HP's Leo Apotheker: We're heading to the cloud

InfoWorld - A day after Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker outlined his strategic vision for HP -- a plan chock-full of new cloud offerings -- he sat down with IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant and InfoWorld Editor in Chief Eric Knorr to share his thoughts on a wide variety of issues in this latest installment of the IDGE CEO Interview Series. In this conversation, Apotheker, who's been with HP just over four months, talked about why HP is better positioned than IBM to help customers deliver on the promise of cloud and how he plans to rapidly eclipse the likes of IBM, Oracle, and others in the analytics market. (Short answer: Apotheker will leave old-school BI to the other players. HP's focus will be on analytics and Big Data.)

When it comes to the server market, Apotheker isn't shy about assessing Cisco's prospects, saying John Chambers and company are neither a threat nor an annoyance: HP simply doesn't see Cisco in sales situations. Apotheker also has strong views for IT executives on how consumerization and the cloud will reshape their jobs and their role in the corporation. Read on for more on HP's mobile strategy and cloud offerings, how HP's service offerings will evolve to support private cloud, and how HP needs to "sell itself" better to customers, investors, and partners.

John Gallant: When you were announced as CEO, there was some surprise in the industry. What do you want to tell our readers about why you're the right person for this job, at the right time for HP?

Leo Apotheker: I'm almost tempted to say I don't think I need to answer that question, but I won't go that far. There must be more than one person as the right person to be the CEO of HP. I would be pretty arrogant to believe that there is only one human being on the whole planet who is capable of doing that.