HP 2014 Annual Report Download - page 21

developed and marketed new compatible cartridges for HP’s laser and inkjet products, particularly
outside of the U.S. where IP protection is inadequate or ineffective. 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’’), Lenovo, Oracle
Corporation (‘‘Oracle’’), Fujitsu Limited (‘‘Fujitsu’’), Inspur, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.,
NetApp, Inc., Hitachi Ltd., Juniper Networks, Inc., Arista Networks, Inc., Extreme Networks, Inc.,
Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., VMware, Microsoft, Google Inc., Rackspace Inc., and
Amazon.com, Inc. (‘‘Amazon’’). In certain 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 include our
broad end-to-end solutions portfolio, supported by our strong IP portfolio and research and
development capabilities, 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 plc. and offshore companies such as Fujitsu 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 such as Amazon, 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-country, multi-vendor and/or multi-language
environments, differentiated 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 AG (‘‘SAP’’), 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 Intel. As customers are becoming increasingly comfortable with newer delivery mechanisms such as
SaaS, 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 solution 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
deliver flexible investment solutions and expertise that help customers and partners create unique
technology deployments based on specific business needs.
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