HP Earnings: Executive Shakeup, Enterprise Changes Impact Donatelli?

Hewlett-Packard‘s (HPQ) earnings call later today apparently will include executive changes that impact HP Enterprise Group Executive VP Dave Donatelli. Plus, CEO Meg Whitman may announce additional leadership changes, according to All Things D. The big question: Much like IBM, is HP’s enterprise business — containing servers, storage and networking — struggling amid the shift to cloud computing?

Hmmm… For the six months ended in April, HP’s Enterprise unit reported $13.8 billion in sales, down 7 percent from the same period in 2012, notes All Things D. Pure speculation on The VAR Guy’s part, but perhaps Q3 enterprise performance showed an even more dramatic slowdown — prompting Whitman to shift Donatelli to a new post.

The VAR Guy won’t have answers until HP officially announces earnings later today. But in the meantime consider this: IBM recently announced hardware employee furloughs amid slowing server sales. IBM has also been trying to sell its x86 server business — though an alleged deal with Lenovo apparently fell apart a few months ago.

Meanwhile, it seems like both HP and IBM are playing catch up in the cloud market. HP’s public cloud and IBM’s SmartCloud haven’t generated much buzz in recent weeks, though IBM’s recent SoftLayer acquisition is worth watching.

The VAR Guy will update his HP coverage later today when the company officially announces Q3 results. Update, 4:56pm ET, Aug. 21, 2013: Here are HP’s official earnings.