Meg Whitman: "I love the channel"
HP will not become software- and services-led firm, pledges Whitman in closing keynote of company's Global Partner Conference
HP chief executive Meg Whitman has assured partners that she "gets the channel" and claimed the vendor has recaptured its mojo after a bumpy 2011.
In an attempt to put clear water between herself and fallen predecessor Léo Apotheker, Whitman also used the closing keynote of the firm's Global Partner Conference to argue that HP should be proud of its core hardware business.
Whitman said she "loves the channel" and stressed that the seller community formed the backbone of her previous employer eBay. She also described HP's global channel of 200,000 partners as the firm's "competitive advantage".
"I get what you do and appreciate the importance of what we do together," she said.
"I want to be a steady hand on the tiller, take the noise out of the system and focus on what makes HP great. I want to re-establish HP's reputation for being the reliable and trusted partner you can count on to build your business."
Whitman swiftly reversed HP's decision to review offloading its $40bn (£25.5bn) PSG business after taking the helm in September, and was quick to admit the strategy of her predecessor had caused uncertainty for partners.
"Last year maybe we didn't make it the easiest relationship we have had in our history together," she said. "Some announcements we made last August created a lot of confusion about who HP is."
In his short tenure, Apotheker put the foundations in place for transforming HP into a software- and services-led firm, a vision all but rejected by Whitman.
"Seventy per cent of our revenues come from printers, servers, storage, networking, PCs and workstations," she said. "This is the core of what we are and we should stand up and be proud of that. Everything else we do complements or builds on that opportunity. We are not in the software business to transform HP into a software company."
Whitman said HP would be patient over WebOS, the operating system it tossed over to the open-source community last year, but predicted it would emerge a strong contender in two to four years' time.
"My view is the industry needs another operating system. Apple iOS is doing great but it is a closed system," she said. "Google Android I think may end up being a closed system with their purchase of Motorola.
"We love our Microsoft-Intel partnership but I think there is an opportunity for another operating system to utilise the creativity of the developer community to enable us to do things that we never dreamed of," she added.
Autonomy, the UK software firm HP bought last summer, will be kept at arm's length for now although partners can expect more integration with certain products in the vendor's IPG and PSG portfolio, Whitman said.
"The mother tiger can roll over the baby tiger quite easily," she said. "We want them to continue on the incredible trajectory they have been on and hope they grow faster than [they] otherwise would have as part of HP."