Cortlandt writes:
> "Quite the contrary", you reply, "the HP e3000 is alive and well and
> continues to get active attention from HP." And so you convince
> management that their IT department is in good hands and they go away
> happy.
>
> Happy that is, until they read not one but several articles quoting HP
> officials who never mention the HP 3000. Now management comes back
> and says "I've read the articles and the HP 3000 is never mentioned.
> At least IBM stands behind their proprietary operating systems."
> Their response falls just short of asking "why did you have to lie to
> us?" It is really hard (or impossible) to come up with a response
> that doesn't sound a bit lame and/or suspicious.
There is a reasonably transparent solution to the marketing problem that
Cortlandt describes and HP faces, and one that I've advocated for about five
years now. The solution is to make CSY a wholly-owned, but otherwise
completely independent subsidiary of HP.
When I originally proposed this, Harry Sterling was GM. In this proposal,
Harry would have been made CEO-for-life, with no recourse to transfer back to
HP. If this new company were to be formed, the captain should have at least
an equal commitment to the success of the new ship as has anyone on board.
Now that Winston Prather is GM, I would make the same offer to Winston.
The advantage that this newly named, privately-held company would have is
that it would be free to openly advertise the value of its solutions -- and
freely and very directly compare them to the alternatives: IBM, Sun, Oracle,
Microsoft, and even HP's other offerings. While the new company can't be all
things to all people, and it should never try to be, it would start off life
with one heck of a product, well-tested, very stable, of proven reliability,
and an extremely loyal user base. Indeed, if this new company constrained
itself to only promoting the HP3000 and the IMAGE DBMS, I believe that it has
every possibility of being quite successful over the long run.
Wirt Atmar
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