HPE has shrunk so much it's abandoning its iconic Palo Alto campus to move in with a company it acquired
- Two years after the breaking up of Hewlett-Packard Co, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is selling its headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
- After years of layoffs and restructuring, the company will consolidate some of its Silicon Valley offices.
- HPE will move its headquarters to the HPE Aruba office in Santa Clara. The office was recently built to house the team at Aruba, which was acquired by HPE in 2015.
After two years of massive restructuring and staff reductions, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is selling its headquarters on land it has owned in Palo Alto, California since 1957, the company announced on Thursday.
The headquarters will move to nearby Santa Clara, at a new 23,000 square-foot office complex originally built to house Aruba, a company acquired by HPE in 2015. Some of the staff will also move to existing offices in San Jose and Milpitas.
HPE wouldn't disclose how many people work in Silicon Valley, but the company has around 45,000 employees globally.
"Over the past two years we've made tremendous progress towards becoming a simpler, nimbler and more focused company," said Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE, said in a statement. "I'm excited to move our headquarters to an innovative new building that provides a next-generation digital experience for our employees, customers and partners. Our new building will better reflect who HPE is today and where we are heading in the future."
A home of 60 years
The move follows the 2015 break-up of Hewlett-Packard Co into two separate companies: HPE, which focuses on selling technology to businesses, and HP Inc, which makes printers and desktop computers.
Both companies have remained at the Palo Alto property, which was originally acquired by HP Co sixty years ago, since the split. But HPE has worked out of separate offices that were built on a portion of the land in 1979. HPE will sell those buildings, while HP Inc will remain on its portion of the property.
Since becoming an independent organization, HPE has shrunk by divesting its technology services unit and signing a deal to sell its software division.
The reorganization has already involved several rounds of layoffs, including a major restructuring in June 2016, which saw the departure of numerous company veterans and the consolidation of its sales organization.
In September, Bloomberg reported that HPE would lay off around 5,000 people - 10% of its global workforce - before the end of the year.