X
Business

HP reportedly handing out more pink slips within Autonomy unit

A leaked memo from Hewlett-Packard reveals that there is more trouble in the Autonomy unit: It's being downsized.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

Hewlett-Packard is downsizing its Autonomy unit again, based on a new leaked memo published by AllThingsD on Monday.

Reportedly written by Robert Youngjohns, the general manager of the Autonomy/Information Management business unit at HP since September, the main point of the note is this: while the unit is going to hire more engineers, other team members are going to be cut.

A full copy of the memo is available in the AllThingsD report, but here's an excerpt:

Secondly, with the announcement of Aurasma 2.0, we are ready to move to the next stage of this exciting business and focus on commercialization and revenue generation, including plans to feature Aurasma in products from other parts of HP – notably PPS, where the technology is key to PPS’s strategic intent to link print back to the Internet making it an equal mobile, social, and cloud citizen with digital display technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets, PC’s, and TV). For instance, our close collaboration with the team on the ‘HP Live Photo’ app for iOS is one of the first instances of product integration in action.

Youngjohns went on to say that some employees will be shifted elsewhere in the company. However, based on this memo, it looks like pink slips have not been handed out yet.

Autonomy has been a thorn in HP's paw for months now -- most notably since HP's quarterly earnings report in November. At that time, HP revealed that the Autonomy purchase cost its software unit up to $8.8 billion.

On November 26, an HP investor filed a lawsuit at a federal court in San Francisco, alleging that the tech giant knew its statements about its Autonomy acquisition were misleading, which led the stock to fall.

The following day, Autonomy's founder and former CEO Mike Lynch got into an open letter war over allegations by HP regarding "serious accounting improprieties" that were said to have taken place at Autonomy before the acquisition was completed.

In December, Leo Apotheker, the former CEO who was at the helm of HP at the time of the Autonomy purchased, retorted that that the company's board of directors should also take responsibility in this case.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded HP's long-term credit rating from A3 to Baa1, which is three levels above junk, with a negative outlook.

For more coverage about HP and Autonomy on ZDNet:

Editorial standards