HP formally divorces itself
HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise go their separate ways today
Operationally, the companies have been independent since 1 August.
The plan, similar to a plan first put forward by ousted CEO Léo Apotheker in 2011, has been more than a year in the making, with the formal split announcement made in October last year. Apotheker, however, planned to sell-off PCs and printers to raise funds for acquisitions.
The two companies will have similar turnovers of around $57bn, and the bundling of the profitable printers division with struggling PCs will ensure that the spun-out company has some value.
Meg Whitman, appointed HP CEO in succession to Apotheker just as the company acquired software vendor Autonomy, will be president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of HPE, and chairman of HP Inc, too.
In an interview with Computing's sister publication, Computer Reseller News, HP Enterprise's UK managing director, Andy Isherwood, claimed that HP Enterprise would be "about speed".
He continued: "It will be about having the mindset of a startup. How can we be quick? How can we be in industries and businesses that are growing? And how can we get out of stuff quicker if they're not working? That is really what this separation and launch of Hewlett Packard Enterprise is about."
According to CRN, when HP unveiled its new partner programmes for both HP Inc and HPE last month, the vendor's partners "hailed the split as a success", reporting very little disruption.
In addition, the operational split between the two companies on 1 August also went smoothly, claimed Isherwood.
"I didn't go on holiday, I had teams stood up here dialling in at 7am waiting for all the problems," he said. "We split every single system - each customer has a different trading relationship with the two companies, every channel partner has different support mechanisms - everything! Thank God that we didn't blink."
However, TechMarketView analyst Anthony Miller cautioned that there could be further divestments planned at HPE.
"The job is not yet complete. As recently as last week HP divested its networking security business, TippingPoint, to Trend Micro and then announced its decision to exit the public cloud market in favour of partnering with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Undoubtedly there will be more ‘fine tuning' to come," he suggested.