Hewlett-Packard
Encyclopedia
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational
information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto
, California
, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors.
The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by William (Bill) Reddington Hewlett
and Dave Packard
. Currently, HP is the world's leading PC manufacturer
, operating in nearly every country. It specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise, and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software and a diverse range of printers, and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP also has strong services and consulting business around its products and partner products.
Major company events have included the spin-off of part of its business as Agilent Technologies
in 1999, its merger with Compaq
in 2002, and the acquisition of EDS
in 2008, which led to combined revenues of $118.4 billion in 2008 and a Fortune 500
ranking of 9 in 2009. In November 2009, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com
; with the deal closing on April 12, 2010. On April 28, 2010, HP announced the buyout of Palm for $1.2 billion. On September 2, 2010, won its bidding war
for 3PAR
with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Dell
declined to match.
Hewlett-Packard is not affiliated with Packard
Motor Car Corporation, founded by James Ward Packard
and William Doud Packard .
and Dave Packard
graduated in electrical engineering
from Stanford University
in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto
during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Frederick Terman
at Stanford during the Great Depression
. Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard.
In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard's garage with an initial capital investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett Packard won the coin toss but named their electronics manufacturing enterprise the "Hewlett-Packard Company". HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.
Of the many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model HP200A
. Their innovation was the use of a small incandescent light bulb (known as a "pilot light") as a temperature dependent resistor
in a critical portion of the circuit, the negative feedback loop which stabilized the amplitude of the output sinusoidal waveform. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. The Model 200 series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years.
One of the company's earliest customers was Walt Disney Productions
, which bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in certifying the Fantasound
surround sound
systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia
.
From the 1940s until well into the 1990s the company concentrated on making electronic test equipment: signal generator
s, voltmeter
s, oscilloscope
s, frequency counter
s, thermometer
s, time standard
s, wave analyzers, and many other instruments. A distinguishing feature was pushing the limits of measurement range and accuracy; many HP instruments were more sensitive, accurate, and precise than other comparable equipment.
Following the pattern set by the company's first product, the 200A, test instruments were labelled with three to five digits followed by the letter "A". Improved versions went to suffixes "B" through "E". As the product range grew wider HP started using product designators starting with a letter for accessories, supplies, software, and components.
, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the "Traitorous Eight
" had abandoned William Shockley
to create Fairchild Semiconductor
in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices.
HP partnered in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric
companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs in building HP-looking products in Japan. HP and Yokogawa formed a joint venture (Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard) in 1963 to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999.
HP spun off a small company, Dynac, to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo "hp" could be turned upside down to be a reverse reflect image of the logo "dy" of the new company. Eventually Dynac changed to Dymec, then was folded back into HP in 1959. HP experimented with using Digital Equipment Corporation
minicomputers with its instruments, but after deciding that it would be easier to build another small design team than deal with DEC, HP entered the computer market in 1966 with the HP 2100
/ HP 1000 series of minicomputers. These had a simple accumulator
-based design, with registers arranged somewhat similarly to the Intel x86 architecture still used today. The series was produced for 20 years, in spite of several attempts to replace it, and was a forerunner of the HP 9800
and HP 250
series of desktop and business computers.
was an advanced stack-based design for a business computing server, later redesigned with RISC technology, that has only recently been retired from the market. The HP 2640
series of smart and intelligent terminals introduced forms-based interfaces to ASCII terminals, and also introduced screen labeled function keys
, now commonly used on gas pumps and bank ATMs. The HP 2640
series included one of the first bit mapped graphics displays that when combined with the HP 2100
21MX F-Series microcoded Scientific Instruction Set enabled the first commercial WYSIWYG
Presentation Program
, BRUNO
that later became the program HP-Draw on the HP 3000
. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP would eventually surpass even IBM as the world's largest technology vendor, in terms of sales.
HP is identified by Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first marketed, mass-produced personal computer, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A
, introduced in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator, because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM
. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at the time, the logic circuit was produced without any integrated circuits; the assembly of the CPU having been entirely executed in discrete components. With CRT
display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $5000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between that of a scientific calculator and an adding machine. There was no alphabetic keyboard.
Steve Wozniak
, co-founder of Apple, originally designed the Apple I
computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their right of first refusal
to his work, but they did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets.
The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator
in 1972 (the HP-35
), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65
), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41
C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the HP-28C. Like their scientific and business calculators, their oscilloscope
s, logic analyzer
s, and other measurement instruments have a reputation for sturdiness and usability (the latter products are now part of spin-off Agilent
's product line). The company's design philosophy in this period was summarized as "design for the guy at the next bench".
The 98x5 series of technical desktop computers started in 1975 with the 9815, and the cheaper 80 series, again of technical computers, started in 1979 with the 85. These machines used a version of the BASIC programming language which was available immediately after they were switched on, and used a proprietary magnetic tape for storage. HP computers were similar in capabilities to the much later IBM Personal Computer, although the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high.
and laser printer
s for the desktop. Along with its scanner product line, these have later been developed into successful multifunction products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's tremendously popular LaserJet line of laser printers depend almost entirely on Canon
's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by Xerox
. HP develops the hardware, firmware, and software that convert data into dots for the mechanism to print. HP transitioned from the HP3000 to the HP9000 series minicomputers with attached storage such as the HP 7935
hard drive holding 404 MiB.
On March 3, 1986, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the ninth Internet .com
domain ever to be registered.
In 1987, the Palo Alto
garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a California State historical landmark.
HP also grew through acquisitions, buying Apollo Computer
in 1989 and Convex Computer
in 1995.
Later in the decade, HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; in 2005, the store was renamed "HP Home & Home Office Store."
From 1995 to 1998, Hewlett-Packard were sponsors of the English football team Tottenham Hotspur
.
In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form Agilent. Agilent's spin-off was the largest initial public offering
in the history of Silicon Valley
. The spin-off created an $8 billion company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instrument
s, semiconductor
s, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment
for telecom and wireless R&D
and production.
In July 1999, HP appointed Carly Fiorina
as CEO, the first female CEO of a company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
. Fiorina served as CEO during the technology industry downturn of the early 2000s. During her tenure, the market value of HP halved and the company incurred heavy job losses. The HP Board of Directors asked Fiorina to step down in 2005, and she resigned on February 9, 2005.
to merge the two companies.
In May, 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially merged with Compaq. Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines.
In 1998 Compaq had already taken over the Digital Equipment Corporation. That is why HP still offers support for PDP-11, VAX and AlphaServer.
The merger occurred after a proxy fight with Bill Hewlett's son Walter, who objected to the merger. Compaq itself had bought Tandem Computers
in 1997 (which had been started by ex-HP employees), and Digital Equipment Corporation
in 1998. Following this strategy, HP became a major player in desktop
s, laptops, and servers for many different markets. After the merger with Compaq, the new ticker symbol
became "HPQ", a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show the significance of the alliance and also key letters from the two companies Hewlett-Packard and Compaq (the latter company being famous for its "Q" logo on all of its products.)
In the year 2004 HP released the DV 1000 Series, including the HP Pavilion dv 1658
and 1040 two years later in May 2006, HP began its campaign, The Computer is Personal Again. The campaign was designed to bring back the fact that the PC
is a personal product. The campaign utilized viral marketing, sophisticated visuals, and its own web site (www.hp.com/personal). Some of the ads featured well-known personalities, including Pharrell, Petra Nemcova
, Mark Burnett
, Mark Cuban
, Alicia Keys
, Jay-Z
, Gwen Stefani
, and Shaun White
.
On May 13, 2008, HP and Electronic Data Systems
announced that they had signed a definitive agreement under which HP would purchase EDS. On June 30, HP announced that the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act
of 1976 had expired. "The transaction still requires EDS stockholder approval and regulatory clearance from the European Commission and other non-U.S. jurisdictions and is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in the merger agreement." The agreement was finalized on August 26, 2008, and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded "EDS an HP company." As of September 23, 2009, EDS is known as HP Enterprise Services.
On November 11, 2009, 3Com
and Hewlett-Packard announced that Hewlett-Packard would be acquiring 3Com for $2.7 billion in cash.
The acquisition is one of the biggest in size among a series of takeovers and acquisitions by technology giants to push their way to become one-stop shops. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, tech giants have constantly felt the pressure to expand beyond their current market niches. Dell
purchased Perot Systems
recently to invade into the technology consulting business area previously dominated by IBM
. Hewlett-Packard's latest move marked its incursion into enterprise networking gear market dominated by Cisco
.
On April 28, 2010, Palm, Inc.
and Hewlett-Packard announced that HP would be acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion in cash and debt, In the months leading up to the buyout it was rumored that Palm was going to be purchased by either HTC
, Dell
, RIM
or HP. The addition of Palm handsets to the HP product line provides some overlap with the current iPAQ
mobile products but will significantly increase their mobile presence as those devices have not been selling well. The addition of Palm brings HP a library of valuable patents as well the mobile operating platform known as webOS. On July 1, 2010, the acquisition of Palm was final. The purchase of Palm, Inc.
's webOS began a big gamble – to build HP's own ecosystem. On July 1, 2011, HP launched its first tablet named HP TouchPad
, bringing webOS to tablet devices. On September 2, 2010, won its bidding war
for 3PAR
with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Dell
declined to match.
On August 6, 2010, CEO Mark Hurd resigned amid controversy and CFO Cathie Lesjak assumed the role of interim CEO. On September 30, 2010, Léo Apotheker
was named as HP's new CEO and President.
Apotheker’s appointment sparked a strong reaction from Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, who complained that Apotheker had been in charge of SAP when one of its subsidiaries was systematically stealing software from Oracle. SAP accepted that its subsidiary, which has now closed, illegally accessed Oracle intellectual property.
On August 18, 2011 HP announced that it would strategically exit the smartphone
and tablet computer business, focusing on higher-margin "strategic priorities of cloud, solutions and software with an emphasis on enterprise, commercial and government markets" They also contemplated spinning off their personal computer division into a separate company.
HP's fundamental restructuring to quit the 'PC' business, while continuing to sell servers and other equipment to business customers, was similar to what IBM did in 2005.
On September 22, 2011, Hewlett-Packard Co. named former eBay Inc. Chief Executive Meg Whitman
its president and CEO, replacing Léo Apotheker, while Raymond Lane became executive chairman of the company.
HP's global operations are directed from its headquarters in Palo Alto, California
, USA. Its U.S. operations are directed from its facility in unincorporated
Harris County
, Texas, near Houston. Its Latin America offices in unincorporated Miami-Dade County
, Florida, U.S., near Miami and in Medellín
Colombia. Its Europe offices are in Meyrin
, Switzerland, near Geneva
. Its Asia-Pacific offices are in Singapore
. It also has large operations in Boise, Idaho
, Roseville, California
, Fort Collins, Colorado
, San Diego, and Plano, Texas
(the former headquarters of EDS, which HP acquired). In the UK, HP is based at a large site in Bracknell, Berkshire with offices in various UK locations, including a landmark office tower in London, 88 Wood Street
. Its recent acquisition of 3Com
will expand its employee base to Marlborough, Massachusetts
.
. HP today promotes itself as supplying not just hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement, and support IT infrastructure.
HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) is "the leading imaging and printing systems provider in the world for printer hardware, printing supplies and scanning devices, providing solutions across customer segments from individual consumers to small and medium businesses to large enterprises." Products and technology associated with IPG include Inkjet
and LaserJet
printers, consumables and related products, Officejet all-in-one multifunction printer/scanner/faxes
, Designjet and Scitex Large Format Printers, Indigo Digital Press
, HP Web Jetadmin printer management software, HP Output Management suite of software, LightScribe
optical recording technology, HP Photosmart
digital cameras and photo printers, HP SPaM
, and Snapfish by HP
, a photo sharing and photo products service. On December 23, 2008, HP released iPrint Photo for iPhone
a free downloadable software application that allows the printing of 4" x 6" photos.
HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG) claims to be "one of the leading vendors of personal computers ("PCs") in the world based on unit volume shipped and annual revenue." PSG includes business PCs and accessories, consumer PCs and accessories, (e.g., HP Pavilion
, Compaq
Presario, VoodooPC
), handheld computing (e.g., iPAQ Pocket PC), and digital "connected" entertainment (e.g., HP MediaSmart TVs, HP MediaSmart Servers, HP MediaVaults, DVD+RW drives). HP resold the Apple iPod until November 2005.
HP Enterprise Business (EB) incorporates HP Technology Services
, Enterprise Services (an amalgamation of the former EDS
, and what was known as HP Services), HP Enterprise Security Services oversees professional services such as network security, information security and information assurance/ compliancy, HP Software Division, and Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN). The Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN) oversees "back end" products like storage and servers. HP's networking business unit ProCurve
is responsible for the family of network switch
es, wireless access point
s, and routers. They are currently a business unit of ESSN.
HP Software Division is the company's enterprise software unit. For years, HP has produced and marketed its brand of enterprise management software, HP OpenView. From September 2005 through 2010, HP purchased a total of 15 software companies between as part of a publicized, deliberate strategy to augment its software offerings for large business customers. HP Software sells three categories of software: IT performance management, IT management software and information management software. HP Software also provides consulting, Software as a service
, cloud computing
solutions, education and support services.
HP's Office of Strategy and Technology has four main functions: (1) steering the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment, (2) fostering the development of the company's global technical community, (3) leading the company's strategy and corporate development efforts, and (4) performing worldwide corporate marketing activities. Under this office is HP Labs
, the research arm of HP. Founded in 1966, HP Labs's function is to deliver new technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP's current strategies. An example of recent HP Lab technology includes the Memory spot chip
. HP IdeaLab further provides a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community.
HP also offers managed services where they provide complete IT-support solutions for other companies and organisations. Some examples of these are: A large activity is HP offering "Professional Support" and desktop "Premier Support" for Microsoft
in the EMEA
marketplace. This is done from the Leixlip
campus near Dublin, Sofia
and Israel
. Support is offered on the line of Microsoft operation systems, Exchange, Sharepoint and some office-applications. But HP also offers outsourced services for companies like Bank of Ireland
, some UK banks, the U.S. defense forces, etc.
s of electronics
, toner and ink cartridge
s. It has set a new goal of recycling a further two billion pounds of hardware by the end of 2010. In 2006, the company recovered 187 million pounds of electronics, 73 percent more than its closest competitor.
In 2008, HP released its supply chain emissions data — an industry first.
In September 2009, Newsweek
ranked HP No.1 on its 2009 Green Rankings of America's 500 largest corporations. According to environmentalleader.com, "Hewlett-Packard earned its number one position due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction programs, and was the first major IT company to report GHG emissions associated with its supply chain, according to the ranking. In addition, HP has made an effort to remove toxic substances from its products, though Greenpeace has targeted the company for not doing better."
HP took the top spot on Corporate Responsibility Magazines 100 Best Corporate Citizens List for 2010. The list is cited by PR Week as one of America's most important business rankings. HP beat out other Russell 1000 Index companies because of its leadership in seven categories including environment, climate changes and corporate philanthropy. In 2009, HP was ranked fifth.
Fortune magazine named HP one of the World's Most Admired Companies in 2010, placing it No. 2 in the computer industry and No. 32 overall in its list of the top 50. This year in the computer industry HP was ranked No. 1 in social responsibility, long-term investment, global competitiveness, and use of corporate assets.
In May 2011, HP released its latest Global Responsibility report covering accomplishments during 2010. The report, the company’s tenth, provides a comprehensive view of HP’s global citizenship programs, performance, and goals and describes how HP uses its technology, influence, and expertise to make a positive impact on the world. The company’s 2009 report won best corporate responsibility report of the year. The 2009 reports claims HP decreased its total energy use by 9 percent compared with 2008. HP recovered a total of 118,000 tonnes of electronic products and supplies for recycling in 2009, including 61 million print cartridges.
In an April 2010 San Francisco Chronicle
article, HP was one of 12 companies commended for "designing products to be safe from the start, following the principles of green chemistry." The commendations came from Environment California, an environmental advocacy group, who praised select companies in the Golden State and the Bay Area for their efforts to keep our planet clean and green.
In May 2010, HP was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute. This is the second year in a row HP has made the list. Ethisphere reviewed, researched and analyzed thousands of nominations in more than 100 countries and 35 industries to create the 2010 list. HP was one of only 100 companies to earn the distinction of top winner and was the only computer hardware vendor to be recognized. Ethisphere honors firms that promote ethical business standards and practices by going beyond legal minimums, introducing innovative ideas that benefit the public.
HP is listed in Greenpeace
's Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers according to their policies on sustainability, energy and climate and green products. In November 2011, HP secured the 1st place (out of 15) in this ranking (climbing up 3 places) with an increased score of 5.9 (up from 5.5). It scored most points on the new Sustainable Operations criteria, having the best programme for measuring and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from its suppliers and scoring maximum points for its thorough paper procurement policy.
Moreover, HP does especially well for its disclosure of externally verified greenhouse gas emissions and its setting of targets for reducing them. However, Greenpeace reports that HP risks a penalty point in future editions due to the fact that it is a member of trade associations that have commented against energy efficiency standards.
HP has earned recognition of its work in the area of data privacy and security. In 2010 the company ranked No. 4 in the Ponemon Institute's annual study of the most trusted companies for privacy. Since 2006, HP has worked directly with the U.S. Congress, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Department of Commerce to establish a new strategy for federal legislation. HP played a key role in work toward the December 2010 FTC report “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change.”
After winning nine straight annual "Most Respected Company in China" awards from the Economic Observer and Peking University, HP China has added the "10 Year Contribution" award to its list of prestigious accolades. The award aims to identify companies doing business in China with outstanding and sustained performance in business operations, development and corporate social responsibility.
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According to a Business Week Study, HP is currently the world's 11th most valuable brand.
Since its creation, the HP Logo has remained largely the same. Because of its extreme simplicity, the logo is recognized all over the world.
HP has many sponsorships. One well known sponsorship is of Walt Disney World's Epcot
Park's Mission: SPACE
.
From 1995 to 1999 they were the shirt sponsor of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
. From 1997 to 1999 they were sponsors of Australian Football League
club North Melbourne Football Club
. They also sponsored the BMW Williams Formula 1 team until 2006 (a sponsorship formerly held by Compaq), and as of 2010 sponsor Renault F1
. Hewlett-Packard also has the naming rights arrangement for the HP Pavilion at San Jose, home of the San Jose Sharks
NHL
hockey team.
After the acquisition of Compaq
in 2002, HP has maintained the "Compaq Presario" brand on low-end home desktops and laptops, the "HP Compaq" brand on business desktops and laptops, and the "HP ProLiant
" brand on Intel-architecture servers. (The "HP Pavilion" brand is used on home entertainment laptops and all home desktops.)
HP uses DEC's "StorageWorks" brand on storage systems; Tandem's "NonStop" servers are now branded as "HP Integrity NonStop".
, not HP, retains the direct product legacy of the original company founded in 1939. Agilent's current portfolio of electronic instruments are descended from HP's very earliest products. HP entered the computer business only after its instrumentation competencies were well-established. When Agilent was spun off, items in the Corporate Archives were split-up along product lines, with Agilent retaining almost all of the original HP archives – only where there was duplication of material, was HP given early Test and Measurement material. Both companies retained an original 200A Audio Oscillator.
events annually, one for the Americas and one for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). HP DISCOVER 2011 Americas took place June 6–10, in Las Vegas
at the Venetian/Palazzo. The event offered nearly 1,000 sessions on application transformation, Converged Infrastructure
, information optimization, mobile devices, webOS, global data centers, security, hybrid delivery and cloud computing
.
Approximately 10,000 customers, partners and IT thought leaders attended HP Discover 2011 in Las Vegas and approximately 5,000 are expected to attend the EMEA event. The Americas conference featured tracks designed for several industries including automotive and aerospace; communications, media & entertainment, energy, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, high tech and electronics, public sector, retail and consumer goods, and transportation and logistics. The nearly 1,000 sessions, hands-on labs and exhibits explored all areas of the HP Enterprise Business portfolio including servers, storage, networking, software and services. In addition, the company provided sneak previews of its new tablet device, webOS TouchPad which will be available in July 1, 2011, starting at $500.
The HP DISCOVER 2011 event in EMEA is slated to take place in Vienna, Austria, at the Reed Exhibitions, Messe Wien Congress Center, on November 29 through December 1, 2011.
revealed that HP's general counsel
, at the behest of chairwoman Patricia Dunn
, contracted a team of independent security experts to investigate board members and several journalists in order to identify the source of an information leak. In turn, those security experts recruited private investigators who used a spying technique known as pretexting. The pretexting involved investigators impersonating HP board members and nine journalists (including reporters for CNET
, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal) in order to obtain their phone records. The information leaked related to HP's long-term strategy and was published as part of a CNET
article in January 2006. Most HP employees accused of criminal acts have since been acquitted.
Hewlett-Packard has also been at the center of a fiasco in recent years. In November 2007, Hewlett-Packard released a BIOS update covering a wide range of laptops with the intent to speed up the computer fan as well as have it run constantly, whether the computer was on or off. The reason was to prevent the overheating of defective NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) that had been shipped to many of the original equipment manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple. In July 2008, HP revealed an extension to the initial one-year warranty covering a few of the affected computers, but leaving many more without the protection, despite research showing that these computers were also affected. Since this point, several websites have been documenting the issue, most notably www.hplies.com, a forum dedicated to what they refer to as Hewlett-Packard's "multi-million dollar cover up" of the issue. (The site now carries computer-repair ads, and the domain name is apparently now for sale.) There have been several small-claims lawsuits filed in several states, as well as suits filed in other countries. Hewlett-Packard also faced a class-action lawsuit in 2009 over its i7 processor computers. The complainants stated that their systems locked up within 30 minutes of powering on, consistently. Even after being replaced with newer i7 systems, the lockups continued.
For HP Chairmen and CEOs.
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors.
The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by William (Bill) Reddington Hewlett
William Reddington Hewlett
William Redington Hewlett was an engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company . He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan where is father taught at the Univerisy of Michigan Medical School...
and Dave Packard
David Packard
David Packard was a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard , serving as president , CEO , and Chairman of the Board . He served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969–1971 during the Nixon administration...
. Currently, HP is the world's leading PC manufacturer
Market share of leading PC vendors
Because the personal computer is an iconic high tech product the market share of leading PC vendors is watched closely. Market discussion of these devices may include netbooks but do not include media tablets which was dominated by Apple products....
, operating in nearly every country. It specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise, and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software and a diverse range of printers, and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP also has strong services and consulting business around its products and partner products.
Major company events have included the spin-off of part of its business as Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies , or Agilent, is a company that designs and manufactures electronic and bio-analytical measurement instruments and equipment for measurement and evaluation...
in 1999, its merger with Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
in 2002, and the acquisition of EDS
Electronic Data Systems
HP Enterprise Services is the global business and technology services division of Hewlett Packard's HP Enterprise Business strategic business unit. It was formed by the combination of HP's legacy services consulting and outsourcing business and the integration of acquired Electronic Data Systems,...
in 2008, which led to combined revenues of $118.4 billion in 2008 and a Fortune 500
Fortune 500
The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...
ranking of 9 in 2009. In November 2009, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
; with the deal closing on April 12, 2010. On April 28, 2010, HP announced the buyout of Palm for $1.2 billion. On September 2, 2010, won its bidding war
Bid price
A bid price is the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for a good. It is usually referred to simply as the "bid."In bid and ask, the bid price stands in contrast to the ask price or "offer", and the difference between the two is called the bid/ask spread.An unsolicited bid or purchase...
for 3PAR
3PAR
3PAR Inc. is a manufacturer of systems and software for data storage and information management headquartered in Fremont, California, USA. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard. 3PAR produces a range of enterprise storage products, including hardware disk arrays and storage management...
with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
declined to match.
Hewlett-Packard is not affiliated with Packard
Packard
Packard was an American luxury-type automobile marque built by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, and later by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation of South Bend, Indiana...
Motor Car Corporation, founded by James Ward Packard
James Ward Packard
James Ward Packard was an American automobile manufacturer who founded the Packard Motor Car Company and Packard Electric Company with his brother William Doud Packard.-Life and career:...
and William Doud Packard .
Founding
Bill HewlettWilliam Reddington Hewlett
William Redington Hewlett was an engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company . He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan where is father taught at the Univerisy of Michigan Medical School...
and Dave Packard
David Packard
David Packard was a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard , serving as president , CEO , and Chairman of the Board . He served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969–1971 during the Nixon administration...
graduated in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Frederick Terman
Frederick Terman
Frederick Emmons Terman was an American academic. He is widely credited with being the father of Silicon Valley.-Education:...
at Stanford during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard.
In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard's garage with an initial capital investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett Packard won the coin toss but named their electronics manufacturing enterprise the "Hewlett-Packard Company". HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.
Of the many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model HP200A
HP200A
The HP200A was the first product made by Hewlett-Packard and was manufactured in David Packard's garage in Palo Alto, California.It was a low-distortion audio oscillator used for testing sound equipment. It used the Wien bridge oscillator circuit, which had been the subject of Bill Hewlett's...
. Their innovation was the use of a small incandescent light bulb (known as a "pilot light") as a temperature dependent resistor
Resistor
A linear resistor is a linear, passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element.The current through a resistor is in direct proportion to the voltage across the resistor's terminals. Thus, the ratio of the voltage applied across a resistor's...
in a critical portion of the circuit, the negative feedback loop which stabilized the amplitude of the output sinusoidal waveform. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. The Model 200 series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years.
One of the company's earliest customers was Walt Disney Productions
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
, which bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in certifying the Fantasound
Fantasound
Fantasound was a stereophonic sound reproduction system developed by the engineers of Walt Disney studios for its 1940 animated film Fantasia, the first commercial film to be released in stereo. Fantasound led to the development of what is known today as surround sound.-Origins:Walt Disney's...
surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
.
Early years
The company was originally rather unfocused, working on a wide range of electronic products for industry and even agriculture. Eventually they elected to focus on high-quality electronic test and measurement equipment.From the 1940s until well into the 1990s the company concentrated on making electronic test equipment: signal generator
Signal generator
Signal generators, also known variously as function generators, RF and microwave signal generators, pitch generators, arbitrary waveform generators, digital pattern generators or frequency generators are electronic devices that generate repeating or non-repeating electronic signals...
s, voltmeter
Voltmeter
A voltmeter is an instrument used for measuring electrical potential difference between two points in an electric circuit. Analog voltmeters move a pointer across a scale in proportion to the voltage of the circuit; digital voltmeters give a numerical display of voltage by use of an analog to...
s, oscilloscope
Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
s, frequency counter
Frequency counter
A frequency counter is an electronic instrument, or component of one, that is used for measuring frequency. Frequency is defined as the number of events of a particular sort occurring in a set period of time. Frequency counters usually measure the number of oscillations or pulses per second in a...
s, thermometer
Thermometer
Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...
s, time standard
Time standard
A time standard is a specification for measuring time: either the rate at which time passes; or points in time; or both. In modern times, several time specifications have been officially recognized as standards, where formerly they were matters of custom and practice. An example of a kind of time...
s, wave analyzers, and many other instruments. A distinguishing feature was pushing the limits of measurement range and accuracy; many HP instruments were more sensitive, accurate, and precise than other comparable equipment.
Following the pattern set by the company's first product, the 200A, test instruments were labelled with three to five digits followed by the letter "A". Improved versions went to suffixes "B" through "E". As the product range grew wider HP started using product designators starting with a letter for accessories, supplies, software, and components.
The 1960s
HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon ValleySilicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the "Traitorous Eight
Traitorous Eight
The Traitorous Eight, as they became known, are eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to form Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. More neutral terms include the "Fairchild Eight" and the "Shockley Eight." They have sometimes been called "Fairchildren," although this term has been also...
" had abandoned William Shockley
William Shockley
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s...
to create Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. is an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957, it was a pioneer in transistor and integrated circuit manufacturing...
in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices.
HP partnered in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric
Yokogawa Electric
is a Japanese electrical engineering and software company, with businesses based on its technologies in measurement, control, and information. It has a workforce of over 19,000 in its 80 companies worldwide, operating in 33 countries....
companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs in building HP-looking products in Japan. HP and Yokogawa formed a joint venture (Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard) in 1963 to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999.
HP spun off a small company, Dynac, to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo "hp" could be turned upside down to be a reverse reflect image of the logo "dy" of the new company. Eventually Dynac changed to Dymec, then was folded back into HP in 1959. HP experimented with using Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
minicomputers with its instruments, but after deciding that it would be easier to build another small design team than deal with DEC, HP entered the computer market in 1966 with the HP 2100
HP 2100
The HP 2100 was a series of minicomputers produced by Hewlett-Packard from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. The 2100 was also a specific model in this series. The series was renamed HP 1000 by the 1970s and sold as real-time computers, complementing the more complex IT-oriented HP 3000, and would be...
/ HP 1000 series of minicomputers. These had a simple accumulator
Accumulator (computing)
In a computer's central processing unit , an accumulator is a register in which intermediate arithmetic and logic results are stored. Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation to main memory, perhaps only to be read right back again for...
-based design, with registers arranged somewhat similarly to the Intel x86 architecture still used today. The series was produced for 20 years, in spite of several attempts to replace it, and was a forerunner of the HP 9800
HP 9830
The HP 9800 was a family of what were initially called programmable calculators and later desktop computers made by Hewlett-Packard, replacing their first HP 9100 calculator...
and HP 250
HP 250
The HP 250 was a multiuser business computer by Hewlett Packard running HP250 BASIC language as its OS with access to HP's IMAGE database management. It was produced by the General Systems Division , but was a major repackaging of desktop workstation HP 9835 which had been sold in small business...
series of desktop and business computers.
The 1970s
The HP 3000HP 3000
The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1973. It was designed to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with time-sharing. The first models were withdrawn from the market until speed improvements could be made. It ultimately...
was an advanced stack-based design for a business computing server, later redesigned with RISC technology, that has only recently been retired from the market. The HP 2640
HP 2640
The HP 2640A and other HP 264X models were block-mode "smart" and intelligent ASCII standard serial terminals produced by Hewlett Packard using the Intel 8008 and 8080 microprocessors.-History:...
series of smart and intelligent terminals introduced forms-based interfaces to ASCII terminals, and also introduced screen labeled function keys
Screen labeled function keys
Screen-labeled function keys are a special case of function keys where keys are placed near a screen, which provides labels for them. These are most commonly found in kiosk applications, such as automated teller machines and gas pumps. These were first developed by Hewlett-Packard in the 1970s...
, now commonly used on gas pumps and bank ATMs. The HP 2640
HP 2640
The HP 2640A and other HP 264X models were block-mode "smart" and intelligent ASCII standard serial terminals produced by Hewlett Packard using the Intel 8008 and 8080 microprocessors.-History:...
series included one of the first bit mapped graphics displays that when combined with the HP 2100
HP 2100
The HP 2100 was a series of minicomputers produced by Hewlett-Packard from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. The 2100 was also a specific model in this series. The series was renamed HP 1000 by the 1970s and sold as real-time computers, complementing the more complex IT-oriented HP 3000, and would be...
21MX F-Series microcoded Scientific Instruction Set enabled the first commercial WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
Presentation Program
Presentation program
A presentation program is a computer software package used to display information, normally in the form of a slide show...
, BRUNO
BRUNO
BRUNO was the first commercial computer software program for creating presentations using a WYSIWYG user interface. BRUNO, which originated on the Hewlett Packard HP-1000 F-Series computer, was finished in 1979 and was used around the world by HP customers. BRUNO was later ported to the HP-3000...
that later became the program HP-Draw on the HP 3000
HP 3000
The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1973. It was designed to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with time-sharing. The first models were withdrawn from the market until speed improvements could be made. It ultimately...
. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP would eventually surpass even IBM as the world's largest technology vendor, in terms of sales.
Hewlett-Packard 9100A
The Hewlett-Packard 9100A is an early computer , first appearing in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM...
, introduced in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator, because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM
IBM mainframe
IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM from 1952 to the present. During the 1960s and 1970s, the term mainframe computer was almost synonymous with IBM products due to their marketshare...
. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at the time, the logic circuit was produced without any integrated circuits; the assembly of the CPU having been entirely executed in discrete components. With CRT
Cathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $5000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between that of a scientific calculator and an adding machine. There was no alphabetic keyboard.
Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...
, co-founder of Apple, originally designed the Apple I
Apple I
The original Apple Computer, also known retroactively as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a personal computer released by the Apple Computer Company in 1976. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer...
computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their right of first refusal
Right of first refusal
Right of first refusal is a contractual right that gives its holder the option to enter a business transaction with the owner of something, according to specified terms, before the owner is entitled to enter into that transaction with a third party...
to his work, but they did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets.
The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator
Calculator
An electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.The first solid-state electronic...
in 1972 (the HP-35
HP-35
The HP-35 was Hewlett-Packard's first pocket calculator and the world's first scientific pocket calculator . Like some of HP's desktop calculators it used reverse Polish notation. Introduced at US$395, the HP-35 was available from 1972 to 1975.Market studies at the time had shown no market for...
), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65
HP-65
The HP-65 was the first magnetic card-programmable handheld calculator. Introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1974 at an MSRP of $795, it featured nine storage registers and room for 100 keystroke instructions. It also included a magnetic card reader/writer to save and load programs...
), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41
HP-41
The HP-41C series are programmable, expandable, continuous memory handheld RPN calculators made by Hewlett-Packard from 1979 to 1990. The original model, HP-41C, was the first of its kind to offer alphanumeric display capabilities...
C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the HP-28C. Like their scientific and business calculators, their oscilloscope
Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
s, logic analyzer
Logic analyzer
A logic analyzer is an electronic instrument which displays signals in a digital circuit. A logic analyzer may convert the captured data into timing diagrams, protocol decodes, state machine traces, assembly language, or correlate assembly with source-level software.Presently, there are three...
s, and other measurement instruments have a reputation for sturdiness and usability (the latter products are now part of spin-off Agilent
Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies , or Agilent, is a company that designs and manufactures electronic and bio-analytical measurement instruments and equipment for measurement and evaluation...
's product line). The company's design philosophy in this period was summarized as "design for the guy at the next bench".
The 98x5 series of technical desktop computers started in 1975 with the 9815, and the cheaper 80 series, again of technical computers, started in 1979 with the 85. These machines used a version of the BASIC programming language which was available immediately after they were switched on, and used a proprietary magnetic tape for storage. HP computers were similar in capabilities to the much later IBM Personal Computer, although the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high.
The 1980s
In 1984, HP introduced both inkjetInkjet printer
An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost up to thousands of...
and laser printer
Laser printer
A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...
s for the desktop. Along with its scanner product line, these have later been developed into successful multifunction products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's tremendously popular LaserJet line of laser printers depend almost entirely on Canon
Canon Inc.
is a Japanese multinational corporation that specialises in the manufacture of imaging and optical products, including cameras, camcorders, photocopiers, steppers and computer printers. Its headquarters are located in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan.-Origins:...
's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
. HP develops the hardware, firmware, and software that convert data into dots for the mechanism to print. HP transitioned from the HP3000 to the HP9000 series minicomputers with attached storage such as the HP 7935
HP 7935
The HP 7935 was a business computer hard disc drive system manufactured by Hewlett Packard. It was produced by the Disc Memory Division in Boise, Idaho USA beginning in 1982 at a cost of about $27,000...
hard drive holding 404 MiB.
On March 3, 1986, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the ninth Internet .com
.com
The domain name com is a generic top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for domains registered by commercial organizations...
domain ever to be registered.
In 1987, the Palo Alto
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a California State historical landmark.
The 1990s
In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business users, to reach consumers.HP also grew through acquisitions, buying Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer, Inc., founded 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts by William Poduska and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo was one of the first vendors of graphical workstations in the 1980s...
in 1989 and Convex Computer
Convex Computer
Convex Computer Corporation was a company that developed, manufactured and marketed vector minisupercomputers and supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their later Exemplar series of parallel computing machines were based on the Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC microprocessors, and in 1995,...
in 1995.
Later in the decade, HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; in 2005, the store was renamed "HP Home & Home Office Store."
From 1995 to 1998, Hewlett-Packard were sponsors of the English football team Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club , commonly referred to as Spurs, is an English Premier League football club based in Tottenham, north London. The club's home stadium is White Hart Lane....
.
In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form Agilent. Agilent's spin-off was the largest initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
in the history of Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
. The spin-off created an $8 billion company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instrument
Measuring instrument
In the physical sciences, quality assurance, and engineering, measurement is the activity of obtaining and comparing physical quantities of real-world objects and events. Established standard objects and events are used as units, and the process of measurement gives a number relating the item...
s, semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
s, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment
Electronic test equipment
Electronic test equipment is used to create signals and capture responses from electronic Devices Under Test . In this way, the proper operation of the DUT can be proven or faults in the device can be traced and repaired...
for telecom and wireless R&D
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
and production.
In July 1999, HP appointed Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina is an American business executive and a former Republican candidate for the United States Senate representing California. Fiorina served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 and previously was an executive at AT&T and its equipment and technology spinoff,...
as CEO, the first female CEO of a company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average , also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow...
. Fiorina served as CEO during the technology industry downturn of the early 2000s. During her tenure, the market value of HP halved and the company incurred heavy job losses. The HP Board of Directors asked Fiorina to step down in 2005, and she resigned on February 9, 2005.
The 2000s
On September 3, 2001, HP announced that an agreement had been reached with CompaqCompaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
to merge the two companies.
In May, 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially merged with Compaq. Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines.
In 1998 Compaq had already taken over the Digital Equipment Corporation. That is why HP still offers support for PDP-11, VAX and AlphaServer.
The merger occurred after a proxy fight with Bill Hewlett's son Walter, who objected to the merger. Compaq itself had bought Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum uptime and zero data loss. The company was founded in...
in 1997 (which had been started by ex-HP employees), and Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
in 1998. Following this strategy, HP became a major player in desktop
Desktop computer
A desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Early desktop computers are designed to lay flat on the desk, while modern towers stand upright...
s, laptops, and servers for many different markets. After the merger with Compaq, the new ticker symbol
Ticker symbol
A stock symbol or ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker...
became "HPQ", a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show the significance of the alliance and also key letters from the two companies Hewlett-Packard and Compaq (the latter company being famous for its "Q" logo on all of its products.)
In the year 2004 HP released the DV 1000 Series, including the HP Pavilion dv 1658
HP Pavilion dv 1658
The HP Pavilion dv1658 computer is a Hewlett-Packard designed product released in 2006 with optional webcam and microphone and speakers by Altec Lansing or Harman Kardon. The CPU is an Intel Centrino Pentium M family single core processor with virtualization. The RAM starting capacity is 512MB...
and 1040 two years later in May 2006, HP began its campaign, The Computer is Personal Again. The campaign was designed to bring back the fact that the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
is a personal product. The campaign utilized viral marketing, sophisticated visuals, and its own web site (www.hp.com/personal). Some of the ads featured well-known personalities, including Pharrell, Petra Nemcova
Petra Nemcová
Petra Němcová is a Czech model, television host, author, and philanthropist. She is the founder and chair of the Happy Hearts Fund. In December 2004, she was injured in Thailand by a tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake; her fiancé, photographer Simon Atlee, was killed in the...
, Mark Burnett
Mark Burnett
Mark Burnett is a British television producer and executive producer, based in the United States. He currently is the executive producer of five network television series with seven hours of network programming. Works with which Burnett is associated have won multiple awards and recognition...
, Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban is an American business magnate and investor. He is the owner of the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, and Magnolia Pictures, and the chairman of the HDTV cable network HDNet....
, Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys
Alicia Augello Cook , better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began playing the piano...
, Jay-Z
Jay-Z
Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010...
, Gwen Stefani
Gwen Stefani
Gwen Renée Stefani is an American singer-songwriter and fashion designer. Stefani is the lead vocalist for the rock and ska band No Doubt. Stefani recorded her first solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. in 2004. The album was inspired by music of the 1980s, and was a success with sales of over...
, and Shaun White
Shaun White
Shaun Roger White is an American professional snowboarder and skateboarder. He is a two-time Olympic gold medalist. He rides regular stance, twelve and negative three degrees on his board.-Early life:Shaun White is an Irish American...
.
On May 13, 2008, HP and Electronic Data Systems
Electronic Data Systems
HP Enterprise Services is the global business and technology services division of Hewlett Packard's HP Enterprise Business strategic business unit. It was formed by the combination of HP's legacy services consulting and outsourcing business and the integration of acquired Electronic Data Systems,...
announced that they had signed a definitive agreement under which HP would purchase EDS. On June 30, HP announced that the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act
Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act
The Hart–Scott–Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 is a set of amendments to the antitrust laws of the United States, principally the Clayton Antitrust Act. The HSR Act was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on September 30, 1976...
of 1976 had expired. "The transaction still requires EDS stockholder approval and regulatory clearance from the European Commission and other non-U.S. jurisdictions and is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in the merger agreement." The agreement was finalized on August 26, 2008, and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded "EDS an HP company." As of September 23, 2009, EDS is known as HP Enterprise Services.
On November 11, 2009, 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
and Hewlett-Packard announced that Hewlett-Packard would be acquiring 3Com for $2.7 billion in cash.
The acquisition is one of the biggest in size among a series of takeovers and acquisitions by technology giants to push their way to become one-stop shops. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, tech giants have constantly felt the pressure to expand beyond their current market niches. Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
purchased Perot Systems
Perot Systems
Perot Systems was an information technology services provider founded in 1988 by a group of investors led by Ross Perot and based in Plano, Texas, United States. A Fortune 1000 corporation with offices in more than 25 countries, Perot Systems employed more than 23,000 people and had an annual...
recently to invade into the technology consulting business area previously dominated by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. Hewlett-Packard's latest move marked its incursion into enterprise networking gear market dominated by Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
.
The 2010s
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
and Hewlett-Packard announced that HP would be acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion in cash and debt, In the months leading up to the buyout it was rumored that Palm was going to be purchased by either HTC
HTC
-Companies:*HTC Corporation, a Taiwanese manufacturer of handheld devices*Harrisonville Telephone Company, a telephone company in Waterloo, Illinois*Horry Telephone Cooperative, a telephone cooperative in Horry County, South Carolina...
, Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
, RIM
Research In Motion
Research In Motion Limited or RIM is a Canadian multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada that designs, manufactures and markets wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market...
or HP. The addition of Palm handsets to the HP product line provides some overlap with the current iPAQ
IPAQ
iPAQ presently refers to a Pocket PC and personal digital assistant first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000; the name was borrowed from Compaq's earlier iPAQ Desktop Personal Computers. Since Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq, the product has been marketed by HP. The devices use a Windows...
mobile products but will significantly increase their mobile presence as those devices have not been selling well. The addition of Palm brings HP a library of valuable patents as well the mobile operating platform known as webOS. On July 1, 2010, the acquisition of Palm was final. The purchase of Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
's webOS began a big gamble – to build HP's own ecosystem. On July 1, 2011, HP launched its first tablet named HP TouchPad
HP TouchPad
The HP TouchPad is a tablet computer which was developed and designed by Hewlett-Packard. The HP TouchPad was launched on July 1, 2011, in the United States; July 15 in Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany; and August 15 in Australia....
, bringing webOS to tablet devices. On September 2, 2010, won its bidding war
Bid price
A bid price is the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for a good. It is usually referred to simply as the "bid."In bid and ask, the bid price stands in contrast to the ask price or "offer", and the difference between the two is called the bid/ask spread.An unsolicited bid or purchase...
for 3PAR
3PAR
3PAR Inc. is a manufacturer of systems and software for data storage and information management headquartered in Fremont, California, USA. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard. 3PAR produces a range of enterprise storage products, including hardware disk arrays and storage management...
with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
declined to match.
On August 6, 2010, CEO Mark Hurd resigned amid controversy and CFO Cathie Lesjak assumed the role of interim CEO. On September 30, 2010, Léo Apotheker
Leo Apotheker
Léo Apotheker is the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, having served in that position from November 2010 to 22nd September 2011, and the former CEO of SAP AG, having served in that position from April 2008 to February 2010...
was named as HP's new CEO and President.
Apotheker’s appointment sparked a strong reaction from Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, who complained that Apotheker had been in charge of SAP when one of its subsidiaries was systematically stealing software from Oracle. SAP accepted that its subsidiary, which has now closed, illegally accessed Oracle intellectual property.
On August 18, 2011 HP announced that it would strategically exit the smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
and tablet computer business, focusing on higher-margin "strategic priorities of cloud, solutions and software with an emphasis on enterprise, commercial and government markets" They also contemplated spinning off their personal computer division into a separate company.
HP's fundamental restructuring to quit the 'PC' business, while continuing to sell servers and other equipment to business customers, was similar to what IBM did in 2005.
On September 22, 2011, Hewlett-Packard Co. named former eBay Inc. Chief Executive Meg Whitman
Meg Whitman
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard. A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School...
its president and CEO, replacing Léo Apotheker, while Raymond Lane became executive chairman of the company.
Facilities
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, USA. Its U.S. operations are directed from its facility in unincorporated
Unincorporated area
In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...
Harris County
Harris County, Texas
As of the 2010 Census, the population of the county was 4,092,459, White Americans made up 56.6% of Harris County's population; non-Hispanic whites represented 33.0% of the population. Black Americans made up 18.9% of the population. Native Americans made up 0.7% of Harris County's population...
, Texas, near Houston. Its Latin America offices in unincorporated Miami-Dade County
Miami-Dade County, Florida
Miami-Dade County is a county located in the southeastern part of the state of Florida. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 2,496,435, making it the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States...
, Florida, U.S., near Miami and in Medellín
Medellín
Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...
Colombia. Its Europe offices are in Meyrin
Meyrin
Meyrin is a municipality of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It is the city located nearest to the CERN particle physics laboratory.Meyrin was originally a small agricultural village until the 1950s, when construction of CERN began just to the north...
, Switzerland, near Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
. Its Asia-Pacific offices are in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. It also has large operations in Boise, Idaho
Boise, Idaho
Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...
, Roseville, California
Roseville, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Roseville had a population of 118,788. The population density was 3,279.4 people per square mile...
, Fort Collins, Colorado
Fort Collins, Colorado
Fort Collins is a Home Rule Municipality situated on the Cache La Poudre River along the Colorado Front Range, and is the county seat and most populous city of Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Fort Collins is located north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. With a 2010 census...
, San Diego, and Plano, Texas
Plano, Texas
Plano is a city in the state of Texas, located mostly within Collin County. The city's population was 259,841 at the 2010 census, making it the ninth-largest city in Texas and the 71st most populous city in the United States. Plano is located within the metropolitan area commonly referred to as...
(the former headquarters of EDS, which HP acquired). In the UK, HP is based at a large site in Bracknell, Berkshire with offices in various UK locations, including a landmark office tower in London, 88 Wood Street
88 Wood Street
88 Wood Street is a commercial office tower development in the City of London, England on Wood Street. The architects were Richard Rogers Partnership, now known as Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and the Director in Charge was Graham Stirk. The building was constructed between 1993 and 2001...
. Its recent acquisition of 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
will expand its employee base to Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 38,499 at the 2010 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the...
.
Products and organizational structure
HP has successful lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home and small business use; many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with CompaqCompaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
. HP today promotes itself as supplying not just hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement, and support IT infrastructure.
HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) is "the leading imaging and printing systems provider in the world for printer hardware, printing supplies and scanning devices, providing solutions across customer segments from individual consumers to small and medium businesses to large enterprises." Products and technology associated with IPG include Inkjet
Inkjet printer
An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost up to thousands of...
and LaserJet
LaserJet
LaserJet as a brand name identifies the line of dry electrophotographic laser printers marketed by the American computer-company Hewlett-Packard . The HP LaserJet was the world's first desktop laser printer.-Technology:...
printers, consumables and related products, Officejet all-in-one multifunction printer/scanner/faxes
Multifunction printer
An MFP , multifunctional, all-in-one , or Multifunction Device , is an office machine which incorporates the functionality of multiple devices in one, so as to have a smaller footprint in a home or small business setting , or to provide centralized document...
, Designjet and Scitex Large Format Printers, Indigo Digital Press
Indigo Digital Press
Indigo is a series of digital offset printing presses manufactured by the Hewlett-Packard company in Ness Ziona, Israel.HP Indigo presses are used for general commercial printing, direct mail, photo, publications, labels, flexible packaging, folding cartons and specialty printing...
, HP Web Jetadmin printer management software, HP Output Management suite of software, LightScribe
LightScribe
LightScribe is an optical disc recording technology that uses specially coated recordable CD and DVD media to produce laser-etched labels with text or graphics, as opposed to stick-on labels and printable discs....
optical recording technology, HP Photosmart
HP Photosmart
Hewlett-Packard's line of digital cameras and photo printers is called Photosmart.-Digital cameras:The original HP digital camera was a CompactFlash-based model simply called the Photosmart...
digital cameras and photo printers, HP SPaM
HP SPaM
HP SPaM is an internal consulting group that supports HP businesses on mission-critical strategic and operation decisions. SPaM's mission is to drive innovation and data-driven decisions in HP through assisting with analytics, consulting, and operations management...
, and Snapfish by HP
Snapfish
Snapfish is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service that is owned by Hewlett-Packard. Members can upload files for free, and are given unlimited photo storage.- History :...
, a photo sharing and photo products service. On December 23, 2008, HP released iPrint Photo for iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
a free downloadable software application that allows the printing of 4" x 6" photos.
HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG) claims to be "one of the leading vendors of personal computers ("PCs") in the world based on unit volume shipped and annual revenue." PSG includes business PCs and accessories, consumer PCs and accessories, (e.g., HP Pavilion
HP Pavilion (computer)
HP Pavilion is a line of personal computers produced by Hewlett-Packard and introduced in 1995. The name is applied to both desktops and laptops for the Home and Home Office product range....
, Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
Presario, VoodooPC
VoodooPC
Voodoo Computers Inc. or VoodooPC was a luxury personal computer brand owned by Hewlett Packard. Voodoo was originally started as a niche PC maker in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1991, and in September of 2006 Hewlett Packard announced they would acquire Voodoo. Voodoo specialized...
), handheld computing (e.g., iPAQ Pocket PC), and digital "connected" entertainment (e.g., HP MediaSmart TVs, HP MediaSmart Servers, HP MediaVaults, DVD+RW drives). HP resold the Apple iPod until November 2005.
HP Enterprise Business (EB) incorporates HP Technology Services
HP Technology Services
HP Technology Services is a business unit within the HP Enterprise Business division of Hewlett-Packard , a large information technology vendor. HP Technology Services provides IT design, planning, implementation, integration and maintenance services and support for organizations and government...
, Enterprise Services (an amalgamation of the former EDS
Electronic Data Systems
HP Enterprise Services is the global business and technology services division of Hewlett Packard's HP Enterprise Business strategic business unit. It was formed by the combination of HP's legacy services consulting and outsourcing business and the integration of acquired Electronic Data Systems,...
, and what was known as HP Services), HP Enterprise Security Services oversees professional services such as network security, information security and information assurance/ compliancy, HP Software Division, and Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN). The Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN) oversees "back end" products like storage and servers. HP's networking business unit ProCurve
ProCurve
HP ProCurve was the name of the networking division of Hewlett-Packard from 1998 to 2010 and associated with the products that it sold. The name of the division was changed to HP Networking in September 2010 after HP bought 3Com Corporation.-History:...
is responsible for the family of network switch
Network switch
A network switch or switching hub is a computer networking device that connects network segments.The term commonly refers to a multi-port network bridge that processes and routes data at the data link layer of the OSI model...
es, wireless access point
Wireless access point
In computer networking, a wireless access point is a device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or related standards...
s, and routers. They are currently a business unit of ESSN.
HP Software Division is the company's enterprise software unit. For years, HP has produced and marketed its brand of enterprise management software, HP OpenView. From September 2005 through 2010, HP purchased a total of 15 software companies between as part of a publicized, deliberate strategy to augment its software offerings for large business customers. HP Software sells three categories of software: IT performance management, IT management software and information management software. HP Software also provides consulting, Software as a service
Software as a Service
Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...
, cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
solutions, education and support services.
HP's Office of Strategy and Technology has four main functions: (1) steering the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment, (2) fostering the development of the company's global technical community, (3) leading the company's strategy and corporate development efforts, and (4) performing worldwide corporate marketing activities. Under this office is HP Labs
HP Labs
HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for Hewlett-Packard. The lab has some 600 researchersin seven locations throughout the world....
, the research arm of HP. Founded in 1966, HP Labs's function is to deliver new technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP's current strategies. An example of recent HP Lab technology includes the Memory spot chip
Memory spot chip
The Memory Spot chip is an integrated circuit currently in development by Hewlett-Packard. The chip incorporates a central processing unit, random access memory and a wireless receiver, all bundled together in a device 1.4 or 2 mm²....
. HP IdeaLab further provides a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community.
HP also offers managed services where they provide complete IT-support solutions for other companies and organisations. Some examples of these are: A large activity is HP offering "Professional Support" and desktop "Premier Support" for Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in the EMEA
Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Europe, the Middle East and Africa, usually abbreviated to EMEA, is a regional designation used for government, marketing and business purposes...
marketplace. This is done from the Leixlip
Leixlip
-Politics:Since 1988 Leixlip has had a nine member Town Council , headed by a Cathaoirleach , which has control over many local matters, although it is limited in that it is not also a planning authority...
campus near Dublin, Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Support is offered on the line of Microsoft operation systems, Exchange, Sharepoint and some office-applications. But HP also offers outsourced services for companies like Bank of Ireland
Bank of Ireland
The Bank of Ireland is a commercial bank operation in Ireland, which is one of the 'Big Four' in both parts of the island.Historically the premier banking organisation in Ireland, the Bank occupies a unique position in Irish banking history...
, some UK banks, the U.S. defense forces, etc.
Culture
The founders, known to friends and employees alike as Bill and Dave, developed a unique management style that came to be known as The HP Way. In Bill's words, the HP Way is "a core ideology ... which includes a deep respect for the individual, a dedication to affordable quality and reliability, a commitment to community responsibility, and a view that the company exists to make technical contributions for the advancement and welfare of humanity." The following are the tenets of The HP Way:
- We have trust and respect for individuals.
- We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution.
- We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
- We achieve our common objectives through teamwork.
- We encourage flexibility and innovation.
Corporate social responsibility
In July 2007, the company announced that it had met its target, set in 2004, to recycle one billion poundPound (mass)
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
s of electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
, toner and ink cartridge
Ink cartridge
An ink cartridge or inkjet cartridge is a replaceable component of an inkjet printer that contains the ink that is deposited onto paper during printing....
s. It has set a new goal of recycling a further two billion pounds of hardware by the end of 2010. In 2006, the company recovered 187 million pounds of electronics, 73 percent more than its closest competitor.
In 2008, HP released its supply chain emissions data — an industry first.
In September 2009, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
ranked HP No.1 on its 2009 Green Rankings of America's 500 largest corporations. According to environmentalleader.com, "Hewlett-Packard earned its number one position due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction programs, and was the first major IT company to report GHG emissions associated with its supply chain, according to the ranking. In addition, HP has made an effort to remove toxic substances from its products, though Greenpeace has targeted the company for not doing better."
HP took the top spot on Corporate Responsibility Magazines 100 Best Corporate Citizens List for 2010. The list is cited by PR Week as one of America's most important business rankings. HP beat out other Russell 1000 Index companies because of its leadership in seven categories including environment, climate changes and corporate philanthropy. In 2009, HP was ranked fifth.
Fortune magazine named HP one of the World's Most Admired Companies in 2010, placing it No. 2 in the computer industry and No. 32 overall in its list of the top 50. This year in the computer industry HP was ranked No. 1 in social responsibility, long-term investment, global competitiveness, and use of corporate assets.
In May 2011, HP released its latest Global Responsibility report covering accomplishments during 2010. The report, the company’s tenth, provides a comprehensive view of HP’s global citizenship programs, performance, and goals and describes how HP uses its technology, influence, and expertise to make a positive impact on the world. The company’s 2009 report won best corporate responsibility report of the year. The 2009 reports claims HP decreased its total energy use by 9 percent compared with 2008. HP recovered a total of 118,000 tonnes of electronic products and supplies for recycling in 2009, including 61 million print cartridges.
In an April 2010 San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
article, HP was one of 12 companies commended for "designing products to be safe from the start, following the principles of green chemistry." The commendations came from Environment California, an environmental advocacy group, who praised select companies in the Golden State and the Bay Area for their efforts to keep our planet clean and green.
In May 2010, HP was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute. This is the second year in a row HP has made the list. Ethisphere reviewed, researched and analyzed thousands of nominations in more than 100 countries and 35 industries to create the 2010 list. HP was one of only 100 companies to earn the distinction of top winner and was the only computer hardware vendor to be recognized. Ethisphere honors firms that promote ethical business standards and practices by going beyond legal minimums, introducing innovative ideas that benefit the public.
HP is listed in Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
's Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers according to their policies on sustainability, energy and climate and green products. In November 2011, HP secured the 1st place (out of 15) in this ranking (climbing up 3 places) with an increased score of 5.9 (up from 5.5). It scored most points on the new Sustainable Operations criteria, having the best programme for measuring and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from its suppliers and scoring maximum points for its thorough paper procurement policy.
Moreover, HP does especially well for its disclosure of externally verified greenhouse gas emissions and its setting of targets for reducing them. However, Greenpeace reports that HP risks a penalty point in future editions due to the fact that it is a member of trade associations that have commented against energy efficiency standards.
HP has earned recognition of its work in the area of data privacy and security. In 2010 the company ranked No. 4 in the Ponemon Institute's annual study of the most trusted companies for privacy. Since 2006, HP has worked directly with the U.S. Congress, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Department of Commerce to establish a new strategy for federal legislation. HP played a key role in work toward the December 2010 FTC report “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change.”
After winning nine straight annual "Most Respected Company in China" awards from the Economic Observer and Peking University, HP China has added the "10 Year Contribution" award to its list of prestigious accolades. The award aims to identify companies doing business in China with outstanding and sustained performance in business operations, development and corporate social responsibility.
Brand
Since its creation, the HP Logo has remained largely the same. Because of its extreme simplicity, the logo is recognized all over the world.
HP has many sponsorships. One well known sponsorship is of Walt Disney World's Epcot
Epcot
Epcot is a theme park in the Walt Disney World Resort, located near Orlando, Florida. The park is dedicated to the celebration of human achievement, namely international culture and technological innovation. The second park built at the resort, it opened on October 1, 1982 and was initially named...
Park's Mission: SPACE
Mission: SPACE
Mission: SPACE is a motion simulator thrill ride at Epcot. It simulates what an astronaut might experience aboard a spacecraft on a mission to Mars, from the higher g-force of blastoff to the speculative hypersleep....
.
From 1995 to 1999 they were the shirt sponsor of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club , commonly referred to as Spurs, is an English Premier League football club based in Tottenham, north London. The club's home stadium is White Hart Lane....
. From 1997 to 1999 they were sponsors of Australian Football League
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...
club North Melbourne Football Club
North Melbourne Football Club
The North Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed The Kangaroos, is the fourth oldest Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League and is one of the oldest sporting clubs in Australia and the world...
. They also sponsored the BMW Williams Formula 1 team until 2006 (a sponsorship formerly held by Compaq), and as of 2010 sponsor Renault F1
Renault F1
Lotus Renault GP, formerly the Renault F1 Team, is a British Formula One racing team. The Oxfordshire-based team can trace its roots back through the Benetton team of the late 1980s and 1990s to the Toleman team of the early 1980s. Renault had also competed in various forms since , before taking...
. Hewlett-Packard also has the naming rights arrangement for the HP Pavilion at San Jose, home of the San Jose Sharks
San Jose Sharks
The San Jose Sharks are a professional ice hockey team based in San Jose, California, United States. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League...
NHL
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...
hockey team.
After the acquisition of Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
in 2002, HP has maintained the "Compaq Presario" brand on low-end home desktops and laptops, the "HP Compaq" brand on business desktops and laptops, and the "HP ProLiant
Proliant
ProLiant is a brand of server computers that was originally developed and marketed by Compaq. After Compaq merged into Hewlett-Packard , HP continued to develop and market these servers as HP ProLiant. ProLiant systems lead the x86 server market in terms of units and revenue...
" brand on Intel-architecture servers. (The "HP Pavilion" brand is used on home entertainment laptops and all home desktops.)
HP uses DEC's "StorageWorks" brand on storage systems; Tandem's "NonStop" servers are now branded as "HP Integrity NonStop".
Legacy
Agilent TechnologiesAgilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies , or Agilent, is a company that designs and manufactures electronic and bio-analytical measurement instruments and equipment for measurement and evaluation...
, not HP, retains the direct product legacy of the original company founded in 1939. Agilent's current portfolio of electronic instruments are descended from HP's very earliest products. HP entered the computer business only after its instrumentation competencies were well-established. When Agilent was spun off, items in the Corporate Archives were split-up along product lines, with Agilent retaining almost all of the original HP archives – only where there was duplication of material, was HP given early Test and Measurement material. Both companies retained an original 200A Audio Oscillator.
HP DISCOVER customer event
In 2011, HP Enterprise Business, along with participating independent user groups, combined its annual HP Software Universe, HP Technology Forum and HP Technology@Work into a single event, HP DISCOVER. There are two HP DiscoverHP Discover
HP Discover is Hewlett-Packard's showcase technology event for business and government customers. In 2011, HP Enterprise Business, along with participating independent user groups, combined its annual HP Software Universe, HP Technology Forum and HP Technology@Work into a single event, HP DISCOVER...
events annually, one for the Americas and one for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). HP DISCOVER 2011 Americas took place June 6–10, in Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
at the Venetian/Palazzo. The event offered nearly 1,000 sessions on application transformation, Converged Infrastructure
Converged Infrastructure
Converged infrastructure packages multiple information technology components into a single, optimized computing solution. Components of a converged infrastructure solution include servers, data storage devices, networking equipment and software for IT infrastructure management, automation and...
, information optimization, mobile devices, webOS, global data centers, security, hybrid delivery and cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
.
Approximately 10,000 customers, partners and IT thought leaders attended HP Discover 2011 in Las Vegas and approximately 5,000 are expected to attend the EMEA event. The Americas conference featured tracks designed for several industries including automotive and aerospace; communications, media & entertainment, energy, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, high tech and electronics, public sector, retail and consumer goods, and transportation and logistics. The nearly 1,000 sessions, hands-on labs and exhibits explored all areas of the HP Enterprise Business portfolio including servers, storage, networking, software and services. In addition, the company provided sneak previews of its new tablet device, webOS TouchPad which will be available in July 1, 2011, starting at $500.
The HP DISCOVER 2011 event in EMEA is slated to take place in Vienna, Austria, at the Reed Exhibitions, Messe Wien Congress Center, on November 29 through December 1, 2011.
Spying Scandal
On September 5, 2006, NewsweekNewsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
revealed that HP's general counsel
General Counsel
A general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States...
, at the behest of chairwoman Patricia Dunn
Patricia C. Dunn
Patricia Cecile Dunn , aka Patricia Cecile Dunn-Jahnke, is the former non-executive chairman of the board of Hewlett-Packard , a position she held from February 2005 until September 22, 2006, when she resigned her position. On October 4, 2006 Bill Lockyer, the California attorney general, charged...
, contracted a team of independent security experts to investigate board members and several journalists in order to identify the source of an information leak. In turn, those security experts recruited private investigators who used a spying technique known as pretexting. The pretexting involved investigators impersonating HP board members and nine journalists (including reporters for CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal) in order to obtain their phone records. The information leaked related to HP's long-term strategy and was published as part of a CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
article in January 2006. Most HP employees accused of criminal acts have since been acquitted.
Hewlett-Packard has also been at the center of a fiasco in recent years. In November 2007, Hewlett-Packard released a BIOS update covering a wide range of laptops with the intent to speed up the computer fan as well as have it run constantly, whether the computer was on or off. The reason was to prevent the overheating of defective NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) that had been shipped to many of the original equipment manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple. In July 2008, HP revealed an extension to the initial one-year warranty covering a few of the affected computers, but leaving many more without the protection, despite research showing that these computers were also affected. Since this point, several websites have been documenting the issue, most notably www.hplies.com, a forum dedicated to what they refer to as Hewlett-Packard's "multi-million dollar cover up" of the issue. (The site now carries computer-repair ads, and the domain name is apparently now for sale.) There have been several small-claims lawsuits filed in several states, as well as suits filed in other countries. Hewlett-Packard also faced a class-action lawsuit in 2009 over its i7 processor computers. The complainants stated that their systems locked up within 30 minutes of powering on, consistently. Even after being replaced with newer i7 systems, the lockups continued.
HP & Oracle lawsuit
On June 15, 2011, HP filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court in Santa Clara, claiming that Oracle had breached an agreement to support the Itanium microprocessor used in HP's high-end enterprise servers. On June 15, 2011, HP sent a "formal legal demand" letter to Oracle in an attempt to force the world's No. 3 software maker to reverse its decision to discontinue software development on Intel Itanium microprocessor.HP Alumni
- Michael CapellasMichael CapellasMichael David Capellas is Chief Executive Officer of AcadiaEnterprises, LLC a joint venture of Cisco and EMC with investment from Intel and VMware. He also serves as Chairman of the Virtual Computing Environment coalition...
(Compaq CEO/Chairman - HP President) - Rahul SoodRahul SoodRahul Sood was the founder of VoodooPC , and became the outgoing Chief Technology Officer for the Hewlett Packard Global Voodoo Business Unit...
(VoodooPC Founder) - Steve JobsSteve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
(Summer job) - Steve WozniakSteve WozniakStephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...
(mainframe designer)
For HP Chairmen and CEOs.
See also
- HP calculatorsHP calculatorsHP calculators are various calculators manufactured by the Hewlett-Packard company over the years.- History :In the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard was becoming a diversified electronics company with product lines in electronic test equipment, scientific instrumentation, and medical electronics, and was...
- HP Linux Imaging and Printing
- HP Software & Solutions
- HP User Group
- List of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard
- List of computer system manufacturers
- List of Hewlett-Packard products