曾经的惠普，曾经的起起落落

作为久负盛名的标志性科技企业，惠普已一分为二，进入了一个新时代。但从最新的收益报告来看，我们还无法判断这两家公司究竟哪一个能重现惠普昔日的光辉。

这也是一个好机会，正好让我们来回顾一下自1939年威廉•休利特和大卫•帕卡德成立惠普以来，它所经历的起起落落。

几十年来，惠普一直以产品设计精良而闻名，从最初的振荡器，到打印机、个人电脑，再到服务器和存储设备，无不如此。经销商Camera Corner Connecting Point为惠普在威斯康辛州绿湾代理销售产品多年，公司CEO里克•切尔尼克说，讽刺的是，惠普造出了不会散架的打印机，却让自己反受其害，“如果原来的东西仍在运转，就很难把新产品卖出去。”

请记住这一点。接下来，就让我们回顾一下惠普在这几十年经历的高潮和低谷。

斥资250亿美元收购康柏

这件事有好有坏。许多观察人士对此予以猛烈抨击（现在依然会因此厉声斥责惠普）。这项计划2001年披露，引起了巨大争议。一年后，惠普完成了收购。但科技行业分析与咨询机构Moor Insights & Technology创始人帕特里克•穆尔黑德认为，康柏在惠普需要的时候极大地促进了后者的PC和服务器业务。他指出，“在康柏的帮助下”，惠普的Proliant服务器“从这个大类刚刚成形时起”一直是最畅销产品。

但《财富》杂志前高级编辑卡罗尔•卢米斯在一篇2005年的文章中指出，惠普的股东并未从此项收购中获益。两家公司的员工也是如此。收购完成后，约有2.6万名惠普和康柏员工失去了工作。当时二者的合并创造了行业记录，但更多的是为了整合存在竞争关系的业务（和客户），而不是在市场上推出优秀的产品。

公平地说，这次收购成了后来许多科技行业并购的操作范本。

卡莉•费欧莉娜当政时期

除了她自己，许多人都认为卡莉•费欧莉娜把康柏弄得一团糟（请参考上文中惠普对康柏的收购）。

1999年费欧莉娜进入惠普，开启了明星CEO时代。举例来说，在2004年的消费电子展上，费欧莉娜和演员本•阿弗莱克、音乐制作人吉米•艾欧文、摇滚歌手谢丽尔•克罗、U2乐队吉他手The Edge以及歌手兼演员格温•史蒂芬妮共同登台。对于一直把精力集中在技术领域的惠普来说，华而不实似乎终于战胜了脚踏实地，正如该展会上有关惠普的“大”新闻是该公司推出了惠普品牌的iPod一样。没错，正如科技撰稿人史蒂文•利维最近在新型博客平台Medium上所说，惠普的创新能力曾经闻名遐迩，而今它却把自己的商标贴在别人的产品上。

2005年初费欧莉娜被迫下台，惠普的股价当天上涨了6.9%。

As the storied tech icon Hewlett-Packard launches a new era as two companies, it’s by no means clear that either can replicate HP’s past successes, as evidenced by the company’s most recent earnings report.

So this is a good time to revisit those wins and losses accruing since HP was founded by William Hewlett and David Packard in 1939.

For decades, HP HPQ -13.66% has been noted for churning out well-engineered gear from oscillators to printers, PCs, servers, and storage. Rick Chernick, CEO of Camera Corner Connecting Point, a longtime HP reseller in Green Bay. Wis., said the irony is that HP hurt itself over the years by building printers that don’t fall apart. “It’s hard to keep selling stuff into accounts when the old stuff keeps running,” he said.

With that in mind, let’s go through some of HP’s high and low points over its long life.

HP’s $25 Billion Compaq Purchase

This was a mixed bag. Many observers slammed (and still slam) HP’s acquisition of Compaq, announced in 2001 and completed a year later after much controversy. But Patrick Moorhead, founder of Moor Insights & Technology, said Compaq gave HP a huge boost in PCs and servers at a time it needed it. HP’s Proliant servers were the top sellers “since the inception of the category, helped by Compaq,” he noted.

But the Compaq deal did not pay off for HP shareholders, as Fortune’s Carol Loomis pointed out in her 2005 retrospective. Nor for HP/Compaq employees, some 26,000 or so of whom were laid offin the aftermath. The corporate combination, which was the industry’s largest merger at the time, was more about consolidating competitors (and customers) than bringing great products to market.

To be fair, that has become the M.O. for many of the tech deals that followed.

The Reign of Carly Fiorina

By most accounts except her own, Carly Fiorina’s stay at Compaq was a mess. (See the Compaq deal above.)

When Fiorina joined HP in 1999, she ushered in the era of the celebrity CEO. At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2004, for example, she shared the stage with Ben Affleck, Jimmy Iovine, Sheryl Crow, The Edge, and Gwen Stefani. For what had been an engineering-focused company this seemed the ultimate victory of flash over substance. As was the “big” HP news at the event which was the Apple iPod by HP. Yes, as Steven Levy pointed out recentlyon Medium, the company that was known for its ability to invent was now slapping its label on someone else’s device.

The day Fiorina was forced out in early 2005, HP share price jumped 6.9%.

收购EDS，涉足IT服务

2008年，惠普以139亿美元的价格收购了Electronic Data Systems（EDS）。当时的想法是EDS能让惠普更好地在高端IT服务领域立足，并通过帮助大企业选择、安装和运行IT产品来更好地和IBM抗衡。时任惠普CEO的马克•赫德非常痴迷于击败IBM这个念头。收购EDS前，惠普还曾出价180亿美元试图收购普华永道的咨询业务。后来，IBM收购了这项业务，交易价格仅为35亿美元。

那么，收购EDS效果如何呢？2012年，惠普为此减记了80亿美元的损失。

Autonomy，就要Autonomy

要想挖苦曾经或现在的惠普员工，只需要提一个名字，那就是Autonomy。

这是一家设在伦敦的企业软件公司，最出名的是搜索和增强现实技术。然而，惠普打算斥资111亿美元收购Autonomy的消息一出，人们不禁对这样的报价目瞪口呆。它实在是太高了。

被SAP免职后，李艾科成了惠普的董事和CEO。看来他并未注意到外界的反应，只管实施了这项收购。结果呢？欺诈诉讼和反诉，打官司，然后减记——没错，又是80亿美元。2011年9月李艾科被解雇，任职时间不到一年。

梅格•惠特曼时代

对于惠特曼，外界的普遍评价是能提供企业所需的“成人监管”，并让草木皆兵的投资者和分析师感到安心。有人曾在发布业绩的电话会议上开玩笑说，惠特曼是“分析师的知心姐姐”。

她还善于跟合作经销商培养感情或修补关系，后者则是惠普销售策略的重要组成部分。

作为李艾科的继任者，惠特曼上任后立即表示，惠普要用“好几年时间”来扭转局势。当时，没人想听到“好几年时间”这样的字眼，得有胆量才敢这么说。

但惠特曼带来的不全是利好。毕竟，正是她所在的这个董事会批准了对Autonomy的收购。2012年，《财富》杂志曾指出：

“2011年11月21日，CEO梅格•惠特曼将收购Autonomy列为惠普的“重中之重”。当时，包括新董事拉斐尔•威特沃斯在内，整个惠普董事会都为是次收购送上了祝福。2012年11月20日，惠特曼宣布将Autonomy的资产价值下调88亿美元，降幅达85%。”

嗯……

惠普董事会

大概10年前，惠普董事会经历了一次公关危机，尽管许多卷入其中的董事都挺了过来。这次危机被称为“借口门”，爆发原因是人们发现惠普雇佣调查者以非法手段取得董事和记者的通话记录，甚至进行窃听。这样做目的何在呢？是为了发现漏洞。而当时的惠普有许多漏洞。

《巴伦》杂志报道过赫德致惠普员工的电子邮件，大家可以借此感受一下当时的情况。整个事件都带有尼克松式的猜忌色彩。董事帕特丽夏•邓恩背了黑锅，但没人相信这样的不当行为是由她而起，或者会随她的离去而消失。

同时，许多人都认为，“借口门”之后惠普董事会仍未改掉向媒体泄露消息的毛病。比如说，2010年李艾科建议转让PC业务的消息就泄露了出去。

收购Palm

赫德希望惠普进入移动领域。2010年的惠普在这方面处于落后位置。他宣布，惠普计划收购Palm Computing。后者的掌上电脑Palm Pilot曾经风靡一时，而且当时的Palm确实前景光明。收购价约为10亿美元。Palm当时的移动操作系统webOS也较为新颖，但iPhone和黑莓手机随后在智能手机市场超越了Palm。收购Palm时，惠普曾承诺加大对移动业务的投入。仅一年后，李艾科治下的惠普对崭新的webOS平板电脑失去了耐性，而此时惠普进入这个市场还不到两个月。

收购3Par效果良好

斥资23.5亿美元收购存储设备制造商3Par是惠普较为成功的行动，此举看来效果良好。和戴尔的争夺导致收购价高于预期，但3Par的销售业绩一直是惠普财报中的亮点，它还显著提升了惠普同EMC及其他存储设备厂商展开竞争的能力。

在本周二的业绩发布会上，惠特曼说3Par的存储设备业务取得了全面胜利，“其年化营业额已达到5亿美元，而且在今年第四季度实现了三位数增长。”

Aruba Networks Wireless带来动力

惠普非常需要无线网络业务。今年早些时候以30亿美元的价格收购Aruba Networks让惠普得偿所愿。

HP分销商Camera Corner Connecting Point的首席执行官切尔尼克说，在和思科等网络设备公司的竞争中，Aruba Networks让惠普变得更有说服力。他指出：“惠普的交换机和网络产品很棒，但它需要无线业务。”

云山雾罩的云战略

惠普的云战略一直是个谜。如今这项战略被划分到了惠普企业（HP Enterprise）旗下。

由于多次更换负责人，惠普的云业务一直走走停停。两年前，该公司公布的计划是和亚马逊的Amazon Web Services展开正面争夺，将共享计算、存储和网络资源出售（或租赁）给企业客户。但惠普随后承认了亚马逊的市场主导地位，它先是淡化了这项计划，又在几个月前正式予以取消。

眼下，惠普的打算是利用私有云技术，让客户在自己的数据中心，或者用惠普经营的数据中心提供的专门（而非共享）资源进行运算，规模可大可小。在客户需要混合云时，惠普还会通过多种渠道让他们连接到亚马逊或微软的公共云。混合云允许客户将重要数据保存在自己的服务器和存储设备上，同时将其他数据或工作放在共享的公共云资源上。

HP bought Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion in 2008. The idea was that EDS would to give HP a better presence in high-end IT services—helping big businesses choose, install and run technology—so it could compete better with IBM IBM -0.43% . Beating IBM was something that very much interested then-HP chief executive Mark Hurd. Before launching this quest, HP had already broached then dropped an $18 billion bid for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting business, which IBM subsequently bought for a mere $3.5 billion.

So, how did the EDS acquisition go? HP ended up taking an $8 billion write-off related to the purchase in 2012.

Autonomy, Just Autonomy

If you want to get a rise out of a past or current HP employee, mention the “A word.”

Autonomy was a London-based enterprise software company known for its search and augmented reality technologies. But from the minute word of HP’s proposed $11.1 billion purchase leaked, people were dumbfounded at the price. It was just too high.

HP’s board and chief executive officer Leo Apotheker, a deposed executive from SAP SAP 0.46% , apparently didn’t get that memo and proceeded anyway. The result: Charges and countercharges of fraud, lawsuits, and yes, another$8 billion write-down. Apotheker was fired in September 2011 after less than a year on the job.

The Meg Whitman Era

Whitman is generally credited with providing adult supervision for a company that needed it and offering a reassuring presence for shell-shocked investors and analysts. Some joke that on the earnings calls, Whitman is something of an “analyst whisperer.”

She’s also been good at cultivating and repairing relationships with HP’s reseller partners—a key part of its sales strategy.

Whitman was named CEO after Apotheker and immediately said that HP was in the midst of a long-term, “multi-year” turnaround. Multi-year is not something anyone wanted to hear at that point, so that took guts.

But it’s not all good. Whitman, after all was on the board that approved the Autonomy deal. As Fortune pointed out in 2012:

On November 21, 2011, CEO Meg Whitman had toutedAutonomy as HP’s “priority #1, 2 and 3 for 2012.” The entire current HP board, excluding new board member Ralph Whitworth, blessed thepurchase. On November 20, 2012, Whitman announced an 85%, $8.8 billion write-down of the 2011 acquisition.

Hmmm.

The HP Board

Although many of the directors involved havemoved on, HP’s board of a decade or so ago presided over a PR disaster. The “Pretext-gate” scandal erupted when it was discovered that the company hired investigators that illegally obtained phone records of and otherwise spied on its own board members and reporters. The goal? Find the leaks. And there were many, many leaks.

Check out this Barron’s story on Hurd’s email to employees to get the feel for what happened but the whole thing reeked of Nixonian paranoia. Board member Patricia Dunn took the fall, but no one bought that the misbehavior started or ended with her.

And many don’t believe the board’s habit of leaking to the press died after Pretext-gate. Apotheker’s proposed move to sell off HP’s PC business, for example, was leaked in 2010.

Palm Purchase

Hurd wanted HP to get into the mobile business where it was a laggard so in 2010, he announcedplans to buy Palm Computing, home of the once-popular Palm Pilot, which had, frankly by then had seen better days. The price was about $1 billion. Palm had a newish operating system for mobile, the webOS, but had been passed by in the smartphone market by Apple iPhone and Blackberry. At the time of the acquisition, HP promised to double-down in mobile. Fast forward a year, and HP, now run by Apotheker, blew up its brand-new webOS-based tablet after less than two months on the market.

3Par Pays Off

On a brighter note, HP’s $2.35 billion purchase of storage maker 3Par seems to have paid off. HP won the prize after a bidding war with Dell, leading to a higher-than-expected purchase price, but 3Par sales have since been a high point on HP earnings calls and 3Par gives HP a much better storage story to compete with EMC EMC -0.20% and other storage players.

On HP’s earnings call Tuesday, Whitman said 3Par’s all-slash storage hit a “$500 million annualized run rate business and grew triple digits in the fourth quarter.”

Aruba Networks Wireless a Boost

HP needed wireless networking expertise bad. With its $3 billion acquisition of Aruba Networks earlier this year, it got that.

HP reseller Chernick said Aruba gives HP a more compelling way to sell against Cisco and other networking vendors. “HP’s switches and networking were great, but it needed wireless,” he noted.

Cloudy Cloud Strategy

HP’s cloud strategy, which will now live within the HP Enterprise unit, has been a mystery.

There have been several starts and stop under different cloud executives. Two years ago, the stated plan was to compete head-on with Amazon Web Services to sell (or rent) shared computing, storage, and networking resources to business customers. In a nod to Amazon’s AMZN 0.62% market dominance, that plan was at first downplayed, thenofficially scuttled a few months ago.

Now HP’s idea is to offer private cloud technology that lets customers run variable workloads in their own data centers or on resources dedicated to them (not shared) in HP-run data centers. And it will offer ways for those customers to also connect to Amazon or Microsoft MSFT -1.03% public clouds as needed in a hybrid cloud scenario. Hybrid cloud will let customers keep important data on their own servers and storage but put other data or other jobs onto shared public cloud resources.

惠普的诞生地，加州帕拉奥图市的一处车库和小屋已经翻修一新。

今后，惠普企业和惠普公司（HP Inc.）面临的最大挑战都是证明自己不光能通过收购来积累技术，还能像当初的惠普那样打造新颖而可靠的技术，至少可以部分重现当初的情景。

资产管理公司Bain Capital Ventures董事总经理萨利尔•戴希潘德早年曾在惠普当过两次实习生。他认为，和专注于制造产品的公司相比，惠普等老牌企业看起来更像经销商和销售商。

请不要误解，销售部门很重要。然而，如果一家公司造不出人们想要的产品，销售一无用处。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

校对：詹妮

The renovated HP garage and shed in Palo Alto, Calif.

The biggest challenge for both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. going forward is to prove that they are not just about rolling up acquired technologies but can return at least partly to HP’s roots of building innovative and solid technologies.

Salil Deshpande, managing director of Bain Capital Ventures—who did two internships at HP earlier in his career—said legacy companies including but not limited to HP seem to be more distribution and sales organizations than product builders.

Don’t get me wrong, sales organizations are important, but if the company doesn’t make a product people wants, they’re useless.