HP sure knows how to wrap up a party -- by letting its CEO make a surprise appearance right at the end of the show. Joining Todd Bradley on the stage, Meg Whitman reassured the audience with her company's "commitment to fantastic products," and that "engineering is very much still alive from HP." In regards to the recent merger of HP's Imaging and Printing Group with Personal Systems Group (which changed this week's show entirely), Meg -- who's a big believer in focusing tasks -- is confident that Todd's new team will deliver a united brand and a unified design language, thus making the PC business stronger with the best customer experience and customer support.

Additionally, Meg seems to be getting along just fine with the board, saying that they are deeply engaged to plot a brighter future for HP. Under Meg's supervision, HP is doubling down on R&D and incubation, as well as aiming to be a leader in cloud computing (she claims that HP is already the largest provider of private cloud services) and security by bringing a full host of benefits that the competitors lack. When asked about HP's mobile and tablet strategy, Todd skirted around by emphasizing the happy partnership between HP and Microsoft on tablets, but he also said that markets evolve and change all the time, and that his company's well aware of the differences between the needs of enterprises or small businesses and the needs of consumers. So in other words, stay tuned.

Meg Whitman: HP's engineering is very much still alive, aims to be cloud computing leader originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 05:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.