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Topic: Hewlett-Packard

HP shuffles deck, promotes Bill Veghte to COO gig

Summary: Bill Veghte has been promoted to chief operating officer of HP with the hopes of further acceleration the company's innovation and customer satisifaction strategies.

Rachel King

By for Between the Lines |

Following a major slew of layoffs last week, Hewlett-Packard is in a contrast mode this week by shuffling the deck at the top slightly with some executive promotions.

Previously executive vice president of the HP's software unit, Bill Veghte has been bumped up to chief operating officer. According to a statement, Veghte has been assigned the task to "further accelerate the execution of the company’s strategy by working across HP to drive innovation and customer satisfaction."

George Kadifa will replace Veghte as EVP of the software division. Previously serving in executive roles at IBM and Corio, Kadifa comes to HP from global technology investment firm Silver Lake.

At HP, Kadifa will be responsible for overseeing the IT Performance Suite software portfolio, which is designed to enable enterprise IT organizations to manage and secure IT applications on the cloud as well as through on-premise platforms.

His upgrade appears to be the more significant one of the day. HP CEO Meg Whitman, to whom Kadifa will report, commented in prepared remarks:

George brings a wealth of experience gained at traditional software companies, service providers and startups. His ability to manage multiple business models will prove extremely valuable to HP as we extend our software offerings in cloud, information and security.

Both announcements are effective immediately.

These promotions also follow the announcement that HP is planning to cut 27,000 employees across the company -- despite better-than-expected second quarter earnings. Whitman had said the layoffs will be spread out over the next two years through the end of fiscal year 2014 in order to reduce the short-term harm to morale within the company.

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Topic: Hewlett-Packard

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17 comments
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  • HP Laptop

    I hope he improves the cameras on his laptops. The picture is not really of good quality.
    I really miss the clarity and sharpness of the Acer Laptop camera.

    That's all I could think of regarding HP

    Ian
    Ashtonian
    Reply Vote

  • Who cares what HP do at the top??

    Unless of course you are one of the unlucky ones to be directly affected by the redundancies - but then you would know all this info anyway. So the point of this article is....??
    The Central Scrutinizer
    Reply Vote

  • Ok, who does Veghte report to?

    Hopefully not Meg. She can't find her way to the tech bathroom. We will see if he has the tech vision. What they need is direction AND a research budget.
    droidfromsd
    Reply Vote

  • This is Leo all over again.

    Put a software guy in charge of day-to-day execution of a hardware company? Yeah...

    And given our recent experiences, customer sat is the last priority at HP.
    terry flores
    Reply Vote

  • ...reduce the short-term harm to morale?

    "Whitman had said the layoffs will be spread out over the next two years through the end of fiscal year 2014 in order to reduce the short-term harm to morale within the company."

    Reduce the short-term harm to morale in favor of long-term harm to morale?
    dancoiv
    Reply Vote

    • Right

      Every current HP employee can spend the next two years wondering if tomorrow is the day the shoe is going to drop on his or her job. Every day will be a whole new experience in declining short-term morale.
      gene@...
      Reply Vote

  • Deck chairs on the Titanic...

    These guys will undoubtedly be well compensated for staying with the sinking ship while 27000 employees are thrown overboard in HP's third 25k+ layoff in a decade.

    Just watch - these guys will propose buying the dying RIM or Nokia so that they can try to get back into the "mobile" game.
    tonyw@...
    Reply Vote

    • Agreed!

      I swear that your thought waves hit me at the same time. You posted almost word for word what I was thinking.

      The hilarious point of the "early retirements"/layoffs is that the vast majority of people affected are those who HP needs to successfully deliver cloud computing - they are in the former EDS division. HP can't run a data center to save their sinking backsides!
      Guilden_NL
      Reply Vote

  • Reorg

    Same Monkeys, New Tree
    brunnegd
    Reply Vote

  • And the band played on

    Sounds like reorganizing the deck chairs. The employees should look around for something that floats.
    john_gillespie@...
    Reply Vote

  • So many haters ...

    Meg and Veghte are drastically different characters than the hacks of recent years. They care about R&D, future product, and direction. The last two have only cared about Wall Street. Catering to Wall Street may get you good press, but at the end of the day, you have to have products that people want and need. Hurd's cuts in staff and slashing of R&D budget may have made Wall Street happy, but not customers. Apotheker was a non-entity who regularly butchered basic messaging, much less real strategy.

    As an HP fan for ages, I don't know if HP will get "back in" the mobile game. While missing that revenue stream will hurt, it will hardly be fatal to a behemoth like HP. Nobody freaks out that Apple doesn't make printers or servers or enterprise software. Frankly, I'd like to see HP produce "less" and have them work better. I love my HP "convertible" laptop/tablet, even though it was not widely adopted technology. It would be nice to see them make a bet, market it well, and execute on it. The proof is in the products ... make stuff that people want and everyone running the company is a genius. Keep butchering stuff like the TouchPad and more layoffs will be just around the corner.
    zaq.hack
    Reply Vote

    • Convertibles ...

      My point about the "convertible" Tablet PC was that if it was marketed half as well as the iPad ... there would probably not BE an iPad. It was amazing technology when I first saw it in 2004 or so, and rather than explain the stuff you could do with it, they just assumed the market would evolve in that direction. I still meet people that are amazed by what I can do with my 2730p Elitebook and it is started to be pretty well-aged ...
      zaq.hack
      Reply Vote

      • but ...

        Great tech in 2004 but this is 2012. So why didn't they market it well? Ineptitude? stupidity? afraid to be successful? death wish? or did they think is was impractical and would have failed? Are you running Win 7 on your Elitebook?
        john_gillespie@...
        Reply Vote

  • EDS?

    Thought most of the good EDS techs were laid off already. You mean there are some left at HP?
    cwr64
    Reply Vote

    • They were, and now they will be again

      Laid off and then brought back as contractors with lower pay and no benefits. It's "The New HP Way."
      gene@...
      Reply Vote

  • Aliens

    Two aliens are flying over the planet Earth. "What's goes on down there? asked one. The answer, "Interoffice memos."
    trm1945
    Reply Vote

  • Name and designation match

    BILL and COO
    witan
    Reply Vote
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