HP CEO Meg Whitman has offered a strong defence of the company’s performance to an audience of EMEA customers and partners at HP Discover 2012 in Frankfurt this week.
Opening her address, Whitman joked HP had experienced "a very quiet year" before exclaiming: "Holy smokes, it’s been an incredible year for this company, we’ve had a lot of challenges but we’ve also had a lot of victories."
Whitman said she had come to "love" the company, its people, customers and its partners, before extolling the "company’s history and all that it stands for".
Her comments appeared designed to reinforce the company’s deep roots and traditions in the IT industry. She emphasised its "long legacy" of partner relationships and trust.
Whitman claimed customers wanted the company "to win" because they "deeply appreciate the benefits you get from HP in an industry characterised by increasing consolidation and increasing change".
Customers were "even more important to us today than ever in the history of the company", she added.
Whitman was also at pains to emphasise HP’s commitment to Autonomy despite its recent massive write down. "We remain 100% committed to Autonomy’s industry leading technology and its employees, she said.
At the event, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg offered a very public endorsement of Whitman. "I couldn’t be more confident about the company’s future," he told the audience. He had known Whitman since 1989 when they were both at Walt Disney and she was one of the first people he contacted for the board when DreamWorks went public in October 2004.
"She’s a rare leader who cannot only see the big idea but bring it into being," Katzenberg added. "After little more than a year, she’s already moving the company in some pretty great directions."
Billy MacInnes
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