Shane Robison, the chief technology officer and chief strategy officer of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), will retire November 1st, the company announced this afternoon.
Robison, 57, has been with the company for 11 years, and served recently on the “Executive Council.” The company said that it will not seek a replacement for Robison, “in an effort to drive strategy, research and development closer to the company’s businesses.”
Robison came to HP from Compaq with HP’s acquisition of the latter, where he held the same title. He is credited as being “one of the principal architects” of the merger. He also is credited with engineering various acquisitions by HP, such as EDS and 3Com.
Robison’s departure is particular intriguing as it follows the highly contentious strategic choices made in August, under then CEO Leo Apotheker. Those included a consideration of whether to divest the PC business, the $10 billion acquisition of software maker Autonomy PLC, and the canceling of HP’s tablet effort, the TouchPad.
Interestingly, an article by Tom Krazit of mocoNews on September 6th mentioned that WebOS, the software for that tablet, which has been the subject of frequent buyout speculation, had been placed under the direction of Robison since the tablet effort was killed. With Robison departing, the question obviously arises as to what will happen to WebOS. Might there be some announcement about WebOS now that Robison is stepping aside?
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