HP’s new CEO has unveiled his strategy for the company. The debut was accompanied by an epic press release. Some of my favorite parts:
“Connected World” – hopefully Paul Allen won’t call from the 1990s and ask for his strategy back.
“…its vision to provide seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for the connected world” – it probably sounds better in the original German.
“…continue delivering unparalleled value” – that sounds suspiciously like more of the same actually. So much for the break from the Hurd era.
“…well positioned to win through a compelling combination of financial strength, unmatched scale and global reach, and market-leading positions that span from the consumer to the enterprise” – translation: we’re big and not entirely sure what we do either.
“…convergence” – the 1990s may just want to put HP on speed dial.
“Powerful trends like consumerization, cloud computing and connectivity are redefining the way people live, businesses operate and the world works.” – I’d always use ‘live, work and play’ when composing this sentence. It rolls off the tongue a little better.
“…massive, agile and open” – massive and agile so often go hand-in-hand.
“…leveraging” – once.
“Meanwhile, the cloud is combining with mobility to create ubiquitous connectivity.” – ’meanwhile’? Evidently you have to follow multiple plotlines.
“…leverage” – twice.
“…trusted partner” – naturally.
“…continue enhancing HP’s offerings across its broad hardware, software and services portfolio to meet evolving customer demands while also leveraging its core strengths to develop the cloud- and connectivity-based solutions of the future to meet the needs of consumers, small and midsize companies and large enterprises.” – this should really help employees with what NOT to do.
“…trusted leader” – is leader an upgrade from partner?
“…a four-point strategy” – the big decision was whether to have a three or four-point strategy.
“…leveraging” – thrice.
“…core strength in cloud” – you can’t spell Heffalump without the letters H and P. But ‘cloud’, not so much.
“…trusted partner” – on second thought, partner was better.
“…delivering the connected world” – can I get that delivered to my house overnight?
“…leverage” – not sure what comes after thrice.
“…build a robust developer community that is eager” – you can lead a horse (or insert your own CAML joke) to water, but you can’t make him eager.
“…leveraging” – starting to think this is coded reference to printer cartridge business.
“…unmatched” – true, no other company looks even remotely like HP.
“…a multitude of initiatives” – so more than four then?
“…three strategic areas” – uh, oh, now we’ve lost one.
“…leverage” – at this point we can just call him Leo Archimedes.
“…higher-value” – higher than what?
“…greater strategic value” – ah, higher in strategery.
“A device-aware HP cloud…” – eServices lives!
“…a leader in the area of connectivity” – look out AT&T?
“The focus on performance will come through a program focusing on growth, operational excellence and quality.” – looking forward to reading the white paper on this.
“At HP, our mission is to deliver seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world.” – repeated just in case anyone didn’t memorize it up front.
Here is the word cloud if that helps.
In HP’s defense, the only thing worse than reading this kind of press releases is writing them. It is next to impossible to put a coherent and concrete story together that spans all the provinces of vast technology conglomerates, so you’re left with sweeping platitudes. Been there, done that.
Disclosures: a delighted seller of all my HPQ at $49.
