What we knew as Hewlett-Packard is now broken up and part of several companies. First there was HP, Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise with the bulk of the employees at HPE. Then HPE spun out the Enterprise Services division (now part of DXC Technology) and Software division (now part of Micro Focus). Those combined were a majority of the employees. What you have left in HPE today could be 50k people.

Warning: Rant coming.

Will MicroFocus retool their software support pipeline? I hope so, because I'm starting to advocate we drop all their software because their first line of support is utterly incompetent. For example, I had to submit a ticket recently about a product we use. On the form, I selected the closest option to the software we had, say Product X, though my exact product wasn't listed. My inquiry was extremely specific and could only possibly be about one thing. Yet the first tech just threw the ticket back at me asking "can you clarify what version of product X you're on?"

It made absolutely no difference what version of PRoduct X I was on, so I wasted a good 48 hours so far. Then I wasted another 48 hours educating this person on what the product I was using even did.

If you need enterprise support at this point with HPE/MicroFocus, you have to escalate your tickets immediately and act pissed off or you certainly will be by their inept first line because they make it rather difficult to actually get someone on the phone that knows their own products.

Edit: To be clear, this happens with everyone I've ever met that has to engage HPE software support. I'm genuinely curious if anyone has any positive experiences because I've yet to encounter one myself or by proxy.

What you are describing is not new -- I was at an HP partner for about 5 years and it was always like that. One way around it was to buy into their premium support plan, where you got a named support contact. There were very few competent support people, but the ones at that level were solid. Secondly, yes -- the moment you put in a ticket, you also make a phone call and you ask for your ticket to be escalated. It also helps to call your sales rep and let them know you need support. Often that was the key, as they would put a lot of pressure on from the inside. I don't know the current MicroFocus world as well, but it was also possible to buy support contracts from partners like my firm, where those official support partners would also work to back-channel things for you.

If your issues are with the BSM / APM stack, shoot me an email I'll be glad to help. Also happy to refer you to MicroFocus partners that I trust and would use myself.

HP Inc has around 49k employees (consumer computer / printers), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has 195k. According to Wikipedia.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Inc.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett_Packard_Enterprise

Wowowo, 195k employees? So many! Do they really make that much of money? What are the 195k workers for? Dell has way less as a whole company (even after the merge) [1].

[1]: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4104846-dell-technologies-d...

Among other clients, HPE is a giant defense contractor supporting military hardware and software.

HPE also inherited HP's research labs, which Dell never quite had anything similar too, and medical division where they make a lot of very important medical/hospital devices.

ETA: HP at one point was much more similar to GE than Dell, and HPE is all the "fun" stuff that wasn't Dell-like. (The Dell like side is what got spun off into "new" HP.)

HPE still has labs? Note the last time anything was published by labs... https://www.labs.hpe.com/publications

Last I heard they were still working hard on The Machine. But I hear stuff about HPE second hand, so I have no clue.

Is the machine still a labs effort or something now being turned into a product? Organizationally it matters.

That is a very good question. I don't think I've seen anything other PR spin on the subject that felt like it couldn't make up its mind how soon The Machine may be productized.

Last I tried to read one of those PR articles (probably posted here to HN), it sounded like memristors still exist as active research, even though that was supposed to be the gamechanging basis of The Machine, but they are The Machine branding software projects now and non-memristor product tech that is kind of memristor-esque.

But again, that's merely my mostly hearsay-informed, lay readings of tea leaves.

(It's starting to feel a bit like IBM's Watson where the "brand" The Machine has multiple meanings depending on which team/marketer/sales-person/researcher you are talking to.)

Well, that number is Jan 2017, so it at very least still includes the staff spun off into DXC. DXC supposedly has 170k but presumably a large amount of that came from CSC.

According to the analyst Kable/Global Data, HPE has 195,000 employees.