An important competitor - HP

I work in sales for IBM, and my seniors tell me that sales if fun because of the competition that we face in the marketplace everyday, among other things.

HP is more like IBM than any other company, and BusinessWeek has an article on HP's focus on sales execution under its new head, Mark Hurd. Good insight into the working style of the new boss!

Coming back to the point: competition. I've come to believe that it's absolutely important to have really strong competitors against you when you go out everyday to try and make a sale. It's obviously a pain, and you'd probably lose as much as you win. But competition is good because it then makes you work that much harder, and there's a sense of respect for the other guy.

Which is why it's pretty sad to see a competitor - Sun - doing pretty badly nowadays. But there's a lot going on at Sun nowadays: 1 2. (news.com)