Hewlett-Packard Co. late Tuesday announced that its board of directors has unanimously chosen Mark Hurd, CEO of NCR Corp., to take over as HP"s new CEO. The company confirmed media reports about Hurd"s selection only after the close of financial markets in New York.

Hurd, 48, steps in to replace Carly Fiorina, the six-year veteran ousted by HP"s board last month over financial performance issues. He will take up his new duties on April 1 and will join HP"s board, the company said. He succeeds Robert Wayman, a 36-year HP veteran who has been chief financial officer since 1984 and took over as interim CEO after Fiorina left.

Wayman, 59, will remain CFO and continue to serve as a member of HP"s board.

Patricia Dunn, HP"s nonexecutive chairman, said Hurd -- who has served in various positions at NCR for 25 years -- was chosen because of his track record there, as well as his strong executive and personal qualities.

"Mark came to our attention because of his strong execution skills, his proven ability to lead top performing teams and his track record in driving shareholder value," she said in a statement. "He demonstrated these skills by turning around NCR. ... We were impressed by his emphasis on developing internal talent while reaching outside for new skills, his understanding of the role of culture in a company"s success and his personal integrity. "

Said Hurd: "HP is one of the world"s great companies, with a proud history of innovation, outstanding talent and enviable positions in many of its product lines and services. It"s a great honor to join its leadership team and have the opportunity to build on its success."

Hurd comes from a company that makes automated teller machines and retail systems, as well as data warehousing technology. But it does not have anywhere near the technology breadth of HP, whose enterprise products are found in virtually every large company.

Devin York, director of financial systems at Continental Airlines Inc. in Houston, said he hopes the move means HP will continue to innovate. Continental uses HP"s OpenView Storage Data Protector backup software and has a storage-area network with about 20TB of capacity on two HP StorageWorks XP512 arrays. York also operates a large data warehouse from the Teradata division of NCR.

"I was happy with the old (CEO)," said York, who also uses NCR"s Teradata warehouse technology. "As long as they keep innovating, we"ll be happy customers."

But one former NCR employee, Robert A. Nisbet, a scientist who led some data-mining research efforts at NCR, said Hurd is not one to support technology projects that require long-term development. If a project doesn"t have the prospect of delivering immediate results, he will kill it, Nisbet claimed.

"If he doesn"t see immediate and significant feedback in terms of revenue after a couple of years, he"s likely to pull the plug," said Nisbet, who left NCR in 2000 to pursue another job. "He"s not big on R&D."

Indeed, Hurd has a reputation for making tough decisions, according to analysts. For users, more immediate concerns may involve product road maps, particularly on retiring products.

Denys Beauchemin, a member of the board of HP user group Interex and a past president, worries that the new CEO will shorten road maps to cut expenses. "I do not see the board accepting to go back to the way it was," said Beauchemin. "I think Carly was fired because she wasn"t going at it at fast enough or hard enough."

Fiorina moved to end a lot of HP"s legacy platforms, including the HP e3000 midrange systems line and both PA-RISC and the Alpha processors. It also meant an end for two operating systems, the e3000"s MPE software and the Tru64 Unix technology that HP acquired when it bought Compaq.

But Jasmine Noel, an analyst at Ptak, Noel & Associates in New York who focuses on management software, said Hurd"s experience in integrating hardware and software products may be a plus for HP.

"They need someone to understand the intricacies of hardware working with software and bringing those together with a great services organization," Noel said. "On paper, he sounds really good."