New HP head was NCR's turnaround artist

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nurse the company back to health in its other businesses."

Although he served as CEO and a board member since only 2003, Hurd has been at NCR for 23 years, serving as president and chief operating officer, and fulfilling various roles with the company's marketing, professional services and sales management operations.

Mark Hurd

Additionally, in 2004, Hurd teamed with former NCR chief Lars Nyberg to author a book titled, "The Value Factor: How Global Leaders Use Information for Growth and Competitive Advantage."

A bit of a mystery?
Still, not everyone is sold on Hurd as a leader for the technology market.

"NCR has fallen so far off the radar. They have essentially been level, at best, for over a decade" in the general-purpose server market, said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at Illuminata. HP instead should have tried to recruit one of the many lifers out of IBM, Eunice said.

Hurd is known as an operational cost cutter, but he doesn't have a huge record for growing market share, Eunice said.

Added Chris Foster, an analyst at Technology Business Research: "He's definitely a bit of a mystery. The pick was definitely out of left field."

Hurd will face tough choices right away, said Gartner's Martin Reynolds. HP has sufffered under the burden of high overhead and an inability to derive much profit from a hardware business that reaps billions annually in revenue. Although HP went through massive layoffs following the acquisition of Compaq Computer, more may have to occur, Reynolds said.

"He looks like an operations guy. He's got a cutting record. HP has this huge hardware business, and hardware isn't what it used to be," Reynolds said. "Their costs are high."

One choice that Hurd may have to face in the near future is exiting markets, said Gartner's Charles Smulders. Currently, HP participates in every geographic market, and makes PCs for budget seekers and luxury buyers. By contrast, Dell mostly concentrates on the mid- to high-end PCs, while Acer has forged a comeback through concentrating on laptops for Europeans.

"They have to make some hard choices in geographies and end-user markets," Smulders said.

Hurd's also a strong contrast to Fiorina, in terms of personality. She was touted as a rising corporate star when she joined HP from Lucent. Hurd is a mystery. He came up through the ranks of NCR and has been unheralded. When asked what they knew of him, both Reynolds and Smulders replied, "not much."

"He was on our contact list, but that's about it," Eunice said. "I know we sent him a Christmas card because I checked today."

CNET News.com's John Spooner contributed to this report.