Whitman Readies Slimmed Down HP for Duel With Bulked-Up Dell

Whitman Readies Slimmed Down HP for Duel With Bulked-Up Dell

March 3, 2016 Richard Gomez 0

Meg Whitman long resisted a breakup of Hewlett-Packard Co., saying that selling computers to consumers and businesses was the best way to keep the Silicon Valley pioneer alive.
Now, with personal-computer demand in decline and companies flocking to the cloud to run their operations, she's on board with a split taking place next week. The chief executive's biggest job: proving to customers, investors and employees that a smaller, enterprise-focused HP will be faster and more nimble against competitors.
To get there, analysts recommend that Whitman deepen HP's expertise in such areas as security and data analytics, including through smaller, strategic acquisitions. Another area for improvement is catering to customers who do more business over mobile devices.
Whitman's split-up plan stands in contrast to Michael Dell's $67 billion deal to combine Dell with storage-maker EMC in the largest-ever technology merger. He's betting that a single provider of enterpr..