What's the big idea with HP's 'Adaptive Enterprise'?

Six months after HP revealed its new computing strategy, a clear definition of 'Adaptive Enterprise' still remains somewhat elusive, HP CEO Carly Fiorina acknowledged on Tuesday.

Fiorina, who spoke on a range of HP issues at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida, noted that confusion exists over the meaning of HP's Adaptive Enterprise. Last May, HP unveiled the strategy, a move designed to help large corporations receive more value from their information technology investment.

During Fiorina's fireside-chat-style presentation, Gartner ran a brief video clip that featured comments from conference attendees, who tried to describe the strategy. Some struggled to offer a description, while others simply said they didn't know.

"There is some confusion because we only recently began our marketing," said Fiorina, who later defined Adaptive Enterprise as an "end state" for a customer.

She added that it is a way for customers to look at their respective companies and manage their technologies, changes and values associated with them.

In sizing up the current landscape among HP's customers, Fiorina said corporations are looking for ways to bring simplicity to their business processes and cost effectiveness and standards to their organisations.

As a result, companies are trying to create a horizontal IT infrastructure, rather than a vertical one where business processes and applications, for example, are independent of one another.

"We're in an era where people need to think about business processes and applications horizontally... We need to think of the enterprise not as an island of standalone technology," Fiorina said.

Dawn Kawamoto writes for CNET News.com.