HP ProLiant delays continue

HP customers will continue to have difficulties ordering custom configurations of HP’s ProLiant servers through the end of this month, company executives told attendees at the HP World conference last week in Chicago.

HP customers will continue to have difficulties ordering custom configurations of HP’s ProLiant servers through the end of this month, company executives told attendees at the HP World conference last week in Chicago.

The delays are caused by continuing problems with an SAP order-processing and supply-chain deployment rolled out last month, they said.

HP’s troubles began over the July 4 weekend when the company rolled out the system designed to unify the Digital Equipment, Compaq and HP order-processing systems the company was left with after its 2002 merger with Compaq, said Mark Gonzalez, vice president of HP America’s enterprise storage and server sales.

The glitches affected HP’s storage, Unix and ProLiant products, Gonzalez said.

“It’s systems talking to systems,” he said, declining to explain the specific problems. “It just did not quite work out.”

HP disclosed the problems earlier this month when it announced its quarterly financials, blaming the problems for a $400 million revenue shortfall within the company’s Enterprise System Group. HP CEO Carly Fiorina fired Peter Blackmore, executive vice president of HP’s Customer Solutions Group, shortly after the problems were disclosed, saying his group’s performance was “unacceptable.”

Company executives at the show stressed that the majority of problems with the system had now been ironed out and that customers should no longer experience delays when they order storage or Unix systems.

ProLiant ordering is “pretty much back on track with the exception of a couple of complex, configure-to-order-type things,” Gonzalez said. “By the end of August, we should be totally squared away, but the worst is behind us.”

HP ships approximately 163,000 ProLiant systems per month. The vast majority of those systems are not customer configured and, therefore, not affected by the continuing problems with the system, Gonzalez said.

The ordering problems were briefly addressed during a panel discussion at HP World, when an audience member asked Joe Nadler, director of HP’s business critical systems, America, about the reliability of system ship dates provided by the current system.

McMillan is a correspondent with the IDG News Service.