The Mark Hurd era at HP speaks for itself. Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina--now running for the United States Senate--seemed to be much more of a personal glory hound. She was the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company, and she oversaw the acquisition of Compaq, but her tenure was mired with struggle and controversy and saw a steep decline in the reputation of the HP brand.

In stark contrast, Mark Hurd did not make himself the news. What he did was bring a fresh management style and aggressive cost cutting to HP. Hurd created a leaner, but more effective HP--restoring HP as the leading manufacturer of both desktop and laptop computers.

He then set out to diversify the sources of revenue for HP--acquiring EDS, 3Com, and--most recently Palm. Under Hurd's guidance, HP went from being almost completely reliant on computer and printer hardware sales, to expanding the portfolio to include computer services, networking equipment, , and tablet PCs.

HP has established itself as the number two computer consulting and services provider behind IBM through the EDS acquisition, and it set itself up to compete against players like Cisco in the network hardware arena with the purchase of 3Com. But, HPs foray into tablet PCs and its acquisition of Palm have been the focus of most of the recent attention on HP.

While virtually every tech company has some sort of tablet strategy, HP is seen by many as the most likely challenger to Apple's dominant iPad tablet. The purchase of Palm, and its , give HP a formidable platform to build on. The combination of WebOS technology, with the right hardware, and with the HP brand and marketing power behind it could be a .