4-step Guide to Killing Acquisitions

(Source: CIO.com) As we ramp up for RSA, it is interesting that one common cross vendor theme is coming up. HP’s ArcSight installed base has become the great SIEM [Security Information and Event Management] hunting ground. Meg Whitman has effectively killed yet another HP acquisition. Having been through some ugly acquisitions myself, I try to use every example of contrasting how to do these things right vs. how to do them very wrong. It seems that some executives either don’t want to do it right or they never really read the current definition of insanity “doing the same thing over and over expecting a different results.”

Don’t get me wrong, before Whitman came on board HP was kind of legendary for killing acquisitions. VoodooPC and Palm’s destruction were only the latest of a long string of firms HP bought and then systematically killed, wiping out millions to billions of value in what appears to be four easy-to-follow steps. Despite HPs past success in this area, Meg Whitman is turning doing it into a science. There appears to be no one better at killing acquisitions today than HP.

So this week, rather than focus on the firms that do this right, let’s focus on that magical skillset HP has for doing this masterfully wrong using ArcSight as the example.

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