HP is not stopping it’s plans to be a leader in technology even among all the tainted press received from the tainted Mark Hurd era.  HP is bringing the consumer and converged networking story together.

HP has at last revealed its long-awaited Slate, an 8.9-inch tablet with capacitive multi-touch and running Windows 7. This is a big deal for HP and highlights how diverse HP is as a company.

Recently, HP has been under pressure from the press around their recent management turmoil surrounding Mark Hurd. Also, the New York Times has been taking HP to task over their new CEO Leo Apotheker and their prospects for growth.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur veteran and now venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote a fantastic post to counter the New York Times fiction surrounding the real prospect of HP. Of course I’ve been covering HP for sometime now. HP has issues to resolve post Mark Hurd. HP needs to get some focus on their consumer business. HP is a conglomerate that needs to execute, and from what I can see they are on task. They are moving in the right direction. HP just like racle are not going away anytime soon.

HP has a unique combination that positions themselves for the future. HP has roots in enterprise technology and most recently in the past twenty years have been a leading in computer consumer products (started with the LaserJet). The biggest trend emerging from the Apple or consumer market is being driven by network (or cloud) technologies.

We all know that the iPad, iPhone, Android, and now HP Slate are sexy products, but their value to users is the power of the networks that support them. Enter HP’s Converged Networking story.

This is a bright spot within HP is the converged infrastructure group led by David Donatelli who came to HP from EMC. SiliconANGLE had a chance to be at HP’s Barcelona international press event to launch the converged infrastructure story.

Here is an interview that Dave Vellante (founder of Wikibon) and I did with Dave Donatelli inside theCube in Barcelona Spain.

HP’s converged infrastructure strategy and offering is industry best-in-class. With 3Com in the mix for high end networking, HP’s ongoing leadership in servers and the recent acquisition of 3PAR the company is very well-positioned. A $60B supply chain only adds more firepower to HP’s substantial arsenal.

In the above interview (at 19:27 timestamp) I asked David Donatelli about how the consumer wave is driving the enterprise market. Dave’s organization is built to deliver the kind of total solution to speed up deployment of apps and services.

As the consumer and enterprise markets continues to drive more network usage, the cloud convergence infrastructure will become the most important asset in solutions that drive the iPad, Slate, and Android devices.

It was the first time that I met Donatelli who had a reputation at EMC as a technologist and operational genius. What always set EMC apart was their vision and ability to execute. At HP Donatelli is bringing that to HP’s infrastructure group.

In over a year he has put together a strategy and has acquired the key pieces to move forward. Additionally, he’s brought over a lot of former EMC execs to assist in running the business.

HP is poised to take a big piece of market share from the leading players like Cisco. HP needs a boost in the arm and Donatelli has the chops and the team to execute.