HP Taps Vignette CEO To Head Software Business

Hewlett-Packard late Thursday tapped Vignette CEO Thomas Hogan to head the company’s struggling software business, replacing Nora Denzel, who resigned late last year.

Hogan will report to Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP’s Technology Solutions Group. Prior to joining Vignette in 2001, Hogan spent two years as senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Siebel Systems. Prior to that, he spent 17 years in a variety of executive positions at IBM, HP said.

Hogan takes on a business unit within HP that has struggled recently. For HP’s fiscal year 2005 ended Oct. 31, the software unit posted revenues of only $1.07 billion and had an operating loss of $59 million. HP’s overall fiscal 2005 revenue totaled $87.8 billion, with earnings from operations of $3.5 billion.

HP solution providers have said recently that software attach rates with an HP hardware sale are often less than 10 percent. HP executives, led by CEO Mark Hurd, have made bundling more HP content into a solution a top priority this year and have said they will reward HP those partners that sell complete HP solutions.