Guild Companies

With the entire company's server platforms moving toward a unified Itanium-based platform, it was inevitable that Hewlett-Packard would eventually consolidate its server units, which have heritages that stretch back decades at different companies (Compaq, Digital, HP, and Convex, just to name a few), into a single, streamlined organization. And last Friday, that is exactly what the company did. The announcement came days before an HP analyst conference where the company is expected to divulge its unified enterprise computing strategy.

Since the acquisition of Compaq last year, HP has been operating three separate hardware units underneath the Enterprise Systems Group (ESG) headed up by executive vice president Peter Blackmore, the top Compaq executive within HP. The Industry Standard Server (ISS) within ESG was headed up by Mary McDowell, and it was essentially the Compaq ProLiant server business without much changes. The Business Critical Systems (BCS) unit was an HP unit that had the company's PA-RISC HP 9000 Unix servers in it prior to the acquisition, and into this was rolled the Compaq AlphaServer Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS server businesses and the Compaq NonStop fault tolerant business. Both HP and Compaq had their own fairly large storage units, which were more or less merged. This organization had too many vice presidents protecting too many pieces of turf, and that is the main reason HP has shuffled all the deck chairs, creating a new unified hardware unit called the Enterprise Storage and Server unit. This consolidation had been slated for next year, when HP actually had a consolidated server platform out the door, but in the interests in returning the unit to profitability, HP's CEO and chairman, Carly Fiorina, decided to get on with it a little earlier.

Scott Stollard has been named senior vice president in charge of ESS. Prior to this appointment, he was in charge of the Business Critical Servers unit. McDowell, who came from the Compaq side, was obviously a potential candidate for the top spot in the new ESS organization, has taken a short sabbatical and plans to return to HP in an unnamed senior vice president position. (There is some talk about whether McDowell's sabbatical drove the consolidation earlier than planned, or McDowell's sabbatical is a result of the shuffling.) Stollard continues to report to Blackmore, and he will have four vice presidents reporting to him. Rich Marcello heads BCS, Brad Anderson heads ISS, Bob Shultz heads Network Storage Solutions, and Pauline Nist heads up NonStop servers. If McDowell had remained in charge of ISS, she would have been demoted from a senior VP position to a VP position.

ESG gets a whole new unit under the reorganization, too. Howard Elias has been tapped as a senior vice president of the Business Management and Operations group, reporting to Blackmore. This unit will be responsible for the strategy, marketing, business planning, operations, IT infrastructure, and quality control of the ESG division of HP. Elias formerly headed up HP's storage business. HP has also created a Global Accounts special team within ESG to chase the big, multinational business that has traditionally been the turf controlled by rival IBM. Airton Gimenes, who is senior vice president in charge of HP Services Sales, has been named to head this unit, with the same title of senior VP. Gimenes will report jointly to Blackmore and Ann Livermore, the executive vice president who heads up HP Services.