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What is your message to the board of directors as this decision is made?
Go! Go! Go! We have got to make an announcement. We have got to get this done. We have got to settle the uncertainty in the marketplace broadly for HP. Not just for PSG. The uncertainty is causing ripples across our business. And we have worked too hard to build what we have to open doors for other people to come in. I am very, very comfortable with the position that we have talked about. PSG will spin out as a Fortune 60 company if the spin-off is what we do. So that is a very, very powerful platform to build on.
And frankly the rationale that has been discussed-- and I think it is very, very valid-- is that this is such a portfolio of IT businesses now [within HP]. For PSG to compete with capital with everything from software to routers to printers, it makes enormous amounts of sense for this company to spin out, raise its own capital, invest in the PC priorities and the channel priorities around personal computing. I think the future is just extraordinarily bright for us.
How quickly can you spin this business off?
There are just too many third parties that have to be involved in an approval process to give you a good answer to that. Here is my answer: as fast as we can.
What is the best possible scenario in Todd Bradley's view for this PSG spin-off?
I think the broad preference is for a spin-off with the team of people that have built the most successful PC company in the world with the best partner community, the best partner support in the world, the broadest geographic coverage. It doesn't get much better than that.
What new investments are you making to help solution providers deal with this period of uncertainty?
We are moving this as quickly as we can. In our minds the best defense is a great offense, using the old football analogy. It has taken us a couple of weeks to get that offense together. You are seeing it in marketing. You are going to see it in communications to the channel community around just funding capabilities. We'll get you specifics as quick as we can.
One of the top things we have to do is an accelerated communications platform. That is probably the most important and where we are spending the most time. So we have got to get clarity around how we communicate to all of our partners continually so they have the tools they need to go win in the marketplace.
That is what has made us so successful: getting everybody the tools they need for HP to win in the marketplace.
We have got to go through this period where there is so much uncertainty as to what are the tools, what are the tools for you to go to your customer to say 'Look, this is why HP is going to continue to win, going to continue to meet your needs, going to continue to help you to be successful.'
NEXT: Bradley On How An HP PC Business Spin-Off Will Affect PartnerOne
