Whitman rallies UK partners at HPE Discover

Satya Nadella makes surprise appearance via live video link

Meg Whitman has reiterated her commitment to the UK channel in her first formal address to partners since the HP split.

Speaking at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Discover event in London today, Whitman hailed the "amazing" HP split, which saw the creation of HPE and HP Inc a month ago.

She said although the company has undergone a massive change, partners are still a priority.

"Technologies may change and business models may shift," she told the 13,000 partners and customers who attended the event.

"But one thing never changes for us, and that's the importance of our relationships with you, our customers and partners. That was the foundation of Hewlett-Packard more than 75 years ago and it will remain the foundation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise far into the future."

She described Discover as an "historic event" and talked up her company's efforts in completing the task if dividing such a big company in such a short timeframe.

Whitman admitted at the start of her presentation that she was feeling under the weather and said that yesterday a sore throat meant she "couldn't speak at all". After about ten minutes, she handed over to her colleagues who continued the keynote address.

"We have a backup plan," she said. "A real-life version of backup and recovery!"

Earlier in the day, HPE unveiled a new partnership with Microsoft which would see the pair act as preferred partners to each other in the hybrid cloud space.

Microsoft's chief executive Satya Nadella made a surprise appearance via video link to talk up the new agreement.

"We can truly bring forth this new form of hybrid computing to give our customers the infrastructure they need so they have the next level of agility, efficiency and innovation," he said.

Microsoft and HP are long-standing Windows partners, and Nadella said the response to Windows 10 so far has been "humbling". He said there are 110 million devices actively running the OS - 12 million of which are in the business space.