HP Discover 2013: Meg Whitman Says Stable HP Will Lead New Era For IT

HP CEO Meg Whitman expressed her ambition to lead a transition to “the new style of IT” in a keynote at HP Discover in Las Vegas.

Trends such as cloud, mobile, big data and mobility are central to this shift and are placing new pressures on businesses, in what she described as the biggest change to IT in 15 years.

“When these types of shifts happen, everything changes,” she said. “IT is being challenged in ways never seen before.

New style of IT

“IT is no longer just about keeping the computers running.  It is a critical determining factor in who wins and who loses.”

However Whitman also believes that this new age presents new opportunities, such as lower costs, increased simplicity and faster speeds. She added that size and scale are no longer barriers to market entry, but they need the right hardware, applications and services.

Naturally, she added that HP is the right company for this transition, declaring that no other company had the breadth and depth to deliver all the products necessary. She discussed the firm’s storage, big data, printing and cloud services as well as the benefits of HP’s Moonshot servers.

“No other company can provide the connective tissue to companies transitioning to the new style of IT,” she declared. “We helped build the previous IT world and we are helping to create the new one.”

HP has got your back

Whitman said that a lot of things had changed since she joined the company and was keen to point out the increased financial stability of the company, assuring customers, “Believe me, Hewlett Packard is here to stay.”

The former eBay CEO assumed control in 2011, succeeding Leo Apotheker, who oversaw a number of strategic decisions which were at best controversial, such as a move towards software, the sale of WebOS and the acquisition of Autonomy for £7.3 billion – a move which has recently become an expensive headache for HP.

Whitman, who has expressed her commitment to Autonomy, said that invention was central to HP, but the company would not trade on last century’s accomplishments and is spending more on R&D than ever before.

At HP Discover, the firm has revealed a number of new server, storage and big data offerings and Whitman said that she wanted to provide customers with answers to everything.

“HP is aligned around you building a better enterprise by giving you the solutions for the new style of IT,” she said. “You know when you partner with HP, we’ve got your back”

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