blog Interesting news published by The AustralianIT yesterday. It appears as if things aren’t entirely well at technology giant HP, with the company reportedly planning to cut some 180 jobs from its roster. The newspaper reports (click here for the full article):

“Sources told The Australian that 70 per cent of people affected will be from Melbourne with the remainder from Sydney.”

HP rarely says much about these kinds of ‘moves, adds and changes’, but it’s always worth asking a company in a situation like this whether there’s any truth to the reports. With this in mind, we asked HP yesterday about the cuts and got this in return:

“It is part of normal business practice to review and align resources in line with business priorities. As part of the transformation program, we announced the HP Next-Generation Data Centre (NGDC) in Sydney in February 2011. Construction was completed the end of 2011 and will be followed by a period of systems migration and testing to ensure the best levels of service for our clients.”

Riiiight. So what does this really mean? The “normal business practices” sentence probably means it won’t comment on job cuts below a certain number (say, 500 or more), or unless a pesky union gets involved. This is all just normal business, HP appears to be implying.

But what we’re not sure about is the next several sentences. What does this mean? Are the job cuts part of HP’s new datacentre program, which the company announced with great pomp and ceremony last year, at a press conference attended by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy? Is HP cutting jobs in one area so it can invest more in the datacentre program? Or are these sentences merely an attempt to divert attention to an area where HP is investing in Australia?

It’s as if we asked HP whether the sky is blue and got back the following answer:

“It is part of normal environmental practice for the colour of the sky to change pigmentation in line with scientific rules. As part of the global scientific discovery program, Copernicus revealed in the 16th century that the Earth is not in fact the centre of the universe. Construction of this proof was completed in 1514, following the discovery some centuries previously that the Earth is a sphere, and not flat as had been thought.”

Useful information, in other words, but not really relevant — and perhaps even a deliberate attempt at obfuscating the truth. Well, it looks like we’re not going to get much out of HP. But if you do know more about what’s going on, feel free to hit up our anonymous tips form with the juicy details. Even we won’t know who you are ;)

Image credit: HP

Related posts:

1. Data#3 flags job cuts: Read the internal email
2. Telstra mulls 900 job cuts
3. Telstra’s statement an ‘extortion note’: Carriers’ coalition
4. KPMG waffle obscures Qld’s payroll disaster
5. Federal Govt issues datacentre migration tender

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1. Clinton
   Posted 05/01/2012 at 11:23 am | Permalink | Reply

   well we already know that HP is not adverse to sacking anyone.
   just ask Leo.

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 05/01/2012 at 11:24 am | Permalink | Reply

     Heh we knew that before Leo — I’ve covered many a good HP sacking over the years :)

2. Jafaruddin Lie
   Posted 05/01/2012 at 1:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Hate to nit-pick, but “Copernicus revealed in the 26th century that the Earth is not in fact the centre of the universe.” ORLY????????

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 05/01/2012 at 1:56 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Oops! Fixed. Cheers!

   • PeterA
     Posted 05/01/2012 at 1:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

     26th century from his perspective, clearly he was a time traveller, and saw a chance to troll the world after discovering on the unisphere that someone was wrong in history.

3. Jafaruddin Lie
   Posted 05/01/2012 at 2:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

   PeterA
   How did Renai come across this information? Is he a fellow time traveller as well?

   • PeterA
     Posted 05/01/2012 at 3:13 pm | Permalink | Reply

     You aren’t thinking fourth dimensionally!

     Copernicus trolled the past, from the future. Thus the information is now from the past, from our perspective, but the future from Copernicus’s. And anyone from the time-stream ahead of Copernicus will ofcourse see Copernicus’s time-meddling as childish trolling.

     So unless Renai is a time traveller from Copernicus’s future, his actions are the actions from Renais past, rather than his future. Of course if he is from the time stream ahead of Copernicus then Renai by definition must be a time traveller, and must have known all along that Copernicus was just trolling the rest of the world.

     Perhaps that is why Renai chose that as an example. We will never know, well not strictly true … Some of us already do know, some of us already have known, and some of us are yet to know these things from our pasts or futures.

4. Oneofthem
   Posted 05/01/2012 at 6:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

   As someone working on this project for HP, the original story is correct. HP is way over budget, there are lots of resources sitting idle and in 12 months, they haven’t moved a single customer into the new NGDC based in Sydney.

   Added to this, that the customers don’t want to move, as there is no gain for them other than outages, project management costs and business disruption to move data center, which are not ‘gains’ for customers nor is HP giving compensation for these costs.

   HP is the one winning out of these moves, they are moving the customer to lower cost DC (for free), reducing costs by closing DCs and moving the customer to a new type of billing model, which is either the same or more costly than the old model!

   While the DCT project hasn’t been fully cancelled, everything has been cancelled other than the Data centers that the lease is expiring and no option to renew, hence HAVE to move out of. HP is just putting spin on it.

5. Goddy
   Posted 06/01/2012 at 3:02 am | Permalink | Reply

   HPs sink into oblivion continues.