HP CEO Whitman At GTDC Summit: We Succeed Because Of The 'Power Of Many'

The industry is changing rapidly, and that's a huge opportunity for distributors and solution providers.

That was the message from Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman as she took the stage for a fireside chat presentation Tuesday evening with Global Technology Distribution Council CEO Tim Curran at the 12th annual GTDC U.S. Vendor Summit in San Jose, Calif.

"This is one of the best times I've seen to be in technology. Everything is changing. Everything about how compute is bought and sold, how applications are written, how end users interact with technology -- everything's changing," Whitman said. "When everything's changing, to me that says there's a lot of opportunities."

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The change happening right now is as fundamental as when the mainframe changed client/ server environments, Whitman said. And, as consumers look to buy everything as a service, solution providers have to make the technology and business model innovations to facilitate that switch, something that HP has united under the theme of the "New Style of IT."

While there will inevitably be winners and losers as the world continues to evolve, Whitman said she sees it less as a fight for the fittest and more about companies positioning themselves for a piece of a successful, growing market.

"My view is the world is collectively our oyster and the biggest enemy we have is ourselves. I think there's just a tremendous amount of growth available when there is this amount of change," Whitman said.

Customers are feeling the shift themselves, she said, and solution providers and distributors need to step up as trusted advisers to help them navigate the rapidly changing technology market. At HP, she said that she is "overwhelmed" with requests from customers asking for advice on which technology is best for their business, which she said is one of the many reasons she sees the channel as indispensable to HP.

Whitman highlighted technologies that are helping make HP's product road map the "best lineup we've had in many years," including a new lineup of servers, HP networking, 3Par in storage and converged infrastructure. All of those pieces are what Whitman said is the "next generation of infrastructure," something that she said can't be ignored as increased emphasis is put on software because limited hardware could stop customers from deploying the software they want. What those combined technologies drive is an increased need for services from solution providers, Whitman said, as end users know the outcome they are looking for, such as cutting costs or more agility, but they don't know the appropriate technology to get them there.

"We see a huge growth in the services opportunity. When there's these big tectonic plate shifts, people need services to figure out what to do. Everyone ... needs helps figuring out how they are going to ... get to this next generation of technology," Whitman said.

The changes, and Whitman argues "opportunities," will only accelerate as more Millennials take hold in the workforce, she said. Millennials have a completely different relationship with technology, she said, and demand better user interfaces for their technology, even if the functionality is there. For example, Whitman said HP had to redesign the user interface for its Service Manager offering because, despite the technology pieces being all there, younger generations didn't want to use it because of the UI.

However, while HP can make some changes on its own to help make its technology competitive, Whitman said partners and distributors are invaluable to HP in the market.

"It is the power of many. We rely on our relationships with you to represent HP in every part of the global [market], in every market segment -- and if we can work together we're one plus one equals three, four, five, six. That is the definition of the power of many. When it works well, it's incredibly symbiotic," Whitman said.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 10, 2014