Dive Brief:
- HP officially became two companies on Sunday — HP Inc., which will largely consist of personal computers and printers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which will sell the computer servers, data storage, networking, software and consulting services.
- Each company began trading on the NYSE and each is expected to have annual revenue of about $50 billion and be among the top 500 U.S. companies.
- CEO Meg Whitman says she plans to transform the "old guard" company into one that can help enterprises conduct "tough automation."
Dive Insight:
Whitman, who will run HPE, plans to make big changes but also wants to ensure her company continues to perform its base duty — shipping computers and other hardware.
"We have to ship products, we have to send invoices, we have to collect money," she said. "HP sells two PCs a second. A server every six seconds. We had to keep selling them."
With HPE, Whitman plans to conduct tough automation for big computing systems, which will be attractive to the IT departments at companies going through change, said Scott Spradley, who led the team.
For years, HP has struggled to change with the times while trying to hold on to the past. The struggle is reflected in its stock, off more than 30% since the start of the year.