The following appears on Fortune.com
In 2015, in one of the biggest corporate breakups in Silicon Valley’s history, the roughly 75-year old Hewlett-Packard Co. cleaved itself in half. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, would handle data centers, software and services. HP Inc. would take the runt of the litter: printers and computers.
It was not a secret that HPE was the privileged offspring: Its charge was to help customers navigate the lucrative technology shifts around data, applications and cloud computing.
And in case anyone didn’t quite get the message, HPE would be led by its famous chief executive, Meg Whitman. While both companies were under pressure, her businesses held more promise.
