This is a pseudo follow-up to yesterday’s post on HP’s new firmware support policy, and has the benefit of also including a quote from me on a Wall Street Journal Digits post titled H-P Says It Will Clarify Controversial Server Software Policy by Spencer E. Ante.
Mr. Ante reached out to me over Facebook and asked for some comments. Shockingly (to me, at least), he included one of them in the linked post.
Besides the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever seen it abbreviated H-P before and my positions as “webmaster” really is an old position (but still the official one), I think it is kind of cool.
However, as to the remarks made by the HP executives, I’m not assuaged at all. The fact that they announced the change at all is an indication of where they are going in the future (or at least, where they are considering going in the future).
As a campus that relies on HP ProCurve networking gear, HP portables for faculty and staff, and was considering HP servers for a needed storage solution that is worrying. They’ve fallen down the line as far as vendors are concerned and I’ll be looking elsewhere for our server needs in the future.
Update on 2014/2/11 @ 11:49am – HP has clarified its statements from a couple of days ago with another blog post. While it does leave it open for security updates and some other issues to be available to everyone, it still creates a barrier between users and HP. While it might appeal to some, I’m still highly skeptical of the move and it hasn’t changed my stance at all.
2 replies on “WSJ, HP, and Me”
Agreed. This is a bad money grab move. Makes me wonder just how long that Lifetime Warranty on my Procurve equipment really is. For non-profits or small shops that rely on used equipment this hurts, a lot. HP is NOT going to make money off of folks that already can’t afford to buy new equipment. It’s not like big shops are riding their HP servers well past their warranty period…they’re all virtual and you’re not going to take that risk with your virtual environment. This just tells me that HP doesn’t want small shops to even bother thinking about HP hardware.
That’s the thing, they’re going to hurt the smaller guys pretty much exclusively. That makes me sad.
Also staring at my new ProCurves and praying that things don’t change.