Hewlett-Packard customers will continue to have
difficulties ordering custom configurations of HP's ProLiant
servers until the end of August.
The delays are due to continuing problems with an SAP order
processing and supply-chain deployment rolled out last month,
company executives told attendees at the HP World conference.
HP's troubles began in early July, when the company rolled out
the system designed to unify the Digital Equipment, Compaq and HP
order processing systems, said Mark Gonzalez, vice-president of HP
Americas enterprise storage and server sales.
The glitches affected HP's storage, Unix, and ProLiant products.
"It's systems talking to systems," he said. "It just did not quite
work out."
HP disclosed the problems last week when it announced its
quarterly financial results, blaming them for a $400m (£220m)
revenue shortfall in the company's enterprise system group. HP
chief executive officer Carly Fiorina fired Peter Blackmore,
executive vice-president of HP's customer solutions group, shortly
after the problems were disclosed.
Company executives at the show this week 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,"
said Gonzalez. "By the end of August, we should be totally squared
away, but the worst is behind us," he said.
HP ships 163,000 ProLiant systems per month, Gonzalez said. The
vast majority of those systems are not customer configured and,
therefore, not affected by the continuing problems with the
system.
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News Service