On Monday, Meg Whitman hosted her first earnings call since becoming HP's CEO. Photo: Ron Edmonds/AP

HP boss Meg Whitman says that companies trying to build their own servers — without the help of traditional server giants like HP — are having little success due to the global hard drive shortage.

Speaking on her first quarterly earnings call since taking the reins at HP eight weeks ago, Whitman said that a small number of companies are skipping server vendors like HP and building their own machines — and that this number is getting smaller. “We hear all the time that people are building their ow...