The Register: "HP also announced that is has reached a 'Memorandum of Understanding' with SAP. The two companies have agreed to create tighter links between their various software management packages and to go after helping larger enterprises together. Touching. "

"The adaptive enterprise is an umbrella," said Peter Blackmore, executive vice president at HP, during a press conference held today in Germany.

The most important message on the day, however, came from Nora Denzel, a senior vice president and head of the adaptive enterprise at HP. Denzel is a rising star at HP and eloquent - to say the least.

"The more standardized you are the less costly it is to manage IT," she said, during the press conference.

For all of HP's slogan slinging, this really is what the company is getting at and doing a nice job of providing.

"IBM and Sun are still in separate domains," said RedMonk's Governor. "I think from their perspectives, they realize they have to change."

HP has all the right pieces in place thus far. It has a single chip vendor strategy with Xeon and Itanium, the HP OpenView package as a leading management platform and technology such as Utility Data Center humming away in the labs for future use.