Hewlett-Packard this week introduced a new cloud-based mobile device management system and is seeking telecom companies willing to offer the tool as a managed service to midsized buisnesses.

The the unfortunately named service – HP Cloud Services Enablement for Device Management as a Service (HP CSE for DMaaS) – is based on mobile device management software from Mformation Technologies Inc. It allows IT staff to manage mobile devices and PCs through a secure, customizable web portal, according to HP. Using over-the-air technology they can configure devices, distribute applications, diagnose problems, enforce security policies and protect data with full back-up and restore capability.  

Good news in the Wall Street Journal that HP and Oracle have reached some agreement over Mark Hurd. It has been one of the more bemusing executive suite spats, or more accurately, boardroom spats on the HP side and Larry Ellison on the other.

As I noted in my report from Oracle OpenWorld, the two companies need each other. HP has an army of consultants around the world trained in Oracle, and it has the computers and the corporate relationships to run Oracle in the largest companies.  While Oracle has developed some impressive new machines by tuning its software for Sun Solaris, Sun has been a bit on the sidelines for years now as its fate was uncertain.

Larry Ellison is not one to keep his feelings to himself. The demonstrative Oracle CEO proved that once again in an e-mail he sent to the New York Times castigating the HP board for asking Mark Hurd to step down following a sexual harassment suit and some fraudulent expense reports.

"The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago," said Ellison. "That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn't come back and saved them."

August 6 will not go down as one of the better days in Hewlett-Packard history. Not only did HP lose a CEO who had offered stability following Carly Fiorina's rocky tenure as CEO, but it did so as part of a sensational scandal that won't fade quickly from memory.

When word got out Friday that Mark Hurd had resigned over a sexual harassment suit, HP stock fell 10 percent after the market closed. But the revelation Sunday that the marketing contractor who had filed the suit was Jodie Fisher, a B-movie actress and reality TV contestant, ensured that the scandal will have a long life. Fisher and Hurd settled on Thursday.

The primary goal of Hewlett-Packard's pending acquisition of smartphone maker Palm is to gain its mobile operating system, which HP plans to built into everything from tablet PCs to printers.

HP CEO Mark Hurd gave the first detailed look at the company's plans for Palm, once the $1.2 billion acquisition is complete, during the conference call with analysts to discuss the company's second-quarter earnings. Hurd said webOS will go well beyond smartphones, and into connected devices such as tablet PCs and Web printers, complete with an app store. The company also plans to grow Palm's smartphone business, but the acquisition is a broader play to gain a mobile OS.

"It isn't precisely a smartphone play, as I've seen some people write," Hurd said. “It is, for us, strategically broader.”

The idea that Apple's tablet would be more Apple TV than iPhone officially can be put to rest, with the announcement this morning that 1 million of the devices have been sold in its first 28 days of availability. Even the iPad's harshest critics would struggle to call that a bomb.

Apple reached its iPad milestone in 28 days, which CEO Steve Jobs pointed out is significantly quicker than the 74 days it took the iPhone to hit that number. "Demand continues to exceed supply and we're working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers," added Jobs, who now seems more than justified in using the word "magical," which got him some merciless ribbing when he introduced the tablet in January.