BACKGROUND / CHALLENGE:
Formed in 1939, Hewlett-Packard is one of the original silicon valley tech companies. From 2007 to 2013, HP was the world’s leading computer manufacturer, and also one of the largest enterprise solutions suppliers.
In 2015, HP decided to split its PC business from its enterprise business. It had already been decided that the PC business would retain the HP name, so HP approached us to assist with creating a new name for the enterprise business.
SOLUTION:
As a fast-tracked project, over the next several weeks, we developed two rounds of name options covering several different territories, from evolutions or extensions of “HP” to completely new, standalone names. While many standalone names were considered, the equity of the “HP” names dictated that the name should be retained.
In order to not quarrel with the HP name, we determined that a simple descriptive name should be appended to it, which is why “Enterprise” was selected, resulting in the new name “Hewlett Packard Enterprise”.
OUTCOME:
On November 1, 2015, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) officially launched as a separate, publicly-traded company. Today, the company reports revenues in excess of 30 billion dollars, with nearly 62,000 employees.
Since the official launch of HPE, the company has retained WANT for naming help on several additional projects, including most recently its market-leading “PointNext” service (IT strategy to transform hybrid cloud environments) in 2018 and its Ezmeral Container Platform and ESP Digital Network Architecture (for Aruba) in 2019.