Can Meg Whitman spark growth in HP services?

Jens Butler and John Madden, Ovum Services Analysts

AUSTRALIA: HP’s services business has struggled for years with flat to single-digit quarterly revenue growth, the result of a drawn-out and arduous integration of its EDS acquisition, and a strategy that has failed to meet market and customer expectations. Even as HP endures another leadership change with the appointment of industry veteran Meg Whitman as its new CEO, the company insists that services, particularly its outsourcing and global delivery capabilities, will play a critical part in HP’s future.

Whitman lacks experience running a global enterprise IT vendor, but she does have experience as an enterprise IT customer (as CEO of EBay), and understands the value of consulting services (having started her career at Bain). After years of starts and stops, will Whitman be the leader that can bring a fully realized HP services strategy to market and spark greater revenue growth?