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I've watched the slow-motion trainwreck that is HP and HPE though the lens of working with ArcSight, a very expensive and formerly segment-leading enterprise SI

I've watched the slow-motion trainwreck that is HP and HPE though the lens of working with ArcSight, a very expensive and formerly segment-leading enterprise SIEM tool. HP spent a billion and a half dollars to buy them in 2010 and then immediately didn't seem to be able to do anything with it. They ignored needed updates while competitors got better every year. They didn't even seem to be able to actually sell the thing - I had a large client who wanted to upgrade to the latest version (more than a million dollars in licensing costs alone), and couldn't get anyone at HPE to return their calls to actually sell him the thing; after six months of trying to give them his already-approved budget, they gave up and bought a competing product. Now they've sold it off to Micro Focus, who seem to be a company whose business model is milking dying software for support and professional services money. HPE is an organization that has grown so dysfunctional that it's essentially incapable of operating. Somehow I doubt laying off 5k people is going to help that very much.

vram22 9y ago
MicroFocus bought some other well-known software company in the last few years, right? Can't remember the name, but it was a well-known one. Novell or SUSE maybe?
- buzer 9y ago
  They bought Attachmate which gave them NetIQ, Novell & SUSE
csours 9y ago
Hoo boy. See also pretty much everything on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive#Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive#Products All of those products were good for their time, but they never really advanced. As one small example, LoadRunner is load testing software. When writing load tests you use it in interactive mode, but it would be nice to actually run the tests from a server in the background. You can do this... but any errors will POP A MODAL WINDOW! Serious-fucking-ly!
- poulsbohemian 9y ago
  Actually, LoadRunner has gotten a whole lot of continued development over the years, at least compared to all the other products. I did some protocol work on it, Diagnostics, and RUM, plus have had semi-regular contact with the R&D teams over the years. Also -- you can not only run it on a single "server in the background" but to a whole slew of load generators if you like. You can take those same scripts and reuse them via BPM too. Even long in the tooth, it's still an impressive suite for its breadth of solution. JMeter, Selenium, etc really aren't in the same category as LoadRunner, and yes New Relic and AppDynamics are lovely, but give me Diagnostics any day.
  - csours 9y ago
    Yes, there are updates, but it still handles errors with a popup msgbox modal, even in Session 0, where there's no one to click on it. There's even COM integration, but still popups!
le-mark 9y ago
This is a recurring theme with a lot of these types of large companies (Microfocus, CA, Compuware, BMC) they'd buy up companies with niche or larger products, and the products would wither and die. If not simply disappear. One of my long term side projects has been an editor for fixed length files that uses cobol copybook to map the files. A common use for this type of thing is editing/viewing ACH files. There was at least one of these for PC's, but disappeared into one of these companies a long time ago. Note I'm looking for beta testers if anyones interested (email in profile).
- CommieBobDole 9y ago
  Definitely - CA is particularly bad about this; I've always thought of it as a killing jar for companies. Though with ArcSight, there really is no reason it had to go this way. When HP bought them, they were the undisputed market leader in an extremely lucrative and growing segment that has continued to grow in the years since. If CA is a like a trucking company that buys old but still serviceable trucks on the cheap, and then runs them into the ground without maintenance, HPE and ArcSight is like buying a Ferrari at top price, leaving it to molder in the woods somewhere for a decade, then selling it for scrap. Just a ridiculous waste by a company that has nothing going for it but momentum.
- gozur88 9y ago
  Sometimes they don't want the product at all (or the employees). Rather, they're buying customers. I worked for a company that wrote logistics software and we got bought out by a much larger company. They stopped all new development on the product, laid off half the developers, and had the other half working on tools to transition customers from what had been our product to theirs. Tax law used to facilitate this kind of thing, too, because of goodwill writedowns. Might still be true - I don't know.
- nradov 9y ago
  As a counterpoint, CA purchased Rally (an agile project management tool and issue tracker) several years ago and they're been steadily improving it ever since. That's probably because there's a lot of direct competition from similar products such as Jira.
agumonkey 9y ago
I naively believed that HPE was the remaining value from the HP brand. The rest being a HP logo and consumer market milking. I ... am sad. How many HP employees liked HP's image for real (quality, engineering) ? They should spin off.
coliveira 9y ago
Frequently big companies buy others just to slow down possible competitors. In such cases, they don't really have a plan to improve the companies they buy, it is just a game of throwing money away to buy time. They do this because management is thinking short term, doing everything they can to improve their chances of cashing on big bonuses and increasing share prices.

vram22 9y ago

MicroFocus bought some other well-known software company in the last few years, right? Can't remember the name, but it was a well-known one. Novell or SUSE maybe?

buzer 9y ago
They bought Attachmate which gave them NetIQ, Novell & SUSE

csours 9y ago

Hoo boy. See also pretty much everything on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive#Products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive#Products All of those products were good for their time, but they never really advanced. As one small example, LoadRunner is load testing software. When writing load tests you use it in interactive mode, but it would be nice to actually run the tests from a server in the background. You can do this... but any errors will POP A MODAL WINDOW! Serious-fucking-ly!

poulsbohemian 9y ago
Actually, LoadRunner has gotten a whole lot of continued development over the years, at least compared to all the other products. I did some protocol work on it, Diagnostics, and RUM, plus have had semi-regular contact with the R&D teams over the years. Also -- you can not only run it on a single "server in the background" but to a whole slew of load generators if you like. You can take those same scripts and reuse them via BPM too. Even long in the tooth, it's still an impressive suite for its breadth of solution. JMeter, Selenium, etc really aren't in the same category as LoadRunner, and yes New Relic and AppDynamics are lovely, but give me Diagnostics any day.
- csours 9y ago
  Yes, there are updates, but it still handles errors with a popup msgbox modal, even in Session 0, where there's no one to click on it. There's even COM integration, but still popups!

le-mark 9y ago

This is a recurring theme with a lot of these types of large companies (Microfocus, CA, Compuware, BMC) they'd buy up companies with niche or larger products, and the products would wither and die. If not simply disappear. One of my long term side projects has been an editor for fixed length files that uses cobol copybook to map the files. A common use for this type of thing is editing/viewing ACH files. There was at least one of these for PC's, but disappeared into one of these companies a long time ago. Note I'm looking for beta testers if anyones interested (email in profile).

CommieBobDole 9y ago
Definitely - CA is particularly bad about this; I've always thought of it as a killing jar for companies. Though with ArcSight, there really is no reason it had to go this way. When HP bought them, they were the undisputed market leader in an extremely lucrative and growing segment that has continued to grow in the years since. If CA is a like a trucking company that buys old but still serviceable trucks on the cheap, and then runs them into the ground without maintenance, HPE and ArcSight is like buying a Ferrari at top price, leaving it to molder in the woods somewhere for a decade, then selling it for scrap. Just a ridiculous waste by a company that has nothing going for it but momentum.
gozur88 9y ago
Sometimes they don't want the product at all (or the employees). Rather, they're buying customers. I worked for a company that wrote logistics software and we got bought out by a much larger company. They stopped all new development on the product, laid off half the developers, and had the other half working on tools to transition customers from what had been our product to theirs. Tax law used to facilitate this kind of thing, too, because of goodwill writedowns. Might still be true - I don't know.
nradov 9y ago
As a counterpoint, CA purchased Rally (an agile project management tool and issue tracker) several years ago and they're been steadily improving it ever since. That's probably because there's a lot of direct competition from similar products such as Jira.

agumonkey 9y ago

I naively believed that HPE was the remaining value from the HP brand. The rest being a HP logo and consumer market milking. I ... am sad. How many HP employees liked HP's image for real (quality, engineering) ? They should spin off.

coliveira 9y ago

Frequently big companies buy others just to slow down possible competitors. In such cases, they don't really have a plan to improve the companies they buy, it is just a game of throwing money away to buy time. They do this because management is thinking short term, doing everything they can to improve their chances of cashing on big bonuses and increasing share prices.