More Thoughts on HP and Knightsbridge

Having worked in a high-tech company that was a competitor to HP I’ve got some thoughts to add after reading Andy’s post “Santa Comes Early for HP.”  Similar to HP, this company was driven by hardware but also sold software and had a professional services organization. Software and services were always poor step-children to hardware.

Just look at HP's BI/DW offerings and what you see from HP is hardware and software to manage the infrastructure. But everything specific to BI/DW is from partners - software and systems integrators.

I was at PwC Consulting when IBM announced it was acquiring it, and based on my previous experience, I left before the acquisition was completed. I did so because I wanted to provide objective and independent consulting (not that IBM Services doesn’t, but that’s not how I felt personally).

I am sure most consultants who moved into IBM Services have enjoyed working there. At the time of the acquisition, with the US economy in a recession and many H-1Bs not really having viable options, the overwhelming majority of consultants became IBM employees. But I know many who left, if not right away like I did, then when the economy recovered. There was a perceived cultural difference felt by some of the former PwC consultants and they eventually walked.

It is certainly understandable why Knightsbridge sold itself to HP and why HP bought them. But buying something for the right reasons may not always translate into knowing what to do with it. The consultants at Knightsbridge certainly won’t feel any impact at first – they’ll stay on their current client projects and be just as successful on those projects regardless of whether they were independent or part of a high tech titan.

HP has a huge partner network.  Their “About HP Services” states:

"Complemented by a global network of partners, HP Services helps bolster your business agility with an experienced team of more than 69,000 professionals that includes:

23,000 Microsoft specialists
18,000 UNIX specialists
4,500 Cisco specialists
3,000 Linux specialists
7,500 network & systems management specialists
5,000 storage specialists
6,300 OpenVMS engineers"

Will the 700 Knightsbridge employees feel a culture shock? Will the difference in culture matter to the new HP employees? It will take a little time to see how well the acquisition really works and if the real asset – the consultants – stay for the long-term or move on to more independent (at least perceived by them) consulting organizations.