Michael Dell To HP: Dell Is On The Attack, Playing Offense In Midst Of HP 'Chaos'

Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell has a message for Hewlett Packard as the company splits apart into two separate companies: Dell is going on the attack, playing offensive as HP grapples with the chaos of breaking apart.

"I don't know why they did it, you'll have to ask them that, I know that you don't score points when you are on defense and we are on offense," said Dell responding to a question on the HP split as part of a 45 minute no holds barred interview with Channel Company CEO Robert Faletra at the BoB Conference Monday at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Fla.

"They are going to go through a period of being distracted. There is chaos in trying to separate two large companies like that."

Dell's appearance at the BoB conference came one week to the day after Hewlett Packard confirmed its split into what would become two publically traded Fortune 50 companies: a $57 billion PC and Printing business and a $57 billion enterprise computing business with Dell now becoming the largest end to end integrated technology provider at $60 billion.

The HP break up is going to have ripple effects on HP customers and partners, said Dell. He pointed to the difficulty of breaking apart a single building of HP employees in a major country.

"Think of all the (HP) people in a (single) building, then you have to sort of separate them out, now you need two buildings, now the first building is too big, so now you need three buildings, get rid of the first one, move these people over here to over there, establish new legal entities, multiply that by 180 countries, all the partners, all the customers, it is a level of chaos that one really has to question," said Dell.

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