Meg Whitman, as quoted by Sean Gallagher at Ars Technica:

We aren’t as effective internally as we should be because of poor systems. We are not as competitive as we need to be in how we go to market because of our IT systems. We haven’t been using a compelling customer management or CRM system for years.

She has received some harsh criticism from industry watchers like John Gruber and MG Siegler for pushing back HP’s expected mobile phone launch to 2014 at the earliest.

That criticism is justified, especially given HP’s epic Palm/webOS fail.

But this is the most encouraging thing I’ve seen from HP in years: honest self-aware, long-term leadership commitment.

I say well done, Ms. Whitman. Now, call the caterer and lock some engineers in a room for the next year.

Derek Kessler of webOS Nation wrote this up yesterday. His post included an internal email to employees of the new company, “GRAM.”

It was very evasive, vague, and noncomittal for a internal email, but this part bothered me:

Be the culture. Spread our Values: People Matter. Integrity and Trust. Deliberate Innovation. Act small, deliver big.

That is a series of bad PR poster captions strung together with no meaningful intent by HP’s Martin Risau. I hope its aimless encouragements aren’t illustrative of the kind of focus, or lack thereof, the new company will have.

webOS has deserved better than what HP has done for it from the moment their acquisition of the unique mobile OS was finalized. Hopefully, GRAM is a new, bolder, and better beginning for webOS.