作為久負盛名的標志性科技企業，惠普已一分為二，進入了一個新時代。但從最新的收益報告來看，我們還無法判斷這兩家公司究竟哪一個能重現惠普昔日的光輝。

這也是一個好機會，正好讓我們來回顧一下自1939年威廉?休利特和大衛?帕卡德成立惠普以來，它所經歷的起起落落。

幾十年來，惠普一直以產品設計精良而聞名，從最初的振蕩器，到打印機、個人電腦，再到服務器和存儲設備，無不如此。經銷商Camera Corner Connecting Point為惠普在威斯康辛州綠灣代理銷售產品多年，公司CEO里克?切爾尼克說，諷刺的是，惠普造出了不會散架的打印機，卻讓自己反受其害，“如果原來的東西仍在運轉，就很難把新產品賣出去。”

請記住這一點。接下來，就讓我們回顧一下惠普在這幾十年經歷的高潮和低谷。

斥資250億美元收購康柏

這件事有好有壞。許多觀察人士對此予以猛烈抨擊（現在依然會因此厲聲斥責惠普）。這項計劃2001年披露，引起了巨大爭議。一年后，惠普完成了收購。但科技行業分析與咨詢機構Moor Insights & Technology創始人帕特里克?穆爾黑德認為，康柏在惠普需要的時候極大地促進了后者的PC和服務器業務。他指出，“在康柏的幫助下”，惠普的Proliant服務器“從這個大類剛剛成形時起”一直是最暢銷產品。

但《財富》雜志前高級編輯卡羅爾?盧米斯在一篇2005年的文章中指出，惠普的股東并未從此項收購中獲益。兩家公司的員工也是如此。收購完成后，約有2.6萬名惠普和康柏員工失去了工作。當時二者的合并創造了行業記錄，但更多的是為了整合存在競爭關系的業務（和客戶），而不是在市場上推出優秀的產品。

公平地說，這次收購成了后來許多科技行業并購的操作范本。

卡莉?費歐莉娜當政時期

除了她自己，許多人都認為卡莉?費歐莉娜把康柏弄得一團糟（請參考上文中惠普對康柏的收購）。

1999年費歐莉娜進入惠普，開啟了明星CEO時代。舉例來說，在2004年的消費電子展上，費歐莉娜和演員本?阿弗萊克、音樂制作人吉米?艾歐文、搖滾歌手謝麗爾?克羅、U2樂隊吉他手The Edge以及歌手兼演員格溫?史蒂芬妮共同登臺。對于一直把精力集中在技術領域的惠普來說，華而不實似乎終于戰勝了腳踏實地，正如該展會上有關惠普的“大”新聞是該公司推出了惠普品牌的iPod一樣。沒錯，正如科技撰稿人史蒂文?利維最近在新型博客平臺Medium上所說，惠普的創新能力曾經聞名遐邇，而今它卻把自己的商標貼在別人的產品上。

2005年初費歐莉娜被迫下臺，惠普的股價當天上漲了6.9%。

As the storied tech icon Hewlett-Packard launches a new era as two companies, it’s by no means clear that either can replicate HP’s past successes, as evidenced by the company’s most recent earnings report.

So this is a good time to revisit those wins and losses accruing since HP was founded by William Hewlett and David Packard in 1939.

For decades, HP HPQ -13.66% has been noted for churning out well-engineered gear from oscillators to printers, PCs, servers, and storage. Rick Chernick, CEO of Camera Corner Connecting Point, a longtime HP reseller in Green Bay. Wis., said the irony is that HP hurt itself over the years by building printers that don’t fall apart. “It’s hard to keep selling stuff into accounts when the old stuff keeps running,” he said.

With that in mind, let’s go through some of HP’s high and low points over its long life.

HP’s $25 Billion Compaq Purchase

This was a mixed bag. Many observers slammed (and still slam) HP’s acquisition of Compaq, announced in 2001 and completed a year later after much controversy. But Patrick Moorhead, founder of Moor Insights & Technology, said Compaq gave HP a huge boost in PCs and servers at a time it needed it. HP’s Proliant servers were the top sellers “since the inception of the category, helped by Compaq,” he noted.

But the Compaq deal did not pay off for HP shareholders, as Fortune’s Carol Loomis pointed out in her 2005 retrospective. Nor for HP/Compaq employees, some 26,000 or so of whom were laid offin the aftermath. The corporate combination, which was the industry’s largest merger at the time, was more about consolidating competitors (and customers) than bringing great products to market.

To be fair, that has become the M.O. for many of the tech deals that followed.

The Reign of Carly Fiorina

By most accounts except her own, Carly Fiorina’s stay at Compaq was a mess. (See the Compaq deal above.)

When Fiorina joined HP in 1999, she ushered in the era of the celebrity CEO. At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2004, for example, she shared the stage with Ben Affleck, Jimmy Iovine, Sheryl Crow, The Edge, and Gwen Stefani. For what had been an engineering-focused company this seemed the ultimate victory of flash over substance. As was the “big” HP news at the event which was the Apple iPod by HP. Yes, as Steven Levy pointed out recentlyon Medium, the company that was known for its ability to invent was now slapping its label on someone else’s device.

The day Fiorina was forced out in early 2005, HP share price jumped 6.9%.

收購EDS，涉足IT服務

2008年，惠普以139億美元的價格收購了Electronic Data Systems（EDS）。當時的想法是EDS能讓惠普更好地在高端IT服務領域立足，并通過幫助大企業選擇、安裝和運行IT產品來更好地和IBM抗衡。時任惠普CEO的馬克?赫德非常癡迷于擊敗IBM這個念頭。收購EDS前，惠普還曾出價180億美元試圖收購普華永道的咨詢業務。后來，IBM收購了這項業務，交易價格僅為35億美元。

那么，收購EDS效果如何呢？2012年，惠普為此減記了80億美元的損失。

Autonomy，就要Autonomy

要想挖苦曾經或現在的惠普員工，只需要提一個名字，那就是Autonomy。

這是一家設在倫敦的企業軟件公司，最出名的是搜索和增強現實技術。然而，惠普打算斥資111億美元收購Autonomy的消息一出，人們不禁對這樣的報價目瞪口呆。它實在是太高了。

被SAP免職后，李艾科成了惠普的董事和CEO。看來他并未注意到外界的反應，只管實施了這項收購。結果呢？欺詐訴訟和反訴，打官司，然后減記——沒錯，又是80億美元。2011年9月李艾科被解雇，任職時間不到一年。

梅格?惠特曼時代

對于惠特曼，外界的普遍評價是能提供企業所需的“成人監管”，并讓草木皆兵的投資者和分析師感到安心。有人曾在發布業績的電話會議上開玩笑說，惠特曼是“分析師的知心姐姐”。

她還善于跟合作經銷商培養感情或修補關系，后者則是惠普銷售策略的重要組成部分。

作為李艾科的繼任者，惠特曼上任后立即表示，惠普要用“好幾年時間”來扭轉局勢。當時，沒人想聽到“好幾年時間”這樣的字眼，得有膽量才敢這么說。

但惠特曼帶來的不全是利好。畢竟，正是她所在的這個董事會批準了對Autonomy的收購。2012年，《財富》雜志曾指出：

“2011年11月21日，CEO梅格?惠特曼將收購Autonomy列為惠普的“重中之重”。當時，包括新董事拉斐爾?威特沃斯在內，整個惠普董事會都為是次收購送上了祝福。2012年11月20日，惠特曼宣布將Autonomy的資產價值下調88億美元，降幅達85%。”

嗯……

惠普董事會

大概10年前，惠普董事會經歷了一次公關危機，盡管許多卷入其中的董事都挺了過來。這次危機被稱為“借口門”，爆發原因是人們發現惠普雇傭調查者以非法手段取得董事和記者的通話記錄，甚至進行竊聽。這樣做目的何在呢？是為了發現漏洞。而當時的惠普有許多漏洞。

《巴倫》雜志報道過赫德致惠普員工的電子郵件，大家可以借此感受一下當時的情況。整個事件都帶有尼克松式的猜忌色彩。董事帕特麗夏?鄧恩背了黑鍋，但沒人相信這樣的不當行為是由她而起，或者會隨她的離去而消失。

同時，許多人都認為，“借口門”之后惠普董事會仍未改掉向媒體泄露消息的毛病。比如說，2010年李艾科建議轉讓PC業務的消息就泄露了出去。

收購Palm

赫德希望惠普進入移動領域。2010年的惠普在這方面處于落后位置。他宣布，惠普計劃收購Palm Computing。后者的掌上電腦Palm Pilot曾經風靡一時，而且當時的Palm確實前景光明。收購價約為10億美元。Palm當時的移動操作系統webOS也較為新穎，但iPhone和黑莓手機隨后在智能手機市場超越了Palm。收購Palm時，惠普曾承諾加大對移動業務的投入。僅一年后，李艾科治下的惠普對嶄新的webOS平板電腦失去了耐性，而此時惠普進入這個市場還不到兩個月。

收購3Par效果良好

斥資23.5億美元收購存儲設備制造商3Par是惠普較為成功的行動，此舉看來效果良好。和戴爾的爭奪導致收購價高于預期，但3Par的銷售業績一直是惠普財報中的亮點，它還顯著提升了惠普同EMC及其他存儲設備廠商展開競爭的能力。

在本周二的業績發布會上，惠特曼說3Par的存儲設備業務取得了全面勝利，“其年化營業額已達到5億美元，而且在今年第四季度實現了三位數增長。”

Aruba Networks Wireless帶來動力

惠普非常需要無線網絡業務。今年早些時候以30億美元的價格收購Aruba Networks讓惠普得償所愿。

HP分銷商Camera Corner Connecting Point的首席執行官切爾尼克說，在和思科等網絡設備公司的競爭中，Aruba Networks讓惠普變得更有說服力。他指出：“惠普的交換機和網絡產品很棒，但它需要無線業務。”

云山霧罩的云戰略

惠普的云戰略一直是個謎。如今這項戰略被劃分到了惠普企業（HP Enterprise）旗下。

由于多次更換負責人，惠普的云業務一直走走停停。兩年前，該公司公布的計劃是和亞馬遜的Amazon Web Services展開正面爭奪，將共享計算、存儲和網絡資源出售（或租賃）給企業客戶。但惠普隨后承認了亞馬遜的市場主導地位，它先是淡化了這項計劃，又在幾個月前正式予以取消。

眼下，惠普的打算是利用私有云技術，讓客戶在自己的數據中心，或者用惠普經營的數據中心提供的專門（而非共享）資源進行運算，規模可大可小。在客戶需要混合云時，惠普還會通過多種渠道讓他們連接到亞馬遜或微軟的公共云。混合云允許客戶將重要數據保存在自己的服務器和存儲設備上，同時將其他數據或工作放在共享的公共云資源上。

HP bought Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion in 2008. The idea was that EDS would to give HP a better presence in high-end IT services—helping big businesses choose, install and run technology—so it could compete better with IBM IBM -0.43% . Beating IBM was something that very much interested then-HP chief executive Mark Hurd. Before launching this quest, HP had already broached then dropped an $18 billion bid for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting business, which IBM subsequently bought for a mere $3.5 billion.

So, how did the EDS acquisition go? HP ended up taking an $8 billion write-off related to the purchase in 2012.

Autonomy, Just Autonomy

If you want to get a rise out of a past or current HP employee, mention the “A word.”

Autonomy was a London-based enterprise software company known for its search and augmented reality technologies. But from the minute word of HP’s proposed $11.1 billion purchase leaked, people were dumbfounded at the price. It was just too high.

HP’s board and chief executive officer Leo Apotheker, a deposed executive from SAP SAP 0.46% , apparently didn’t get that memo and proceeded anyway. The result: Charges and countercharges of fraud, lawsuits, and yes, another$8 billion write-down. Apotheker was fired in September 2011 after less than a year on the job.

The Meg Whitman Era

Whitman is generally credited with providing adult supervision for a company that needed it and offering a reassuring presence for shell-shocked investors and analysts. Some joke that on the earnings calls, Whitman is something of an “analyst whisperer.”

She’s also been good at cultivating and repairing relationships with HP’s reseller partners—a key part of its sales strategy.

Whitman was named CEO after Apotheker and immediately said that HP was in the midst of a long-term, “multi-year” turnaround. Multi-year is not something anyone wanted to hear at that point, so that took guts.

But it’s not all good. Whitman, after all was on the board that approved the Autonomy deal. As Fortune pointed out in 2012:

On November 21, 2011, CEO Meg Whitman had toutedAutonomy as HP’s “priority #1, 2 and 3 for 2012.” The entire current HP board, excluding new board member Ralph Whitworth, blessed thepurchase. On November 20, 2012, Whitman announced an 85%, $8.8 billion write-down of the 2011 acquisition.

Hmmm.

The HP Board

Although many of the directors involved havemoved on, HP’s board of a decade or so ago presided over a PR disaster. The “Pretext-gate” scandal erupted when it was discovered that the company hired investigators that illegally obtained phone records of and otherwise spied on its own board members and reporters. The goal? Find the leaks. And there were many, many leaks.

Check out this Barron’s story on Hurd’s email to employees to get the feel for what happened but the whole thing reeked of Nixonian paranoia. Board member Patricia Dunn took the fall, but no one bought that the misbehavior started or ended with her.

And many don’t believe the board’s habit of leaking to the press died after Pretext-gate. Apotheker’s proposed move to sell off HP’s PC business, for example, was leaked in 2010.

Palm Purchase

Hurd wanted HP to get into the mobile business where it was a laggard so in 2010, he announcedplans to buy Palm Computing, home of the once-popular Palm Pilot, which had, frankly by then had seen better days. The price was about $1 billion. Palm had a newish operating system for mobile, the webOS, but had been passed by in the smartphone market by Apple iPhone and Blackberry. At the time of the acquisition, HP promised to double-down in mobile. Fast forward a year, and HP, now run by Apotheker, blew up its brand-new webOS-based tablet after less than two months on the market.

3Par Pays Off

On a brighter note, HP’s $2.35 billion purchase of storage maker 3Par seems to have paid off. HP won the prize after a bidding war with Dell, leading to a higher-than-expected purchase price, but 3Par sales have since been a high point on HP earnings calls and 3Par gives HP a much better storage story to compete with EMC EMC -0.20% and other storage players.

On HP’s earnings call Tuesday, Whitman said 3Par’s all-slash storage hit a “$500 million annualized run rate business and grew triple digits in the fourth quarter.”

Aruba Networks Wireless a Boost

HP needed wireless networking expertise bad. With its $3 billion acquisition of Aruba Networks earlier this year, it got that.

HP reseller Chernick said Aruba gives HP a more compelling way to sell against Cisco and other networking vendors. “HP’s switches and networking were great, but it needed wireless,” he noted.

Cloudy Cloud Strategy

HP’s cloud strategy, which will now live within the HP Enterprise unit, has been a mystery.

There have been several starts and stop under different cloud executives. Two years ago, the stated plan was to compete head-on with Amazon Web Services to sell (or rent) shared computing, storage, and networking resources to business customers. In a nod to Amazon’s AMZN 0.62% market dominance, that plan was at first downplayed, thenofficially scuttled a few months ago.

Now HP’s idea is to offer private cloud technology that lets customers run variable workloads in their own data centers or on resources dedicated to them (not shared) in HP-run data centers. And it will offer ways for those customers to also connect to Amazon or Microsoft MSFT -1.03% public clouds as needed in a hybrid cloud scenario. Hybrid cloud will let customers keep important data on their own servers and storage but put other data or other jobs onto shared public cloud resources.

惠普的誕生地，加州帕拉奧圖市的一處車庫和小屋已經翻修一新。

今后，惠普企業和惠普公司（HP Inc.）面臨的最大挑戰都是證明自己不光能通過收購來積累技術，還能像當初的惠普那樣打造新穎而可靠的技術，至少可以部分重現當初的情景。

資產管理公司Bain Capital Ventures董事總經理薩利爾?戴希潘德早年曾在惠普當過兩次實習生。他認為，和專注于制造產品的公司相比，惠普等老牌企業看起來更像經銷商和銷售商。

請不要誤解，銷售部門很重要。然而，如果一家公司造不出人們想要的產品，銷售一無用處。（財富中文網）

譯者：Charlie

校對：詹妮

The renovated HP garage and shed in Palo Alto, Calif.

The biggest challenge for both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. going forward is to prove that they are not just about rolling up acquired technologies but can return at least partly to HP’s roots of building innovative and solid technologies.

Salil Deshpande, managing director of Bain Capital Ventures—who did two internships at HP earlier in his career—said legacy companies including but not limited to HP seem to be more distribution and sales organizations than product builders.

Don’t get me wrong, sales organizations are important, but if the company doesn’t make a product people wants, they’re useless.