HP customers seek stability with Whitman

Whitman was appointed HP's CEO to replace Leo Apotheker, who was on the job for only about a year. While his reign, Apotheker set the stage for HP to move away from PCs to focus on the more profitable enterprise hardware, software and services. In August the company said it would acquire software maker Autonomy for US$10.2 billion, and as well proposed selling or spinning off the Personal Systems Group, which deals in PCs and mobile devices. HP at that time said it would kill its line of WebOS smartphones and tablets, during retaining the software platform.

The way HP communicated its plans to spin off or sell the PC business left many questions hanging, said Gerry McCartney, the CIO at Purdue University, which buys a range of HP products, including servers, desktops, laptops and office supplies. said. Purdue as well has four of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, two of which have been built by HP.

"I think people are looking at things that affect their business strategy. It's the product and product road map," Buik said. Some events over the last year, just as Oracle's decision to stop application development for Intel's Itanium chip architecture, have as well made HP enterprise users fix internal road maps.

Difference in running a smaller company like eBay

There is a difference in running a smaller company like eBay, where Whitman was formerly CEO, and HP, Buik said. Whitman has the qualifications to run the company, nevertheless will as well surround herself with capable people to execute business strategy, Buik said.

Alex de Joode, security officer at Leaseweb, one of Europe's largest Internet hosting providers, said the company was not worried about the turmoil at HP. The company uses thousands of ProLiant servers in its data centers, and in June added 5,700 more servers.

The internal struggles on an operational level

"We did not notice much about the internal struggles on an operational level." de Joode said, adding that Whitman can now focus on the strengths of HP's business, which includes introducing innovative products.