contributing companies, and when asked who at Cisco, the sober reply was "a married couple from 'here' at Stanford, I don't remember their names, but she was always grumpy." Cisco, you might recall, built $500 Million dollars worth of routers, something like 60% of all routers in the world. They are THE reason the Internet happened so fast. But no one has written that story.
Walt Isaacson's book properly lauds Steve Jobs but ignores the 'lean years' from 1997-2003 when Apple missed the dot.com boom (and bust) and Steve's leadership for his first seven years back from exile cut Apple revenue in half and profits to zero. Any board that wasn't fully controlled would have fired him long since. There are lessons in these stories but the stories aren't being told, or read when they are told.
So what are the personal reasons I stopped posting for awhile? Some of you might care....
We moved, to a bucolic horse ranch near the entrance to Sequoia National Park, once we were able to get terrestrial microwave connectivity instead of satellite beams only. Now we can have a Zoom or Vidyo or Skype conversation with full lip-sync with anyone anywhere on the globe (if they have the same low-latency connection). Amazing.
We're a little lean on water down here, though. One of our two wells failed last month--not good for 35 horses drinking an average of 20 gallons per day in hot weather (and 109 degrees qualifies as 'hot' in my book).
The other reason is I've been trying to put a foundation on InnovaScapes Institute for more history and more legacy studies, and it has been a classic set of start-up issues. But we're now making good strides, and able to talk about some progress.
And GUESS WHAT. HPE launches November 1, 2015 and HPE Computing @ 50 happens on November 7, 2016. That is the anniversary of the launch of the HP2116A at the Fall Joint Computer Conference--and there is a monumentally interesting set of stories to tell about that.
More about that later. Tease, tease....
Good to be back
Chuck
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