Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman: Ready to Rally Partners?

When 2012 arrived, thousands of Hewlett-Packard employees likely offered a collective sigh of relief. No doubt, those HP employees — and plenty of channel partners — were ready to bury 2011, which was filled with missteps. Now it’s time to look ahead and wonder: Can recently installed HP CEO Meg Whitman continue to bring order to the executive ranks while delivering clear communications to customers, partners and Wall Street? The answers will emerge in February. Here’s why.

First, a rewind: The VAR Guy has spent this past week analyzing new or recently named CEOs who are leading big high-tech companies — AMD, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and IBM. Stepping into today’s spotlight: HP CEO Meg Whitman.

HP’s Revised Strategy

Give Whitman credit. Within weeks of replacing former CEO Leo Apotheker, Whitman erased some of HP’s biggest question marks:

• Yes, HP would complete the Autonomy acquisition.
• Yes, HP would retain its PC business to retain synergies with its server business.
• Yes, HP would still kill webOS hardware while shifting the webOS operating system to an open source model — though The VAR Guy doubts webOS has a future.

The next big test for HP from February 13 to 15 in Las Vegas, when the company hosts the HP Global Partner Conference. Shortly thereafter, HP on February 22 is expected to announce its latest quarterly results.

Past Mistakes

At the 2011 partner conference, then HP CEO Leo Apotheker gave a rambling preview of HP’s cloud strategy, claiming HP would build a public cloud to take on everyone from Amazon to Apple iTunes. The cloud-related portion of Apotheker’s keynote had big cloud claims, few details and zero channel partner strategy attached to it. Also, a big “touch” user interface shown on stage was merely a mock up and not a true HP technology demo.

HP hasn’t exactly wowed The VAR Guy during the annual partner events. HP back in 2010 — during the Mark Hurd era — essentially told partner conference attendees to sell more networking, servers and PCs per second. It was a classic commodity keynote.

HP’s 2012 Strategy

Fast forward to this year’s HP partner conference, and Whitman must stick to the basics — describing how a unified, well-organized HP can help channel partners with traditional IT, hybrid cloud and pure cloud initiatives.

Hopefully, Whitman and her lieutenants will tell HP partners how HP is growing its R&D budget to once again drive market innovations. Instead of pressuring partners to sell more servers, hopefully HP will offer sound advice to help partners manage — and modernize — SMB environments.

Lingering Challenges

Right now, The VAR Guy suspects, HP’s biggest challenges involve its core server and printer businesses — which seemed to be under serious pressure when HP announced Q4 results in November 2011. If HP can’t rely on solid server and printer (er, ink) revenues, then the company could face more stress as HP attempts to strengthen its cloud portfolio.

Also of note, HP continues to lose executive talent; the latest exit involves HP veteran Tom LaRocca jumping to Oracle as VP of worldwide product strategy and alliances, according to LaRocca’s updated LinkedIn profile.

Sure, executives come and go. But that’s been HP’s problem for more than a decade — particular in the CEO slot. Whitman has provided a calming influence over the past four months or so. But can she restore HP’s growth strategy with channel partners?

The early clues will emerge in February 2012 at HP’s global partner summit.