Climbing HP's new 3000 chain of command
June 7, 2007
It can become difficult to determine what a change in an HP org chart means, especially in an era when every HP communique carries securities and investment impact. By the late 1990s, HP stopped distributing org charts to the press for the division and sector-level managers. Things changed too often. The saying inside the community: "If the ink is dry on that org chart, it must be out of date."
So understanding HP reorganizations has become something like Kremlinology, that old guessing game where the West's analysts would try to figure the Soviet pecking order by the leaders' relative positions in the May Day review stands. That said, HP's business manager now has a report within the 3000 "virtual division" according to accounts from those with internal access to the group.
Hou reports to Ross McDonald in the new organization. McDonald has been the leader of the R&D effort for the HP 3000 ever since Dave Wilde stepped up to the business manager spot in 2002. In terms of tenure in a single management position, he's got the record as near as we can figure.
HP's communiques to the community have been signed by McDonald for several years now, including the notice of how the Right To Use Licenses apply to the community's upgraded 3000s. He's also wielded the deciding word on many post-2008 issues for HP, according to those same insiders.
Like HP's replacement Craig Fairchild, who has stepped in for Jeff Vance, McDonald has lifted his public profile over the last three years. We approached him about a Q&A interview in the summer of 2004, but he declined respectfully. "We have an arrangement, Dave Wilde and me," he told me on the last-ever HP World expo floor. "Dave takes the public positions. I work behind the scenes."
Hou has latitude, we expect, to influence HP's end-of-product-life decisions about the 3000. But it's notable that she reports to McDonald, rather than an outside manager.