A new HP. With a Software CEO.

A new HP  With a Software CEO.
Putting software executives on top of a company that has little in the way of software means there are big changes coming at HP. This can only work with an umbrella company structure, where each of the divisions are like small complete companies led by experts, otherwise these executives would likely create a Sun-like result. In an umbrella company, you can be more creative. Recall that Louis Gerstner, who came from RJR Nabisco, successfully turned IBM around because expertise in IBM’s business wasn’t critical there either, because that expertise exists strongly with the division heads.

HP, now armed with the knowledge of how Oracle was successfully turned around, and knowledge on how SAP was built, will be able to design a software entity from scratch with properties like 3Par at its core to address the market of today. I would expect a number of acquisitions, top executive changes (it would be unusual for Todd Bradley to remain given both his connection to Mark Hurd, and his heavily lobbied play to be HP CEO), and at least one divestiture (the printing and imaging division would appear to be more valuable outside of HP than inside, and the head of that division could easily run a complete company).

Apple isn’t the initial target of this new company, but Oracle is, and while it will likely take a number of years to build HP into something different, the company that results should be vastly more able to deal with emerging market opportunities than the one that exists today can. As far as the Palm-based tablet, it may be the first true cloud client designed against an enterprise-level back end. The fastest growing cloud opportunity is desktop virtualization, and of all of the big players, only HP has a new-age client they actually own.
This is going to get interesting.

"Software is how we can make sure that the various parts of our technology actually fit well together," Leo  Apotheker.