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From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: HP: Why DID you buy Apollo anyway?
Message-ID: <1990Dec7.021940.14636@alphalpha.com>
Date: 7 Dec 90 02:19:40 GMT
References: <9012051357.AA02241@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Organization: asi
Lines: 27

In article <9012051357.AA02241@umix.cc.umich.edu> SRFERGU%ERENJ@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU (Scott Ferguson) writes:
>
>The burning question: If you were just going to dump us, why couldn't
>you have just left Apollo alone? Did HP actually make any money off of us?

My theory is that upper management bought Apollo for the people, but didn't
count on the hostility of the divisions, which promptly tried to kill or
acquire any project that they saw as a threat.  And just about any
project at Apollo had a corresponding one at HP (with the HP one manned
by 3 or 4 times as many people).  They managed to grab just about
everything except networking and compilers and the OSF/1 work as far as
I can tell.  For everything else the end result was that HP didn't get
the people after all.

There was recently an article somewhere (NYT?) about how *no* major
computer merger has ever been successful.  Sperry/Burroughs and
HP/Apollo were both mentioned.

						-kee
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I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.