Stephen DeWitt, SVP & GM, Global Marketing for the Enterprise Group at HP, discussed the future of the company and the major shifts in IT with theCUBE co-hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier, live at VMWorld 2013.

“HP has been around for a long time,” DeWitt said, and “technology was necessary to solve a problem that puts the world forward.” HP is an engineering company at its roots and the culture of the company if focused on identifying the problems that need to solve and organizing to solve them. “We believe convergence of infrastructure is necessary for the Star Trekian future to emerge.”

“Innovation in our world is about the fundamental transformation of a work process,” said DeWitt. The world is now faced with the new style of IT and the differences are massive. We are now in a post angry birds world, a world that needs to prosper in a mobile connected environment.

Human experiences + data, together

“What IT needs to do is to transform their app, go from legacy to mobile apps, to apps that are built on top of a data lake,” DeWitt stated. Companies need to focus on driving business, not just consolidating and reducing costs. To support that, HP will feature more of the evolution towards rapid innovation, and co-innovation with partners.

Convergence is the trend fueled by what customers want. “At the end of the day, customers look for solutions that don’t have friction. They want a partner that can provide a full service across an environment,” DeWitt explained. “It’s about applications and experiences, not a siloed model.” Google’s initial success was generated by the company’s ability to bring the human experience and data together.

Speed of Business Drives IT

“Business operates at the pace of business, not at the rate at which you can drive converged management,” DeWitt said. “This is the age where the modern blocks are being built in modern architecture.” Infrastructure itself is going to go through a massive transformation. “IT operations are all about the speed of business, deliver the application intelligence in a way that is orchestrated by the human, not defined by the different languages of the building blocks that make the system.”

Asked to comment on the idea of HP needing to break up, DeWitt said that part of the power of HP and unique position resided in their R&D department’s span across all company departments, giving it a unique perspective. “The simple reality is that we are moving truly towards a customer driven world, that is about the unique dynamics of the enterprise, or the small business, or the carrier. It’s up to the company to evolve, to make sure that its portfolio is aligned.”

Commenting on VMware’s evolution in the market, DeWItt said, “I watched VMware going through the prove it out phase. It’s been awesome to be partner with them through that.’ In the future, over the next 2-3 years, “there’s going to be a lot of vetting out” in the marketplace. “You’ve got to look where people are putting their dollars, where their R&D is now.”