Some customers who felt disrupted by recent changes at HP said they want Whitman to stabilize a chaotic situation by quickly and decisively communicating a product road map.

Whitman was appointed HP's CEO to replace Leo Apotheker, who was on the job for only about a year. During his reign, Apotheker set the stage for HP to move away from PCs to focus on the more profitable enterprise hardware, software and services. In August the company said it would acquire software maker Autonomy for US$10.2 billion, and also proposed selling or spinning off the Personal Systems Group (PSG), which deals in PCs and mobile devices. HP at the time said it would kill its line of WebOS smartphones and tablets, while retaining the software platform.

HP's board felt the need to bring in new leadership after spotting weaknesses in Apotheker's performance and operational execution, said Ray Lane, executive chairman at HP on a conference call to discuss Whitman's appointment. Board members were also "embarrassed" by the way Apotheker's team handled the August announcements.

The way HP communicated its left many questions hanging, said Gerry McCartney, the CIO at Purdue University, which buys a range of HP products, including servers, desktops, laptops and office supplies. said. Purdue also has four of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, two of which have been built by HP.

"I think the decision was poorly signaled. You could be watching the market and what's being said. We do that fairly well and we did not see this coming. When this was announced it was unsettling. You wonder 'what's coming next,'" McCartney said.