New HP Enterprise sees big opportunity in China

An attendee at the Microsoft Ignite technology conference walks past the Hewlett-Packard (HP) logo in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015.[Photo/IC]

NEW YORK -- The newly spun-off tech giant HP Enterprise believes China is the real emerging market and there will be huge technology demand from the country in the forthcoming decades, said chief executive officer Meg Whitman Monday.

Whitman made the remarks following a historic breakup of the computing giant Hewlett Packard Company (HP).

She told reporters in New York that HP Enterprise, spun off from Hewlett Packard, along with its printer and PC unit called HP Inc, has decided to exit the "public cloud" business of making data storage available to all customers.

HP Enterprise will continue in the "hybrid cloud" business of working with companies to store data both on-site and in outside data centers, she said.

Hewlett-Packard officially split into two entities Sunday, opening a new chapter for the 76-year-old American technology legend. The aim is to develop a sharper focus both for the enterprise unit and the PC-printer division that made it a household name but has become fiercely competitive and less lucrative in recent years.

Following its spinoff from Hewlett Packard, HP Enterprise on Monday debuted as a corporate technology leader with $53 billion in annual revenue.

"The winners in today's market will be those who apply the power of technology to fuel the power of ideas, and the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise is built to accelerate this journey for customers," said Whitman.

China is a very important market for HP Enterprise, said Whitman. "China's growth rate may slow down a bit, still one of the fastest growth rates of the world. (It is a ) very important long-term market for us, (and a ) very fast-growing economy."

HP's previously wholly-funded business H3C is HP's exclusive provider of servers, storage and networking, as well as hardware support services in China. Six months ago, HP sold 51 percent of its stake on H3C to Tsinghua Holdings, a subsidiary of Tsinghua University, an elite college of higher learning in China.

Whitman said she was confident that partnering with Tsinghua Holdings would help HP Enterprise best-positioned to capture the demand from China.