HP sees big exec shakeup in wake of PC upheaval
updated 06:25 pm EDT, Mon June 13, 2011
HP shuffles several execs in drastic steps
HP on Monday night shook up its executive structure in the wake of its tough winter quarter. The company's Chief Adminstrative Officer Peter Bocian and Chief Information Officer Randy Mott are both leaving the company immediately. Executive VP and enterprise head Ann Livermore was leaving her position but joining HP's board of directors.
Their exits would help focus on "customer-facing businesses," HP said. The CIO role would see a replacement with a broader scope, but the administrative officer role would be scrapped entirely.
The shift would see more of HP's direct operational executives report directly to company CEO Leo Apotheker. The company's executive VP of enterprise hardware and network businesses, Dave Donatelli, as well as its software executive VP Bill Veghte and global sales executive VP Jan Zadak, would all have a clear line to Apotheker. Its shift would "help drive the overall direction" for HP, the CEO explained.
Although some of the reorganization helped focus on business, the revamp appeared to have been at least partly triggered by a steep drop in the home PC market. After the leak of a broader warning from the CEO that every division had to cut back, the company put out hastily published results that showed much of the decline coming from HP's consumer business. An overall slump in PCs took HP with it and has been frequently blamed on the iPad leading to home buyers either delaying purchases or skipping them entirely.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2003
Yes, the hardware department
Who (at least for awhile) thought that rather than having an external microprojector that could be shared among PCs, people wanted to have a projector built-in to laptop computers. R&D wasted for something with potentially not much return but a lot of potential implementation issues. That and the lack of consumer value provided from the VooDoo acquisition.