HP to shut Cupertino campus, shuttle to HQ
July 16, 2010
Yesterday's email at HP included some watershed news about the company labs. The buildings that cooked up the ultimate generation of the HP 3000 and MPE/iX, as well as much of the company's current enterprise systems, are being closed down in Cupertino.
For decades, Cupertino was the heartbeat of HP's business computer operations, but by 2012 the entire staff now working across a lush campus will be relocated to HP's facilities in Palo Alto. The new Building 20, being constructed as a shining example of a green, efficient workplace, will house thousands of employees who've spent their entire careers inside places like Building 47.
HP's memo to the workforce came out yesterday and was reprinted at VentureBeat.com. So the migration of HP's servers will include much more than HP's 3000 operations. Entire business units are moving across Silicon Valley to reside in Building 20, as well as into some buildings where HP grew up in the 1960s. In a bit of irony for 3000 users, HP is vacating a campus whose northern perimeter is Homestead Road.
HP believes that 40 percent of its Cupertino campus -- which includes sites such as the Maple Room, where HP 3000 meetings and customer presentations are still held -- is going unused. The consolidation of HP's Bay Area operations is sparking the relocation. HP offices on Pruneridge Avenue, the physical address for the HP 3000 since the 1980s, will be closed within two years. The Customer Briefing Center will be relocated to the Palo Alto campus.
HP will boast a world-class headquarters that better reflects our brand, better supports the way we work today, and improves our impact on the environment.
We need to improve efficiency and utilization of the Cupertino and Palo Alto sites. Recent analysis shows current utilization of both sites is low, with only about 60% of workspaces in regular use – our goal is to have 90% of workspace in regular use.
HP has been facing mandatory upgrades to the buildings whose parking lots once hosted release bashes for HP 3000s. Redwood Grove, where retiring 3000 staffers commemorated their exits with a party, will become a memory itself. The short walk across the campus to Wolfe Road and its Asian restaurants will disappear. HP acknowledges this migration is a major change -- a sentiment the company might have better expressed and stressed when it cut its 3000 futures short.
Building 20 in Palo Alto will be fully upgraded and improvements will be made to Buildings 1-6. Older infrastructure will be replaced with new, more efficient technology, using green solutions such as energy-efficient lighting and equipment and sustainable materials.
Real estate in California is priced and taxed at a level far above HP's operations in Texas, where the old Compaq once headquartered. Dave Packard's office, now preserved as a shrine complete with pocket change left on his desk, is still inside the Palo Alto campus. It will be interesting to see just how much of HP can remain in the Valley within a few years. Change is the one constant at the company that's built itself into the Number 1 supplier of PCs and enterprise servers worldwide.