John Lee wrote:

> An analyst interviewed on CNBC today thinks that HP's Board is trending out of the hardware business and going to concentrate on software and become a software company.

If that's correct, a lot of HP's enterprise customers should be trying to calculate the rate of trending away from NonStop, VMS and HP-UX servers. All of which operate with Itanium chips. No growth there anymore. And that's the wrong kind of software, if last week is a good indicator.

It's hard to see HP giving up on the ProLiants, so profitable, and really leading in their space for blade servers. So at the very least, that's much slower trending. HP is still signing up new ProLiant customers.

Does storage count as hardware? HP is competitive and profitable in that sector, too. Not sure about the margins there -- have to check with my pal Scott Hirsh, or as he's known on Twitter, @MisterStorage. (Once led the SIGSYSMAN group and a 3000 shop in San Francisco.)

Then there's the printer business, which is certainly hardware for about 30 days in any customer's life. Then they become an HP customer for ink and paper. Big margins there, one $17 cartridge at a time. HP talked up its "increasing page count" for its honking-big Indigo commercial printers. But that's "page count," not "hardware units sold count." Again, ink and paper, but much larger quantities than $17 a throw.

The surprise to me during the pullout of last week was how short the leash looks for WebOS. CEO Leo is a software guy, but his idea of software isn't an OS, it's Autonomy -- the UK firm that managed to sell $850 million of SaaS last year. Or, fewer sales than those stalled NonStop, VMS and HP-UX businesses post in half as many months. I don't know what magic HP will manage to spin an $850-mil company into a business big enough to replace its profitable hardware lines.

Is there a chart for trending on magic?

Ron

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