As an ex-employee of HP I have a completely different biew of this . To the present Apotheker took the HP reseller channel and thumbed his nose at them, and then set out to destroy what Hp had built over several years (like the largest PC mfg in the world) He then turns and tries to burn most of their funds buying a speculative company not congruous to HP’s business model and then spin off the PC division, close down the tablet business and on and on. If you understand the SAP model, they are not well liked at all in the business hence why they are losing share to others, they are parasitic in their practices and not well liked at all.
HP had a unique culture once, I was there when Carly came aboard and they had lost the edge, the Compaq folks used to say HP would aim, aim, aim, aim shoot. We said the opposite, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot aim about them. But from where I was in the company I could see that Carly was faced with an entrenched bureacracy and needed to move more strongly into the PC space, dominated by Compaq at the time. Shaking things up was the only thing she could do to break the logjam.
So to me Meg makes more sense to hire than Ole Lou, she knows how to build a collaborative culture which is how HP used to be. And I laugh at the investment firms who got caught with their pants down betting on this, the purchase of Autonomy will not go through and I for one am extremely optimistic about their chances
I’m a current HP employee and just got my email from “Meg and Ray” announcing the new team. I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. We’ll see.