HP 2013 Annual Report Download - page 20

document-centric commercial solutions and services. Our competitive advantages include our
comprehensive solutions for the home, office and publishing environments, our innovation and research
and development capabilities, our brand, and the accessibility of our products through a broad-based
distribution strategy from retail and commercial channels to direct sales.
Enterprise Group. EG operates in the highly competitive enterprise technology infrastructure
market that is characterized by rapid and ongoing technological innovation and price competition. Our
primary competitors include technology vendors such as International Business Machines Corporation
(‘‘IBM’’), Dell, EMC Corporation (‘‘EMC’’), Cisco Systems, Inc. (‘‘Cisco’’), VMware, Microsoft and
Amazon.com Inc. In particular regions, we also experience competition from local companies and from
generically-branded or ‘‘white-box’’ manufacturers. Our strategy is to deliver superior products,
high-value technology support services and differentiated integrated solutions that combine our
infrastructure, software and services capabilities. Our competitive advantages are our broad end-to-end
solutions portfolio, supported by our strong intellectual property portfolio and research and
development know-how, coupled with our global reach and partner ecosystem.
Enterprise Services. ES competes in the IT services, consulting and integration, infrastructure
technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing and application service markets. Our primary
competitors include IBM Global Services, Computer Sciences Corporation, systems integration firms
such as Accenture Ltd. and offshore companies such as Fujitsu Limited and India-based competitors
Wipro Limited, Infosys Limited and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. We also compete with other
traditional hardware providers, such as Dell, which are increasingly offering services to support their
products, new players in emerging areas like Cloud, and smaller local players. Many of our competitors
offer a wide range of global services, and some of our competitors enjoy significant brand recognition.
ES teams with many companies to offer services, and those arrangements allow us to extend our reach
and augment our capabilities. Our competitive advantages include our deep technology expertise,
especially in complex multi-vendor environments, differentiated intellectual property (‘‘IP’’), our strong
track record of collaboration with clients and partners, and the combination of our expertise in
infrastructure management with skilled global resources on platforms from SAP, Oracle Corporation
(‘‘Oracle’’) and Microsoft, among others.
Software. The markets in which Software operates are fueled by rapidly changing customer
requirements and technologies. We design and develop enterprise IT management software in
competition with IBM, CA Technologies, Inc., VMware, BMC Software, Inc. and others. Our big data
solutions, which include data analytics, information governance and digital marketing offerings
incorporating both structured and unstructured data, compete with products from companies like
Adobe Systems Inc., IBM, EMC, Open Text Corporation, Oracle and Symantec Corporation. We also
deliver enterprise security/risk intelligence solutions that compete with products from EMC, IBM, Cisco
and McAfee, Inc. As customers are becoming increasingly comfortable with newer delivery mechanisms
such as software-as-a-service, we are facing competition from smaller, less traditional competitors,
particularly for customers with smaller IT organizations. Our differentiation lies in the breadth and
depth of our software and services portfolio and the scope of our market coverage.
HP Financial Services. In our financing business, our competitors are captive financing companies,
mainly IBM Global Financing, as well as banks and other financial institutions. We believe our
competitive advantage in this business over banks and other financial institutions is our ability to
finance products, services and total solutions.
For a discussion of risks attendant to these competitive factors, see ‘‘Risk Factors—Competitive
pressures could harm our revenue, gross margin and prospects,’’ in Item 1A, which is incorporated
herein by reference.
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