NCR's Mark Hurd, who's been tapped to become HP's next CEO, may indeed be the right man for the job, according to at least one analyst.
Others aren't convinced yet — but rest assured that all are looking at his track record for signs of what's to come.
"He's got the right resume [for HP], and he's been working for a solid company," says IDC's Roger Kay. "The story on NCR is more or less: It's been [pulled] back from the brink."
The appointment of Hurd, 48, comes less than two months after HP ousted former CEO Carly Fiorina.
Hurd is probably best known for his work in helping NCR — owner of Teradata and a maker of ATMs, point-of-sale terminals and other technologies — recover from financial ills of years past.
In 2001, NCR dropped its earnings estimates by 40 percent during one quarter, as slowed spending on data warehousing technology caught up with the company. But during 2003, the year he was chosen to take the helm of NCR, Hurd helped the company's profits nearly quintuple, from $58m (£31m), or 61 cents a share, to $285m, or $2.97 a share.
As part of the turnaround effort, Hurd was credited with slashing NCR's spending.
Hurd has also been credited with building the company's Teradata data warehousing business, which generated $1.2bn of NCR's $5.9bn in sales in 2004. Overall, the company's revenue grew by almost 7 percent last year.
Kay says that before Hurd took over, NCR had declined unnecessarily under the oversight of AT&T, which spun off the company in 1997. Kay credits Hurd with helping drive its resurgence.
"I thought [NCR] was very innovatively positioned in about 1980 or 1981, and AT&T kind of mismanaged it," Kay says. "What's likely is that Mark Hurd and his colleagues have spent the past decade or so trying to 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.
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.
