At Whitman’s Slimmer HPE, Acquisitions Offer Promise of Growth
- Company needs innovation to compete with cloud, analysts say
- CEO has signaled willingness to consider deals with discipline
The Numbers Don't Lie: HP Enterprise Earnings Preview
Meg Whitman has taken steps to shrink Hewlett Packard Enterprise into a company that’s less than half the size of the Silicon Valley behemoth it once was. Whitman now is signaling that she’s inclined to add back some heft through acquisitions.
After breaking off HPE from its PC and printer businesses last year, Chief Executive Officer Whitman has sought to make the corporate technology provider even slimmer by cutting deals to spin off other units that are dragging on growth. But the company still needs new ways to thwart competition from cloud-computing giants such as Amazon.com Inc. and Google. These rivals have eroded demand for HPE’s servers, software and storage gear by offering the same products and services on a pay-as-you-go basis -- giving corporate customers less incentive to buy the pricey hardware traditionally used to handle such tasks.