Hurd On The Street

The selection of Mark Hurd, NCR's chief executive, to replace Carly Fiorina at HP also isn't lost on some bloggers, who acknowledge "many good joke possibilities" in the offing.

But to the industry and Wall Street, Hurd's selection is no laughing matter. Carl Howe, a consultant who writes at Blackfriar's Blog, says the following:

In all fairness, we shouldn't prejudge Mr. Hurd's performance. We admired his work at Teradata and expect he will work hard for HP. But this is a great example of corporate actions not being aligned with the messages that HP's board has been delivering. For years, we heard that Fiorina's problem was that she was too aggressive about the business results and not in tune with the more engineering- and consensus-based culture at HP. Hiring an even tougher, cost-cutting, turnaround executive makes those messages ring untrue for anyone who has been paying attention to HP's story.

Naomi Moneypenney, vice president of research and media at ManyWorlds Inc. and a former business and IT strategist at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, writes on her blog that while running NCR, Hurd "has improved the financial results of the company, but maybe not its strategy." She adds this:

In the end, though, HP's board may have been unable to ignore the obvious in selecting Hurd: He's got a track record of boosting a company's stock price. And HP's shares have been stuck in mud since its acquisition of Compaq. Writes blogger Bob V:

For HP shareholders, that may suffice as a strategy for now.