Reorganizing
The Executive Suite:
HP,
CA, SCO
HP Surprises The Industry By Picking
Hurd Of NCR
Right
from the start, it was clear that when Carly Fiorina left her post
as CEO of HP, her replacement was unlikely to be an insider. No one seemed to have been groomed for that part and many
senior executives had left the company during Carly’s last months
in office.
Nevertheless,
the jaded computer industry seemed honestly surprised by the
selection of NCR CEO Mark Hurd as Fiorina’s replacement.
Much of the surprise seemed to center on the fact that he
came from a much smaller company, about a tenth the size of HP, and
much less complex in its product diversity, its customer sets, and
its unresolved problems.
Hurd
hasn’t had much to say yet, other than to note that he’s new to
the job and that he wants to do a lot of listening and talking (to
employees, customers, and partners) before he puts a plan for HP on
the table. However, he
has noted that HP will have to make cuts to return to profitability
and some of those cuts have already begun.
We’d expect more – a lot more – to follow.
He’s
got some great stuff to work with here – HP has an outstanding
position in the printer and consumer PC markets and a well deserved
reputation for outstandingly robust products and service, but (you
knew there would be a but, didn’t you?) their enterprise business,
especially the software and services business, has taken a long time
in search of profitability. HP
tells us they expect to reach that illusive but highly desired goal
by calendar year end, reaching $1 billion in software sales.
That sounds like a good goal and we wish them luck.
We’ll
withhold judgment on Mr. Hurd until we’ve had a chance to meet
him, hear his plans, and see how they play in the marketplace.
CA Changes Its Business Unit Alignment
CA
recently completed a business unit alignment designed to permit it
to be more accountable to business and customer needs and more
responsive to fast moving management software market.
You’ll see from announcements (e.g., Mergers and
Acquisitions) noted elsewhere that fast moving is an understatement.
CA’s
goal is to leverage its experience and its broad product portfolio
across platforms, systems, applications and technology stacks.
The focus continues to be on systems and security management
for the enterprise. The
realignment is being undertaken under the direction of new CEO John
Swainson who believes it will help maintain focus and give CA the
necessary accountability.
CA
has created five business units, with each accountable for all the
aspects of management and financial performance of their unit,
including profit and loss, product development and innovation,
product marketing, staffing, strategic planning and execution, and
customer satisfaction. CA anticipates being able to provide
some financial metrics by business unit with its first quarter
fiscal year 2006 financial reports.
Executive Vice President for Products Russell Artzt will
oversee all of the business units.
He notes that some functions will remain centralized to
streamline management.
The
five business units include:
Enterprise Systems Management:
Alan F. Nugent, Senior VP and General Manager.
Mr. Nugent was recently recruited from Novell where he was
CTO. This group will
focus on systems and management solutions for database and mainframe
systems and will include CA’s Unicenter product line.
Security Management: Toby Weiss Senior Vice President and General Manager. Areas of
focus include identity and access management, threat management and
security information management.
Storage Management:
Chris Broderick
Senior Vice President and General Manager.
Business
Service Optimization (BSO): Jacob
Lamm, Senior Vice President and General Manager of BSO.
This new area of focus for CA will leverage life cycle and systems
management technologies and focus on Business Service Optimization.
These solutions will help customers with business process modeling,
IT governance, IT service management and enterprise change
management.
Products
Group: Mark Combs, Senior Vice President and General Manager.
This newly formed group will be composed of solutions from a
number of CA brands that fall outside of CA’s core areas of
systems and security management.
These products are critical to customers, and generate significant
revenue for CA.
New Chairman At SCO
If
you’ve lost touch with the SCO legal hijinks, you might be
interested in this little corner of their world.
It seems that a significant part of SCO’s stock was held by
The Canopy Group, Ray Noorda’s (Novell founder) holding company.
As
part of a settlement to a bitter dispute between Canopy’s
management and the Noorda family, Ralph Yarro III, a former Canopy
executive, received all of Canopy’s shares of The SCO Group, Inc.
Stock. This makes Yarro
Canopy’s largest stockholder, with 5.2 million shares, or about
30% of SCO’s stock. Canopy
no longer has any interest in SCO.
Yarro was and continues to be the chairman of the SCO board.
This
settlement (which included several other Canopy former executives),
ended the dispute.
Blake
Stowell, a spokesperson for SCO, does not expect Yarro to make any
changes in SCO’s plans with respect to the ongoing UNIX
litigation.
