Reading or playing at the oracle

 

Quick appendix to our previous post…

Apparently Léo Apotheker, by the way, is going to be traveling around the world meeting customers and HP teams as a good start for his new position at HP.

A secondary objective might probably be irritating the oracle (yukyuk).

So here is our little contribution to cool the oracle down a bit. Maybe he should relax a bit reading, playing games other than tennis, or both things!

Soooo obvious, that we’d better apologize in advance.

Note: Sorry kid, but this one’s Nintendo… no oracle software there… (hihihihihihihihihi)

Armani-labeled suits…

 

So here we go…Today the news is reproducing almost everywhere an email submitted by the oracle regarding the case of TomorrowNow’s, scheduled for the first day in November. There are even quite funny references to that (not saying the content is not serious).

But as we go through these references, we miss a certain link that explains why the outbursts from the oracle are coming these days, before the trial actually starts.

After all the mess about certain article published in NYT, a few days ago SAP formally asked for a gag order against the oracle.

And we think that this is probably one of the reasons why the oracle has actually exploded and certainly has done it before the trial started.

Should the gag order come effective, all the information and media influence about it would remain within the courtroom. So in certain way, this email from Big Mouth Larry is one more attempt to influence jurors before he must shut up publicly. it would be consistent with his style, as we recall his declarations about Mark Hurd’s ousting, and many other examples of his particular verbosity.

And trying to understand what he means in this email, we wonder what the need or purpose of sending it is .

First: He is not addressing that much the case itself, but more the fact of Léo Apotheker, former SAP CEO and currently HP CEO, attending the trial should he be called or not. His main point is this one. It is Léo Apotheker’s presence. The German exec is just one more witness in a longer list. SAP, the offender company, is hardly mentioned but incidentally, as the previous employer of Léo Apotheker.

Second: If he does have evidence about any wrongdoing by Léo Apotheker, then he indeed has a won case, and naturally Justice will grant him his demands. But it is up to the jurors to decide the verdict, not general public, and certainly not journalists. The case will be settled in a courtroom, not in parallel trials online.

Third: He boldly dares to guess HP’s plans of keeping Léo Apotheker away from the US in order to avoid having to attend the trial. Who is Big Mouth Larry to suggest cowardice of others?

We think that some explanation to the previous items lies in the hypothetical rationale in Big Mouth Larry’s feverish mind. If you want, the situation looks very much like crime investigation: The first suspects are usually those thought by investigators to get some kind of benefit from the crime.

One: By distracting its CEO, the oracle hits directly HP top managers. He would delay the effective start date at HP of Apotheker, and would have as well HP’s top managers sort of “distracted” too.

Two: All the energy and resources that Léo has and will have to dedicate to this issue won’t be therefore devoted to HP.

Three: HP’s reputation will be damaged. HP has already been too much in the news in the news because of legal matters: HP Board being sued by shareholder groups, HP suing Mark Hurd for lack of ethics, more shareholders suing HP for how the Hurd ouster was managed… not to mention earlier (and not so old) suit that cost the job to former chairwoman Patricia Dunn and so forth.

Four: Driving attention to Léo Apotheker in particular, and to HP and SAP at a broader level, effectively removes it from Mark Hurd primarily and Charles Phillips secondarily, much more tied to the oracle than to HP or SAP. This guys badly need it.

Five: Particularly related to Mark Hurd, this is a big favor from big-brother Larry… We could imagine, right after his ouster, Mark Hurd running out of tears to his tennis dear friend: “Larry, Larry, look at what they did to me; Larry, would you please stand for me?…”

Six: The self-assigned myth of invincibility and being above Good and Evil for Larry himself. Blinded by self-pride, the guy probably feels the need to prove himself and incidentally the rest of the world that his word is law… And a particularly sensitive community within the “rest of the world” is made up from the ranks at the oracle precisely. We would not be surprised if Big Mouth Larry expects his employees to fall down to their knees and surrender to the power of their Leader, like all those Ford-worshippers in George Orwell’s 1984.

It is said that Larry Ellison dresses in Armani suits. Being as rich as him, it is something that we could expect…Probably there are many Armani suits in the meetings and forums Larry attends.

   

Now, what we should not expect is to see are Armani suits in slum bullies brawling.

Elegance is more than just paying thousands of dollars for perfectly tailored suits, and ranking 6th in the list of wealthiest people in the globe…

If you’d follow me, it is not the suit: It is more the way you use and wear the suit. Armani, by the way, is just a label.

 

Dangerous artillery

 

In modern warfare, heavy artillery can be necessary. It can be fundamental to determine who wins a battle. It can contribute as much as you like to winning.

But heavy artillery will not be the actual means to achieve a decisive victory. Actual victory is achieved when the ground troops (infantry, cavalry, tanks or scouts) do actually keep the battlefield and the enemy is either gone, captured or dead.

The problem with heavy artillery is more in the when and the how to use it.

If you strike too early, its effects on the enemy will probably be quickly fixed and mended before your ground troops can take any advantage of it. If you launch it too late, you may probably not even have the time to do it, as the enemy will have taken your position before you strike.

If you use it without having considered all the effects of it, without the proper intelligence backing your plan, well, you may not hit the necessary targets to wreck the enemy as you should. If you shoot before coordinating appropriately with your ground forces, you may even hit them by the so-called friendly-fire. In this case, you couldn’t do your enemy a bigger favor.

We have recently seen the first serious move from the HP Headquarters after the appointment of the new top executives, Ray Lane and Léo Apotheker. Ray Lane himself sent an open letter to The New York Times in reply to a long range torpedo launched by the latter.

The first heavy artillery blow in the Oracle Wars show.

Well-intentioned backing from the incoming Chairman to his CEO… but was it the right shoot?

We think it might have been launched too quickly. Though it might have given the market a positive sign about “hey guys, despite whatever Larry Ellison might have said or might say in the coming future, we are not dead yet”, the main message was not strong enough (they pleaded “non guilty” more than “innocent” in the TomorrowNow affair) and the speed of it looked to us more like an attempt to cut short the thesis from NYT than a real solid argumentation.

Not only was it sent too fast. It was aimed to the wrong target. If the main blow from NYT (which could be read as Oracle, after the conflict of interest held by the author, as you can see in the previous links above) was targeting Léo Apotheker and the HP Board, we believe that attacking Hurd again was a very poor defense of HP’s new CEO and those who picked him.

As well, the heavy artillery blow was self-weakened from the beginning. From Ray Lane’s letter to NYT, the reader gets the impression that Léo Apotheker will be called as a key witness only after having been appointed CEO at HP. This is not actually true. Léo’s name appears in the list of Oracle’s witnesses dated August 5th, even before Mark Hurd’s scandal exploded.

If Ray Lane is capable of managing well the artillery he’s got as Chairman of the Board, he won’t make the best use of it aiming to past issues (and Mark Hurd is definitely something past for HP) as this won’t restore the confidence from the market peers that HP badly needs to wage its war. If selecting Léo Apotheker was the best option for the HP Board, let Léo prove it. Support him forward, and in the event of failure, remove him. But Mark Hurd has nothing to do with that.

One collateral effect as well from this unfortunate artillery firing could be as well weakening Léo Apotheker, as it probably limits his natural space of maneuver. It’s adding pressure on him, unnecessarily, as he already got all the IT industries eyes on him.

It is a matter of opinion, however, whether Oracle’s lawyers intended or not to actually call Apotheker. It belongs to the sphere of hypothesis that after Ray Lane’s letter to NYT, Oracle’s lawyers will eventually call Apotheker or not. But it is certainly true that Léo Apotheker’s presence at court was a possibility before anybody in the world could have even imagined that Mark Hurd was to leave the HP CEO job.

The shadow of doubt

 

It seems that a columnist from NYT has added some fuel to the war between the titans…

And though it is not the first one the same journalist writes after more or less similar thesis, this time he has provoked some reaction from the HP biggies.

None less than the incoming non executive Chairman of the Board himself.

In a polite and educated letter to NYT, Ray Lane replies back to the author in a double-pronged manner:

In one hand, he pleads “not-guilty” for his CEO.

On the other, he drives attention to the sacking of HP’s former CEO, in an attempt to settle for once and for ever the reasons for that. He actually sides with his new board colleagues and endorses the ousting.

It could be somehow imaginable that sooner or later there could be articles in the press like this one. As a matter of fact, this is not the first one, and probably won’t be the latest…. but this one has provoked a formal reply from the highest HP figure so far. Personally.

What makes us think that the author of the NYT column has touched HP in an extremely sensitive aspect, in an extremely sensitive way, and in an extremely sensitive moment.

Assuming that a Chairman of the Board of a company such as HP does not have the time to answer like he’s done all the opinions which are spreading so rapidly throughout the internet, why has he backfired so quickly?

The shadow of doubt will surely float around, we suppose.

One thing under any reasonable doubt is certain though: There is a trial going on, and Léo Apotheker is going to be called as a witness, according to WSJ.

We will see in a few weeks how this story keeps going, but we could expect Big-Mouth Larry becoming growingly excited about the prospects of embarrassing HP…

Coherence for trust

 

We believe one of the biggest needs a company like HP does need these days is trust.

Trust from customers, trust from partners, trust from shareholders, trust from vendors, trust from employees too. Trust from the market, in short.

If it only were for the fact that trust is the base of the share value that ultimately will hold, support and sustain the company career in the market.

Trust in its values, its leadership, its ways and procedures, its fair play.

Though History has plenty of examples of leaders that have succeeded based on the general trust they have inspired, the recent episodes starred by HP generate some doubts in our minds.

In early August CEO Mark Hurd is ousted after some ethics and confidence principles.

HP takes its time to name a successor, while zillions of rumours of all imaginable flavors, like Bertie Bott’s beans, spread all over the media.

In a context background were relatively recently Oracle was swiftly but openly sliding to war against the rest of the Universe, including HP in particular, the latter needed a bold and clear move that as well went as fast as reasonably possible.

A probably not irrelevant coup about one month after Hurd packed his stuff from Palo Alto, drove him into the arms of Big-Mouth-Larry at Oracle. This could be seen today as the natural aftermath of a series of unfortunate declarations from the Oracle’s Pontifex Maximus where words like idiots, resignation en masse and other delicatessen were not infrequent.

We think it is not unlikely that HP’s Board took this last bravado from Big-Mouth as a somewhat personal insult to HP and its board… and even eventually determined them to twist the path they could very well have followed up to that point by naming CEO a more expected or natural candidate. At the end of the day, all the media have been filled up regularly with the names of Bradley, Livermore, Joshi, Tim Cook and quite a number of others…The usual suspects. HP even tried to prevent Hurd from teaming with Big-Mouth by filing suit against the move… a minor clash that ended up quickly with no further consequences than making more obvious who was on which side. The war theatre even afforded getting special guest stars as Jack Welch who starred an unforgettable panegyric for some in pectore candidate…

So 55 days after Cathie Lesjak stepped up temporarily as interim CEO, enter the unexpected Léo Apotheker… followed by Ray Lane as the new non-exec Chairman of the Board. Rescued from unemployment, and with a background at SAP that won’t lead him to succeeding Jack Welch as Manager of the Century precisely, he still might deserve a pass.

Apparently, the stage was set for just a “wait and see” status quo, the market anxiously awaiting the next move. But not all the elements had been considered so far.

Next November the show will go on in a different scenario, a trial about inappropriate procedures by SAP against Oracle. The hot topic won’t be about guilt versus innocence, but more about how much. As a matter of fact, SAP has admitted responsibility, and though being tens of millions a reasonable fine for them, Big-Mouth talks of billions.

We do not know the level of engagement and involvement of the apparently calm Léo… but the matter sounds fishy enough to consider whether he was appropriate or not for HP, given the situation HP’s in, and the reputation it is rapidly earning.

If Hurd was ousted based on ethics… why the very same judges forget so easily about ethics now? Was that important to slap Big-Mouth in his face? Is the slapping worth a reputation?

If you are interested in details, yo may want to read The New York Times.

 

Léo Apotheker, new HP CEO

Ray Lane, new Chairman of the Board at HP’s.