HP CEO pledges dramatic boost in R&D

She echoed a recent promise made by Mark Hurd, former HP CEO and now co-president of Oracle, saying that HP was simplifying its operations and portfolios to make it easier for clients to do business with the company.

More exactly, Whitman said that HP would be focusing on three areas - what she referred to as "three corporate bets" - namely, cloud computing, security and information optimisation.

Leader in cloud

"We are already a leader in cloud," she said. "The HP cloud is leading in private cloud with near 600 clients implementations. Our enterprise managed service business operates almost 200 private clouds."