
SAP Nation Excerpts: Preface
Amazon has released SAP Nation on the Kindle. Over the next few weeks the book will be available in other print and eBook formats. As I have done with my other books, I plan to excerpt here about 10% of the book over the next several weeks for my blog readers. Let’s start with the […]

The eBay Turnaround that Never Had to Be: Now Here’s the Rest of the Story
Read an interesting account of John Donahoe’s turnaround at eBay in Business Insider. It’s a fascinating discussion that revolves around relatively few premises for how the turnaround was accomplished. Here are the money quotes: He de-emphasized eBay’s auction business and started describing the company as a “technology partner” to retailers small and large. eBay added clients Home Depot, […]

M&A The HP Way – Why the Autonomy deal was doomed, and what can’t be done to save HP
The latest debacle at Hewlett-Packard involving the allegations of accounting wrong-doing at Autonomy make for a particularly sticky wicket for CEO Meg Whitman. While there have been some attempts to blame her predecessor, Léo Apotheker, for the decision to buy Autonomy, it’s impossible for Whitman to avoid taking ultimate responsibility for the deal. And when […]

Has HP bottled it?
After a terrible quarter, someone in HP has made the decision to run and hide – to cancel their September analyst event – an unprecedented action for a leading tech services provider to take

Making HP Matter Before It’s Too Late
It’s a sad day when the bar is set so low that a company’s most successful endeavor in recent memory involves a new slogan and ad campaign tied to the Olympics, and the best news to date is that it won a lawsuit it should never have had to engage in. Such is the state of Hewlett-Packard today, a […]

HP Self Destruction Fully Implemented
This is a devastating expose on the dysfunctional upper echelon at HP: “The company is coming apart at the seams,” said one person familiar with H.P.’s operations. “Because they may or may not be selling the PC business, the enterprise side is completely frozen. The business customers who buy tens of thousands of these machines […]