PALM DESERT, Calif. — Big acquisitions can be complex, time consuming and downright messy.

HP knows this better than most, since its controversial acquisition of Compaq in September 2001 nearly “tore the company apart,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Given that, Hewlett Packard Enterprises CEO Meg Whitman is sensing a big opportunity now that two of the company’s largest rivals — EMC and Dell — have agreed to merge in a historic $67 billion deal.

Whitman said EMC-Dell’s strategy could not be more different than what HP is now trying to achieve, with the tech exec noting that her rivals decided to “double-down on old technology.”

I think we have a couple years to really prove that our strategy was the right one.

“Our bet was smaller, nimble, leaning into new technology and being stable in this time of incredible disruption,” said Whitman, who spoke Saturday at the EY Strategic Growth Forum. “When you do an acquisition of that magnitude, think about what has to happen here: What is your sales coverage going to be? What businesses are you going to keep? What overlapping product lines are you going to keep or kill? So, it is going to be a real tumultuous time, and it will take a year to close that deal, would be my guess…. And so I think we have a couple years to really prove that our strategy was the right one here.”

Asked by moderator Alan Murray of Fortune whether HP sees those two years as a competitive opportunity, Whitman responded matter-of-factly: “Absolutely.”

“I recognize that instability when I came to HP. We were not the paragon of stability, right? We had a lot of challenges,” she said. “And I know the importance of stability to enterprise customers because they are making long-term bets on product lines on people on architectures. So, as ironic as this is, we look like the paragon of stability now four years later.”

Murray then noted that Dell and EMC could hold an advantage since the company will be operated privately, while HP’s units are publicly traded.

Whitman conceded that being privately-held “may give them an advantage.” However, she then pointed out that Dell will hold $60 billion in debt once the deal closes.

“It is a big number, so it is a slightly different strategy,” she said. “Listen, I think we have done very well as a public company and there is a certain discipline there that I actually don’t mind. But, listen, I think, we all sometimes say: If we weren’t under the Wall Street scrutiny, what would we do differently?'”