The Hewlett-Packard Company is an American global information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. It develops and provides a wide variety of hardware components as well as software and related services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by William "Bill" Redington Hewlett and David "Dave" Packard starting with a line of electronic test equipment. HP was the world's leading PC manufacturer from 2007 to Q2 2013, after which Lenovo remained ranked ahead of HP. It specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software and a diverse range of printers and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP also has services and consulting business around its products and partner products.
Super Micro Computer, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures and sells servers based on the x86 architecture. The company's offerings include rackmount, tower and blade server systems, high-end workstations, storage server systems, motherboards, chassis, and server components branded under the Server Building Block Solutions product line. Supermicro was founded in 1993 by engineer and current CEO Charles Liang. The company was incorporated in Delaware in August 2006 and had its IPO in March 2007. As of June 30, 2012, Supermicro employed 1,472 full-time employees and 31 consultants at its operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia with customers in over 89 countries. The company offers its products through value-added resellers, system integrators, and original equipment manufacturers, as well as through its direct sales force.
