HP wants to keep it in the faaamily

Hats off to HP chief Meg Whitman - she has stood firm and made a decision, thus ending the turmoil created by her predecessor Apotheker.

HP's PSG division will now remain part of the company and will not be spun-off or sold.

At the time I thought the decision was pretty hasty - after all HP had pretty much missed the PC spin-off boat - after IBM's decision to sell to Lenovo in 2004 proved a wise move for the company - SEVEN years ago.

This decision will surely leave a lot of HP partners heaving a sigh of relief that the 'will it, won't it' saga is finally over and they can get on with their day-to-day business and trying to restore any lost customer faith in HP's products.

Of course it begs the question - why did any of this have to happen at all? What purpose did it actually serve?

Apart from - as Paul Hunter said in a message today - causing the company to evaluate the PSG business and realise that it makes a valuable contribution to HP.  But surely it should have done the evaluation before actually making any announcements about a potential spin-off?

This wasn't exactly a good PR move for the company's reputation.

However that aside, I'm sure there is a lot of relief all round HP and its channel partners today after yesterday's news and will be interesting to see what the PSG division announces next as it carries on its life as part of the HP family.

I'd also be interested to hear your thoughts - feel free to email me or let me know what you think via Twitter: @Yirrelli