HP Article

I met with HP at the recent info 360 show, and Palo Alto-based technology giant really seemed to have lot of good stuff going on in the ECM market. This includes the recent release of its Capture and Route document scanning for MFP  solution, as well as improvements to the TRIM records management system to make it more enterprise-ready. Word is that some of the Autonomy search technology is now being incorporated in TRIM, and that the Cardiff (remember Cardiff Teleform?) capture platform is at least being considered. HP also had some nice refreshed scanners at its booth.

That said, we recently read in Brian Bissett's excellent MFP Report that HP is having all kinds of problems with the software for its popular Digital Sender network scanner and that a fix is not expected until this fall - a year after originally planned. Not sure how much of that is reflective of the macro issues at HP, but here is an excellent article from CNN that details some of the problems HP has been having. (It's a long one but well written.)

Here's an excerpt that talks about some of the struggles that technology developers at HP have faced as a result of cost cutting measures to improve HP's struggling bottom line: "Hurd's early initiatives to pare spending were valuable and necessary. But as time went on it became harder to find waste, and the results became extreme. Employees practically needed an act of Congress to get approval to buy a piece of software. The headquarters of the tech company did not have Wi-Fi. And some minions took Hurd's edicts to self-defeating lengths. At HP's office in Fort Collins, Colo., for example, the lights shut off automatically at 6 p.m. every day, effectively forcing workers to go home. An intrepid few brought their own lamps to the office, only to be scolded by facilities managers, who told them to remove the lights."

Yes, that's pretty harsh. I'll only say that, at least in our market, HP certainly has an impressive collection of technology, people, and services - with not only their own developed stuff, but acquisitions of Autonomy, Tower, and EDS contributing as well. I'd like to see HP figure it out, but I'm not sure how much dead weight it is carrying in the overall organization.