Cisco Vs. HP: It's On!
Cisco Systems drew a line in the sand at its annual Partner Summit, publicly proclaiming that the competition between it and rival Hewlett-Packard (HP) is heating up. The pair now compete in the networking space, with Cisco's bread-and-butter going against HP's darling ProCurve Networking line; the data center, with Cisco's UCS blade and rack server offerings butting heads with HP's server products; and a host of other segments like immersive high-definition video, Wi-Fi and unified communications.
No one was more vocal about the budding rivalry, which had been dormant for years but crescendoed in the first half of 2009, than Rob Lloyd, Cisco's new executive vice president of worldwide operations (shown here).
"I think we've been taking too many punches with regard to the competitive landscape and not punching back … We'll keep it clean, but for you we need to help define the value proposition on why we're a better choice than [HP] ProCurve," Lloyd said, garnering applause from the audience during his Partner Summit keynote. "I'm encouraging all of us to punch back -- with a little bit of class -- and if we get it right, it will make a big difference in the market."
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