WHITE PAPERS SPONSORED PROFILES JOB BOARD WEBINAR CENTER FREE SOFTWARE BZ RESEARCH ALMSHAREPOINT EVENTS CALENDAR PRINT/PDF EDITION PRINT/PDF BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL CALENDAR EDITORIAL BEATS GUEST VIEW GUIDE SD TIMES 100 GUIDE EVENTS CALENDAR ADVERTISING ARTICLE REPRINTS REPORT A BUG SITE MAP

ABOUT US BZ MEDIA NEWS BZ RESEARCH NEWS ON MONDAY SPTECHREPORT SPTECHWEB SPTECHCON IPHONE/IPAD DEVCON ANDROID DEVCON PRIVACY POLICY CONTACT US

HOME >> OPINIONS

Short Takes: HP takes another shot at services market

By SD Times News Team

June 1, 2008 — (Page 1 of 3)
HP buys EDS, aka, "HP Global Services"

Big Blue's biggest weapon has long been its services arm. As the saying goes, when you buy enterprise "solutions" from IBM, the bulk of the sale is the van full of services folks with packed suitcases, ready to move into your office for good. It’s a simple, yet Faustian, bargain: You give them all your money, and they take care of everything. Forever.

IBM Global Services differentiates IBM from, say, Microsoft, which sells its software through the channel, leaving the lucrative services business for partners. In a few cases, as with its Avenade joint venture with Accenture, Microsoft does capture some services revenue, but otherwise, Microsoft doesn't play in that world.

Hewlett-Packard is another Big Blue competitor that just doesn't measure up when it comes to services and service revenue. Eight years ago, HP almost bought PricewaterhouseCoopers, but pulled back from the deal. Instead, IBM snapped up PwC a couple of years later, for a lot less dough.

Now, apparently, HP is ready to try again by purchasing Electronic Data Systems for almost US$14 billion. The day before the sale was announced, EDS’ shares soared 28% on the news, while HP’s fell by 5%. The next day, HP lost another 5% and change, which is hardly a vote of confidence.

To me, this doesn't seem like a good deal. But then again, I'm skeptical about HP's ability to take full advantage of its large acquisitions. HP never achieved the value it could have from the Compaq fiasco, and the jury is still out as to whether HP and Mercury Interactive are better off as a single company. Certainly, Mercury's competitors remain delighted about the acquisition—and the amount of business they picked up because of it.

Alan Zeichick

Please don’t send unprintable PDFs

Pointless annoyances are unwelcome. Take notes, Adobe Systems. While the nice folks at Adobe’s PR operation are responsive, and well, nice… they have the bad habit of sending me press releases in PDF format with rights management enabled.

Related Search Term(s): Adobe, Apple, HP

Pages 1 2 3

Share this link: http://sdt.bz/32207

Most Read Latest News Blog Resources

Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers

ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists

Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles

Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.

The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...

Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...

Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...

Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...

Technorati

Digg

Slashdot

Facebook

Friendfeed

Twitter

del.icio.us

Zeichick’s Take: Was Apple right about Flash? The company picked HTML5 over Adobe's technology; time has proven it to be the right decision

Zeichick’s Take: No winners in the Apple-Adobe imbroglio over Flash and HTML5 While Apple's moves will work for it in the long run, it short-term moves are bad for developers

From the Editors: Of course we have predictions What's in store for 2012? And what will gesture controls bring to software development?

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment

Zeichick’s Take: Was Apple right about Flash?
The company picked HTML5 over Adobe's technology; time has proven it to be the right decision Read More...

News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>

Download Current Issue
FEBRUARY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
02/09/2012 02:16 PM EST

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
02/07/2012 11:57 AM EST

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
02/04/2012 01:57 PM EST

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
02/03/2012 12:17 PM EST

Facebook claims hacker cred
Facebook's SEC S-1 filing form includes a short essay on the Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
02/02/2012 08:26 AM EST

Ryan Dahl steps down
Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js, steps back from his position as gatekeeper for the project.
02/01/2012 04:58 PM EST