惠普是怎樣“迷路”的

????惠普公司上周二宣布，隨著惠普將分拆成兩家公司，它還將繼續裁員28,000人至33,000人。這也是長期麻煩纏身的惠普為重整旗鼓而做出的又一次努力。

????上世紀90年代后期，惠普的增長陷入停滯，時任CEO的劉?普拉特也嘗試過分拆，那一次惠普將醫療產品與測量儀器部門分拆了出去。邁進千禧年后，惠普在一連串CEO的主導下進行了多次大規模的收購，首先是現在正在競選美國總統的卡莉?費歐莉娜于2002年以190億美元收購了康柏電腦，其次是馬克?赫德以139億美元收購IT服務商電子數據系統公司，最后是李艾科耗資111億美元收購了Autonomy公司。

????從2011年起，惠普進入了現在的梅格?惠特曼時代。在惠特曼上臺后不久，《財富》曾專門撰文報道過惠普公司面臨的危機，并指出了擺在這位新CEO面前的任務：

????“簡單地說，惠普已經迷路了。這家公司已經陷入生存危機。盡管惠普仍然是個龐然大物，在《財富》500強榜單中位列第10位，去年（2011年）的銷售額高達1270億美元，但是它的發展軌跡給人以不祥之感。比如，惠普2011年的利潤比前一年低了19%?；萜盏臉I務在幾乎各個領域都受到了沖擊，市場份額日益縮水，利潤持續下降?！?/p>

????核心業務遭遇的長期威脅，再加上一個弱勢的董事會和一個沒選好的CEO李艾科，混合成為一個潛在的火藥桶。在這位58歲的歐洲軟件高管執掌惠普后的11個月期間，這個火藥桶終于災難性地爆炸了。事實上，理解惠普今天之窘境的最佳方式莫過于回顧并審視李艾科的動蕩任期?！敦敻弧返恼{查表明，在李艾科時期，惠普的混亂要比之前的報道更加嚴重（到了讓人無法相信的程度）。首先，李艾科是惠普匆匆忙忙招募來的，此前在惠普的核心業務領域沒有任何經驗。其次，公司的幾個重大戰略決策都做成了“夾生飯”。此外，惠普最高管理層對李艾科形成的掣肘，也是媒體此前從未報道過的。事實上，惠普董事長雷?萊恩才是決定公司戰略決策的主要實權人物——他后來把種種過錯一股腦地都推在了李艾科身上。

????隨著55歲的梅格?惠特曼的上任，外界針對惠普的批評也有所緩和。到目前為止，惠特曼的戰略一言以蔽之就是：讓我們一邊搞清楚我們的長期計劃，一邊執行得好一些。這么干也不是不可以，至少目前看來效果還行。但除非惠特曼和董事會之間能夠通力合作，更重要的是，除非惠特曼能夠真正回答“惠普究竟是什么”這一問題，否則惠普將永遠無望恢復昔日的榮光。

????四年前的那篇文章，在一定程度上反映了惠普今天的發展方向：

????“惠普做夢都想成為的那家公司——也就是IBM，已經通過另一種策略實現了業績飆升。它拋棄了PC業務，專注于高利潤的軟件和服務。這讓我想起了一個在工程師圈內流傳甚廣的段子，這個故事可能是虛構的，但很能說明問題：兩位來訪的咨詢顧問站在一家大公司的總部大樓里等電梯，其中一位來自IBM，另一位來自惠普。IBM的顧問按了向上的電梯按鈕，去大樓頂層去見CEO，惠普的顧問卻按了向下的按鈕，去見IT部門。這個段子傳遞的信息很清楚：IBM是和王者打交道的，而惠普則是趴在地上‘修理管道’的。它也并非只是個比喻：IBM的稅前利潤只略低于20%，比赫德治下的惠普（8.7%）高出一倍還多?！?/p>

????這個將近5年前的段子很能說明問題，它也進一步解釋了惠特曼為什么近年來致力于把惠普打造成一個領先的云服務提供商。不過這條路也是充滿挑戰的，因為亞馬遜、微軟、谷歌和IBM等競爭對手已經主宰了云市場，惠普要想在這個領域突破重圍并非易事。（財富中文網）

????譯者：樸成奎

????審校：任文科

????Hewlett-Packard will lay off 28,000 to 33,000 workers as it prepares to split into two companies, it announced Tuesday. The move is the latest in a long time of turnaround efforts for the beleaguered HP.

????When the company’s growth stalled in the late 1990’s, then-CEO Lew Platt also opted for a split, spinning off HP’s original medical products and test and measurement devices unit. The next decade would bring a string of mega-mergers under a long line of various CEOs, starting with now-Presidential-hopeful Carly Fiorina and her $19 billion Compaq acquisition in 2002, then the $13.9 billion purchase of IT services company Electronic Data Systems under Mark Hurd and finally the $11.1 billion acquisition of Autonomy under Leo Apotheker.

????Then came the era of now-CEO Meg Whitman, who’s been at the helm since 2011. A look back at Fortune’s coverage of the state of HP shortly after Whitman took the reins reveals a company in crisis, emphasizing the task ahead for the new CEO:

????“Simply put, Hewlett-Packard has lost its way. The company is in the midst of an existential crisis. It remains a behemoth, No. 10 on the Fortune 500, with $127 billion in sales last year [2011] and $7 billion in earnings. But the trajectory is ominous. Those profits, for example, were 19% lower in 2011 than in the previous year. HP’s business is under siege on almost every front, losing market share and facing declining margins.

????It was a combustible mixture: long-term threats to the business combined with an impaired board and an ill-chosen CEO in Léo Apotheker (LAY-o AH-po-teck-er). The three ignited disastrously during the 11 months that the 58-year-old European software executive ran HP. Indeed, there’s no better way to understand the company’s plight today than to examine his tumultuous tenure. A Fortune investigation reveals that the turmoil of Apotheker’s reign was even more intense (hard as that is to believe) than previously reported. From the slapdash hiring of a man with no experience in HP’s biggest lines of business, to the half-baked ways in which the company tackled major strategic decisions; from the never-before-reported internal challenges to Apotheker by top executives, to the fact that HP chairman Ray Lane was a major force in the company’s strategic decisions—which he has since blamed on Apotheker…

????With Whitman, 55, now in place, the acrimony at HP seems to have eased. So far her strategy amounts to this: Let’s execute better while we figure out our long-term plan. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But the company will never come close to reclaiming its former glory unless she and the board can find a way to function together and, most important, until she can answer the real question: What is HP?”

????The profile also reflects on where HP would end up almost four years later:

????“The company HP dreamed of being, IBM, had soared by taking a different tack: It dumped its PC business and focused on high-margin software and services. That prompted what is probably an apocryphal, but telling, anecdote among enterprise techies: Two visiting consultants are waiting for the elevator at a big company’s headquarters. One is from HP, the other from IBM. The consultant from Big Blue pushes the up button to visit the CEO on the top floor. The HP man, by contrast, hits the down button to see the IT guy in the basement. The message was clear: IBM IBM 0.60% was consorting with kings while HP was on hands and knees, fixing the plumbing. It wasn’t just a metaphor either: IBM’s pretax profit margins, just under 20%, were more than double the 8.7% HP achieved in Hurd’s last year.”

????That anecdote from nearly five years ago is telling, and may give further insight into where Whitman hopes to bring the company with her latest move–one that aims to make HP HPQ 5.02% a leading player in cloud services. Still, that path is a challenging one: Rivals like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM are already dominating the cloud market, and it won’t be easy for HP to break through.