If the HP acquisition of Palm has proven only one thing, it's that HP intends to continue the expansion of its web of dominance across a breadth of technological niches. But don't expect the competition to take it lying down. The more HP expands, the more competitive rivalries it enflames. Here are some of HP's most noteworthy competitors across its lines of business.
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Cisco
The 3Com merger put the kibosh on HP's salad days with Cisco. The two vendors are now locking horns for dominance in networking and unified communications. Cisco says it's the perfect partner for resellers streamlining customer data centers. And HP says that the added product lines from 3Com and a new partnership with Polycom in the UC arena are enough to put it on top.
Dell
HP made it clear at the start of this year that it would be charging hard for Dell's SMB business. It started with the launch of its Dell hit squad, otherwise known as SMB Exchange. Then it opened up a call center to focus exclusively on Dell customers. And now it is encouraging partners to really snap up SMB business with better incentives for SMB Elite members of its partner program.
IBM
Going toe-to-toe with HP for share in everything from servers to IT services, IBM long ago mastered the art of maintaining a broad base of business. But IBM is hardly going to rest on its laurels. Big Blue is gunning for HP's server business and it hopes to leverage years more experience in enterprise service than HP has since the EDS pick up.
Juniper
Everybody has been harping on the acrimonious rivalry between HP and Cisco while forgetting to place bets on the networking industry's very viable also-ran: Juniper. HP is counting on a two-horse race, but it can't afford to discount Juniper, which is making waves with its partnership with IBM to develop its highly anticipated Stratus cloud computing initiative, due to launch in 2011.
EMC
HP has made it known that it covets EMC's Clariion customers for its own HP storage business—last year it poached EMC executive David Donatelli to head up HP's server, storage and networking solutions division. Meanwhile, EMC really put the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' principle into action when it teamed up with Cisco following the networking giant's falling out with HP.
Apple
The HP acquisition of Palm now puts Apple's iPhone and iPad squarely within HP's sights. The question is, how successful can HP be in making a dent in Apple's market share? Even in a highly competitive mobile market that includes behemoths such as Google and Microsoft throwing loads of money at it, Apple still dominates resoundingly.
Xerox
HP's hard charging in to the managed print services business has stirred up a hornet's nest of activity over at Xerox, where executives claim that partners have better opportunity for more sales and better margin by sticking with the old standby in print and copy solutions.
Intel Technology Provider Program
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WindowsForDevices.com
WindowsForDevices.com is the comprehensive news site covering Windows embedded technologies. Visitors get news, technical white papers, opinion columns and extensive directories covering the products and companies in the marketplace. Click Here
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