Hewlett-Packard today announced that the HP board of directors has authorized a 10 percent increase in the amount of its regular quarterly dividend, to $0.1452 per share.

The increase in the amount of the dividend will be effective when the HP board of directors declares HP’s next dividend, which is expected to occur in May. The company’s previously announced dividend, payable on April 3, 2013 for stockholders of record on March 13, 2013, will not be increased, staying at $0.132 per share.

HP has approximately 2 billion shares of common stock outstanding.

Meg Whitman can turn HP around with SLI + Services

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This is important news because HP has been carrying a huge debt load from the billions spent on acquisitions.  By increasing the dividend HP’s is showing Wall Street that the board, CEO, and management have confidence in the future.

HP is doing well in its turn around under Meg Whitman.  Industry expert and Wikibon analyst Dave Vellante told me that the recently concluded HP Summit was a big success.  Vellante went on to  say that HP is fired up, and doing well.

According to our reports and other industry analysts, the world is changing and software-led infrastructure is reshaping the definition of leadership.  According to Wikibon analyst Vellante, “scale up open source and multivendor solutions are what top companies are rolling out.”

Yesterday at HP annual shareholder meeting CEO Meg Whitman pointed out two major innovations Moonshot (Gen8) servers and 3Par storage.

Software-led infrastructure and services, from servers to networks, and storage, is a hot topic right now.  Last fall, HP announced the expansion of its Converged Storage architecture to support software-led storage and software-led infrastructure.

Its Project Moonshot will redefine the datacenter, which will impact large cloud providers and corporate enterprises.  The advancements in server architecture and networking infrastructure have advanced relatively slowly compared to the rapid changes in software, the rise of cloud services and the explosion of data.  The cloud is putting new pressures on data centers and networks, and Moonshot and 3Par, along with technologies like software-defined storage, networking, and solid state storage, are changing the game.

The smart money and smart customers are paying attention to HP.