HP CEO Apotheker Has Ambitious Plans, Faces Challenges

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New Hewlett-Packard CEO Léo Apotheker revealed a bit more about his plans for the U.S. PC giant at a Strategy Summit in San Francisco March 14. Over the next two years, Apotheker told the 350-plus gathered analysts, these will include starting a cloud-computing service enabling developers to create applications for consumers and enterprises; a new, major emphasis on services; and the creation of greater synergies between HP products.

"Everything that we do in the future will be delivered as a service," Apotheker said, according to a report from Bloomberg. "It’s the first time HP is trying to put all of the elements of what it’s doing together."

Pund-It Principal Analyst Charles King reacted to the Summit in a March 16 report by writing, in short, that "At HP, the adults are clearly back in charge."

HP CTO Shane Robison described what he defined as HP’s Cloud System differentiators, wrote King, which include offering a single view of services, support for heterogeneous systems, operating systems and hypervisors, and intelligent and automated management solutions. Robison added that a primary driver of cloud-adoption is expected to be the massive amounts of data that both consumers and businesses are increasingly struggling to manage.

King additionally outlined HP’s strategy from three perspectives, saying that, practically speaking, Apotheker’s cloud-computing strategy "seems sensible and workable." Innovation wise, HP’s partnerships with Intel and Microsoft will offer "numerous synergistic opportunities" and, regarding HP’s vision, it’s both in line with most IT vendors’ and is a welcome departure from the style of leadership shown by former HP CEO Mark Hurd, who resigned last year after being found in violation of HP’s codes of conduct.

Nonetheless, wrote King, "the company faces some significant barriers."

For more, read the eWEEK article: HP CEO Apotheker Outlines Plans But Faces Barriers.

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