Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Analysts: HP Must Communicate Strategy at HP Discover, Then Execute: Page 2 of 2

Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at Taneja Group, says HP has historically been missing a few critical storage ingredients--primarily a mid- to high-end NAS product and a deduplication offering. "This meant that EMC and NetApp were moving into HP accounts, and HP couldn't do anything about it. All that has changed recently and will change even more dramatically at Discover."

A slew of storage products will be announced at Discover, and Taneja says he thinks storage has the potential to lead HP out of its hole. "Heads-down execution is what is needed," he explains. "I think on the product side they are looking quite pretty. And they have a strong leader in Donatelli. The next three months will be very telling, indeed."

The company's most recent executive shuffle (elevating senior VP of software Bill Veghte to chief operating officer and hiring George Kadifa from Silver Lake to run software) should have allowed the company to present a united front at HP Discover, says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research. "But comments by Mike Lynch [founder and CEO of Autonomy, who was fired on Wednesday] suggesting that HP was planning to shift its focus away from software have cast something of a pall. If Lynch's comments are true, HP is heading in a direction that's effectively opposite that of all of its major competitors. If Lynch is incorrect, Whitman needs to do a superstar turn explicating HP's software strategy."

Kadifa's hiring is likely to complicate things--his experience in software pales in comparison with Veghte, who was at Microsoft for nearly two decades, says King. "Ideally, HP should be heading into Discover with a unified story and a strong, revitalized executive team. Instead, I expect they'll spend much of the week facing difficult-to-answer questions."

Learn more about Research: 2012 State of the Data Center by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports (free, registration required).