What’s next for HP: Five things to watch for

How can this wacky Hewlett-Packard saga get even nuttier? LOTS of ways. Here are a few things to ponder going forward.

1: Track Jon Rubinstein.  The former Apple hardware whiz , aka The Podfather,  went to the beach for awhile before getting snapped up by Palm. Now that HP’s TouchPad is dead (or IS it?) he might be looking for other things to do and it would be extremely tantalizing if he ended up back at Cupertino’s Infinite Loop for Apple now that Steve Jobs has left the building. Of course, there were some hard feelings when Rubinstein took a hike, so it remains to be seen if Tim Cook would deign to let him back in. Continued »

HP PCs are dead, long live HP PCs!

Talk about mixed messages.

First Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker says the company might spin off or sell off its huge PC business and kill off its new TouchPads. Then a cadre of other HP execs hit the phones to tell partners–the partners that HP has pushed to sell more, more, more PCs and laptops– that PCs remain a priority at HP. Continued »

HP to make good on TouchPad refunds

Hewlett-Packard will, in fact, offer full refunds to  VARs for any TouchPad tablets they have in inventory. it will also “price protect” customers who bought the TouchPad at full price. But it’s not advertising that fact. Continued »

HP reverbs continue to roil partners, Wall Street

Hewlett-Packard PR would really, really like to talk to reporters about its VMworld news next week. But I’m guessing there aren’t many takers given recent HP bombshells.

Last week, CEO Leo  Apotheker told the world that HP was killing the new, heavily-hyped TouchPads, might sell off/spin off its huge PC division, and was exploring options for WebOS.

Oh, and it would buy little-known Autonomy for $10.3 billion.

One HP partner reached on Friday needed to be talked off the ledge.

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HP to dump WebOS TouchPads, phones

In a shocking move, Hewlett-Packard will deep-six its nascent WebOS TouchPad and phone efforts. You know, all the “hot” new products it touted at its annual Americas Partner Conference  That was five months ago. Continued »

HP without PCs? Not so unthinkable

Hewlett-Packard is on the verge of spinning off its PC business, if reports out of Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal are accurate. Continued »

iPhone 5 boom, VAR wars and other takeaways from GreenPages Summit

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Unsurprisingly, cloud was top of mind at this week’s GreenPages Solutions Summit 2011.

About a hundred or so GreenPages customers–IT professionals from organizations ranging from area hospitals to Liberty Mutual Insurance and Stratus Computer — came to hear GreenPages’ cloud pitch, specifically the VAR’s planned “data bus” that would help them move data from on-premises data centers to hybrid and/or public clouds. But that was the official news. Here’s the real scuttlebutt. Continued »

VCE channel guy Koliopoulos jumps ship

Pete Koliopoulos, who shepherded The VCE Co. through some early rough waters around its channel game plan, left the company and joined Arrow as VP of marketing for Arrow ECS, according to his LinkedIn bio.

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Oracle to HP: Leave Adrian Jones alone

Oracle is demanding that Hewlett-Packard drop its trade-secret-theft suit against Adrian Jones.

Jones, a former channel chief and sales executive for HP , left in February ostensibly following former HP CEO Mark Hurd to Oracle. Now that Oracle and HP are hardware rivals the antipathy is running high between companies that were once pretty tightly aligned. Continued »

Muglia moves on to Juniper

Bob Muglia, the respected exec who led Microsoft’s gigantic server and tools business as well as Azure, has surfaced. At Juniper Networks.

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