Both companies see the cloud as their primary battlefield -- IBM spun out PCs a decade ago and HP recently restructured the company so that personal technology and printer declines wouldn't distract senior management. But IBM's initiative is heavily strategic, which suggests the true benefits for the company will emerge in the second half of the decade. HP is more tactically focused, and is demonstrating an adjustment into an area that is closer to their new CEO's skill set.

This isn't about one approach being better than the other, but rather about how each approach defines the significant differences between the companies.

One of the primary goals of CEOs brought in from outside is to change the company they manage to better reflect their skill set. Meg Whitman's background at eBay is tied to what became a cloud service built from the ground up to address a defined customer set. It wasn't in hardware, software or traditional IT services. HP's Hybrid Cloud adds a public cloud component to the company's more traditional hardware solutions.