UPDATED 13:12 EDT / AUGUST 23 2011

HP Bounces Back With TouchPad Sale, Focuses More On Big Data

Last week’s series of drastic announcements caused HP’s shares to plummet but their TouchPad sale over the weekend allowed their stocks to bounce back by 3.6% at $24.45.  But this slight increase may not last long, as it is just an effect of the tablet price cut over the weekend.  Investor focus is still on HP’s decision to acquire Autonomy, the future of webOS, and the future of computer hardware.

For one, it seems like HP already took back an earlier statement that they would stop producing computers, as they have just released a new all-in-one desktop, the Compaq 8200 Business Elite desktop.  They finally found a way to incorporate Compaq Computer in their business.

Second, their announcement that they would discontinue incorporating webOS in their devices may also not be true as they are still aiming to install it on PCs, printers and other devices as well as providing updates for the TouchPad.

“At the end of the day, webOs is going to be a popular platform on a variety of connected devices,” Hewlett-Packard executive Stephen DeWitt stated in a blog at All things D.

As for the Autonomy acquisition, some analysts are thinking that this could be the worst decision they could possibly make, as this move would pit them against three major software competitors: Saleforce.com, IBM and Oracle.  While others think that it is about time HP move away from hardware production, and bank on the enterprise software market to ride the big data wave.

HP’s move to big data will pit them against major competitors, but their Next Generation Data Warehouse in Vertica gives them an edge.   Vertica ’s MPP analytic database was built with a columnar-oriented architecture from the ground-up.  This allows it to run analytics on compressed data, improving query speed and performance.  And together with Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (Idol) that allows computer systems to make sense of data that comes in human-friendly formats like video, music or news stories, rather than numbers, programming code and spreadsheets, analytic database and unstructured content analytics layers of the big data stack is covered.

Yet HP still lacks business intelligence and data visualization tools to deliver traditional structured data analytics to end-users.  With this in mind, HP may look into acquiring companies like Microstrategy, Tableau or even SAP to complete their big data transformation.

HP has a lot more ironing out to do if they really intend on shifting to cloud and big data.  It won’t be easy but if they play their cards right, they may experience increased revenue just like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.  For now, it’s a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs as far as HP products and business strategies go, and we’ll just have to sit tight to see where this ride takes us.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU