Victor -
re: AV is currently managed by the same President and staff, with some additions, who managed it when it belonged to (a) DEC and (b) COMPAQ
Not true - Rod Schrock headed up CPQ's consumer division and joined AV only a month before AV was sold to CMGI... almost all of the DEC team left AV either just before the CPQ acquisition of DEC or shortly thereafter. The sale of AV to CMGI, among other things, allowed AV to retain some of the key technical talent who did not think CPQ would do any more with the property than DEC did, but believed in CMGI.
Likewise the management of AV has been "upgraded" by the addition of key talent from CMGI...
Whatever else we can say, AV was "rotting on the vine" at CPQ and could well have simply imploded from brain drain if CPQ had delayed taking action even a few months.
I am increasingly impressed with the second half of your argument, but if folks are right - i.e. CPQ is now overweight with fuddy-duddy management from the glory days of DEC who have not had to make a responsible decision in years and "just don't get it" - then what chance did they have to do anything with AV??
I believe that Capellas needs to take stronger action to "clean the stable" and unload more of that old management structure. Services performance is weak, the "solutions business" is invisible, CPQ's storage play still depends for bragging rights on the CPQ classic storage attached to ProLiant systems while the StorageWorks business, which could be an EMC competitor, drifts in Limbo... Those are the things that require aggressive management attention IMO.
I continue to believe that CPQ would only have screwed up any AV play and that unloading it was the right thing. It was a complete cultural mismatch at CPQ... they need to walk (as they are doing with the new consumer and commercial internet devices for example) before they try to run with the Internet hounds. |
