HP 2007 Annual Report Download - page 25

Competition
We encounter aggressive competition in all areas of our business activity. We compete primarily on the basis of
technology, performance, price, quality, reliability, brand, reputation, distribution, range of products and services, ease of use
of our products, account relationships, customer training, service and support, security and availability of application
software and our Internet infrastructure offerings.
The markets for each of our business segments are characterized by vigorous competition among major corporations
with long-established positions and a large number of new and rapidly growing firms. Product life cycles are short, and to
remain competitive we must develop new products and services, periodically enhance our existing products and services and
compete effectively on the basis of the factors listed above. In addition, we compete with many of our current and potential
partners, including OEMs that design, manufacture and often market their products under their own brand names. Our
successful management of these competitive partner relationships will continue to be critical to our future success. Moreover,
we anticipate that we will have to continue to adjust prices on many of our products and services to stay competitive.
On an overall basis we are among the largest U.S.-based companies offering our range of general purpose computers and
personal information, imaging and printing products for industrial, scientific, business and consumer applications, and IT
services. We are the leader or among the leaders in each of our principal business segments.
The competitive environments in which each segment operates are described below:
Enterprise Storage and Servers. The areas in which ESS operates are intensely competitive and are characterized by
rapid and ongoing technological innovation and price reductions. Our competitors range from broad solutions providers such
as International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”) to more focused competitors such as EMC Corporation and
Network Appliance, Inc. in storage, Dell, Inc. (“Dell”) in industry standard servers, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. in both
industry standard and UNIX®-based servers. We believe that our important competitive advantages in this segment include
the six technology components of our adaptive infrastructure initiatives: IT systems, power and cooling, security,
management, virtualization and automation. We believe that our competitive advantages also include our global reach and
our significant intellectual property portfolio and research and development capabilities, which will contribute to further
enhancements of our product offerings and our ability to cross sell our portfolio and leverage scale advantages in everything
from brand to procurement leverage.
HP Services. HPS competes in IT support services, consulting and integration and outsourcing services. The IT support
services and consulting and integration markets have been under significant pressure as our customers have reduced their IT
budgets. However, this trend has benefited the outsourcing services business as customers look at reducing IT management
costs to enable more strategic investments. Our competitors include IBM Global Services, systems integration firms such as
Accenture Ltd., outsourcing firms such as Electronic Data Systems Corporation, and offshore companies. We also compete
with other traditional hardware providers, such as Dell, which are increasingly offering services to support their products.
Many of our competitors are able to offer a wide range of global services, and some of our competitors enjoy significant
brand recognition. HPS teams with many companies to offer services, and those arrangements allow us to extend our reach
and augment our capabilities. Our competitive advantages are evident in our deep technology expertise, which includes
multi-vendor environments, virtualization and automation, our strong track record of collaboration with clients and partners,
and the combination of our expertise in infrastructure management with skilled global resources in SAP, Oracle and
Microsoft platforms.
HP Software. Our software competitors include companies focused on providing software solutions for IT management,
such as BMC Software Inc, CA Inc., and IBM Tivoli Software.
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