Exiting the x86 server business, IBM has created a huge opportunity for Hewlett-Packard Co. Chuck Smith, VP of Business Development, HP Servers, said the company “continues to invest in the space,” as well as in its apps and the new style of IT.

In his live interview with theCUBE co-hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier, Smith said that even though Lenovo, the buyer of IBM’s server business, has been messaging a lot that they’re coming after HP, “building an enterprise business, being a brand that customers trust, is something that you don’t build overnight.”

Smith pointed out that it took Lenovo five years to get past a certain market share after buying IBM’s PC business, and that was in better shape than the server business. He went on to claim that HP not only managed to turn some IBM customers, but has also actively recruited hundreds of new partners.

“Customers are starting to look at their infrastructure provider, and HP is their vendor of choice. Our tagline is the right compute for the right workload at the right economics,” Smith said. According to the executive, this expectation fits the requirements of the cloud provider space. As in the enterprise there are hundreds of different applications and users with different requirements, the public cloud doesn’t fit.

Commenting on HP’s clients in the cloud provider space, Smith said “each cloud provider wants their own custom box.” Capability requirements that need to be met take some investment, attention, and a lot of work. “There’s huge growing and networking requirements, it’s not just about computing.”

Watch Chuck Smith’s full interview here:

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