惠普是怎样“迷路”的

    惠普公司上周二宣布，随着惠普将分拆成两家公司，它还将继续裁员28,000人至33,000人。这也是长期麻烦缠身的惠普为重整旗鼓而做出的又一次努力。

    上世纪90年代后期，惠普的增长陷入停滞，时任CEO的刘•普拉特也尝试过分拆，那一次惠普将医疗产品与测量仪器部门分拆了出去。迈进千禧年后，惠普在一连串CEO的主导下进行了多次大规模的收购，首先是现在正在竞选美国总统的卡莉•费欧莉娜于2002年以190亿美元收购了康柏电脑，其次是马克•赫德以139亿美元收购IT服务商电子数据系统公司，最后是李艾科耗资111亿美元收购了Autonomy公司。

    从2011年起，惠普进入了现在的梅格•惠特曼时代。在惠特曼上台后不久，《财富》曾专门撰文报道过惠普公司面临的危机，并指出了摆在这位新CEO面前的任务：

    “简单地说，惠普已经迷路了。这家公司已经陷入生存危机。尽管惠普仍然是个庞然大物，在《财富》500强榜单中位列第10位，去年（2011年）的销售额高达1270亿美元，但是它的发展轨迹给人以不祥之感。比如，惠普2011年的利润比前一年低了19%。惠普的业务在几乎各个领域都受到了冲击，市场份额日益缩水，利润持续下降。”

    核心业务遭遇的长期威胁，再加上一个弱势的董事会和一个没选好的CEO李艾科，混合成为一个潜在的火药桶。在这位58岁的欧洲软件高管执掌惠普后的11个月期间，这个火药桶终于灾难性地爆炸了。事实上，理解惠普今天之窘境的最佳方式莫过于回顾并审视李艾科的动荡任期。《财富》的调查表明，在李艾科时期，惠普的混乱要比之前的报道更加严重（到了让人无法相信的程度）。首先，李艾科是惠普匆匆忙忙招募来的，此前在惠普的核心业务领域没有任何经验。其次，公司的几个重大战略决策都做成了“夹生饭”。此外，惠普最高管理层对李艾科形成的掣肘，也是媒体此前从未报道过的。事实上，惠普董事长雷•莱恩才是决定公司战略决策的主要实权人物——他后来把种种过错一股脑地都推在了李艾科身上。

    随着55岁的梅格•惠特曼的上任，外界针对惠普的批评也有所缓和。到目前为止，惠特曼的战略一言以蔽之就是：让我们一边搞清楚我们的长期计划，一边执行得好一些。这么干也不是不可以，至少目前看来效果还行。但除非惠特曼和董事会之间能够通力合作，更重要的是，除非惠特曼能够真正回答“惠普究竟是什么”这一问题，否则惠普将永远无望恢复昔日的荣光。

    四年前的那篇文章，在一定程度上反映了惠普今天的发展方向：

    “惠普做梦都想成为的那家公司——也就是IBM，已经通过另一种策略实现了业绩飙升。它抛弃了PC业务，专注于高利润的软件和服务。这让我想起了一个在工程师圈内流传甚广的段子，这个故事可能是虚构的，但很能说明问题：两位来访的咨询顾问站在一家大公司的总部大楼里等电梯，其中一位来自IBM，另一位来自惠普。IBM的顾问按了向上的电梯按钮，去大楼顶层去见CEO，惠普的顾问却按了向下的按钮，去见IT部门。这个段子传递的信息很清楚：IBM是和王者打交道的，而惠普则是趴在地上‘修理管道’的。它也并非只是个比喻：IBM的税前利润只略低于20%，比赫德治下的惠普（8.7%）高出一倍还多。”

    这个将近5年前的段子很能说明问题，它也进一步解释了惠特曼为什么近年来致力于把惠普打造成一个领先的云服务提供商。不过这条路也是充满挑战的，因为亚马逊、微软、谷歌和IBM等竞争对手已经主宰了云市场，惠普要想在这个领域突破重围并非易事。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    审校：任文科

    Hewlett-Packard will lay off 28,000 to 33,000 workers as it prepares to split into two companies, it announced Tuesday. The move is the latest in a long time of turnaround efforts for the beleaguered HP.

    When the company’s growth stalled in the late 1990’s, then-CEO Lew Platt also opted for a split, spinning off HP’s original medical products and test and measurement devices unit. The next decade would bring a string of mega-mergers under a long line of various CEOs, starting with now-Presidential-hopeful Carly Fiorina and her $19 billion Compaq acquisition in 2002, then the $13.9 billion purchase of IT services company Electronic Data Systems under Mark Hurd and finally the $11.1 billion acquisition of Autonomy under Leo Apotheker.

    Then came the era of now-CEO Meg Whitman, who’s been at the helm since 2011. A look back at Fortune’s coverage of the state of HP shortly after Whitman took the reins reveals a company in crisis, emphasizing the task ahead for the new CEO:

    “Simply put, Hewlett-Packard has lost its way. The company is in the midst of an existential crisis. It remains a behemoth, No. 10 on the Fortune 500, with $127 billion in sales last year [2011] and $7 billion in earnings. But the trajectory is ominous. Those profits, for example, were 19% lower in 2011 than in the previous year. HP’s business is under siege on almost every front, losing market share and facing declining margins.

    It was a combustible mixture: long-term threats to the business combined with an impaired board and an ill-chosen CEO in Léo Apotheker (LAY-o AH-po-teck-er). The three ignited disastrously during the 11 months that the 58-year-old European software executive ran HP. Indeed, there’s no better way to understand the company’s plight today than to examine his tumultuous tenure. A Fortune investigation reveals that the turmoil of Apotheker’s reign was even more intense (hard as that is to believe) than previously reported. From the slapdash hiring of a man with no experience in HP’s biggest lines of business, to the half-baked ways in which the company tackled major strategic decisions; from the never-before-reported internal challenges to Apotheker by top executives, to the fact that HP chairman Ray Lane was a major force in the company’s strategic decisions—which he has since blamed on Apotheker…

    With Whitman, 55, now in place, the acrimony at HP seems to have eased. So far her strategy amounts to this: Let’s execute better while we figure out our long-term plan. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But the company will never come close to reclaiming its former glory unless she and the board can find a way to function together and, most important, until she can answer the real question: What is HP?”

    The profile also reflects on where HP would end up almost four years later:

    “The company HP dreamed of being, IBM, had soared by taking a different tack: It dumped its PC business and focused on high-margin software and services. That prompted what is probably an apocryphal, but telling, anecdote among enterprise techies: Two visiting consultants are waiting for the elevator at a big company’s headquarters. One is from HP, the other from IBM. The consultant from Big Blue pushes the up button to visit the CEO on the top floor. The HP man, by contrast, hits the down button to see the IT guy in the basement. The message was clear: IBM IBM 0.60% was consorting with kings while HP was on hands and knees, fixing the plumbing. It wasn’t just a metaphor either: IBM’s pretax profit margins, just under 20%, were more than double the 8.7% HP achieved in Hurd’s last year.”

    That anecdote from nearly five years ago is telling, and may give further insight into where Whitman hopes to bring the company with her latest move–one that aims to make HP HPQ 5.02% a leading player in cloud services. Still, that path is a challenging one: Rivals like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM are already dominating the cloud market, and it won’t be easy for HP to break through.