Now as head of HP Networking, he has a job that is no less daunting: Wrestling with none other than Cisco Systems, the powerful grandaddy of the networking business. HP’s networking unit, recently bolstered by its $2.7 billion acquisition of 3Com last year, caught some attention this week with an audacious promotion offering networking customers a 20 percent discount on certain products if they trade in old Cisco gear.

To be fair, HP has yet to take much business away from Cisco. As The Wall Street Journal noted, Cisco has so far held on to its 70 percent share of the enterprise Ethernet switching market in Q3, up from 67 percent a year ago, according to the research firm Infonetics. HP’s share was 11 percent, the same share that 3Com had before it was part of HP.

Still, it’s an interesting time to be trading barbs with Cisco, in part because it appears vulnerable given its uncertain market outlook when it reported earnings last month, but also because it’s eyeing some of HP’s home turf for expansion.

I met up with Haas at HP Headquarters in Palo Alto recently to talk about how the matchup with Cisco is shaping up, and what to expect from HP in 2011.

NewEnterprise: Marius, let’s start with the big question about the coming year. You were deeply involved with the EDS deal and several HP deals before that. Is there still an appetite for big deals in IT or at HP?

Marius Haas: “It’s not going to stop. The big are going to get bigger. The appetite for some of the niche technology players to get some funding so they can grow to a sufficient scale is not gone. Now it’s becoming clear that Cisco, Oracle, IBM and HP are all pretty much starting to build out their end-to-end stacks and I don’t see any stop to the deal-making. In order to get the kind of muscle you need to compete in this market you have to be pretty big and you have to be global.”

NE: So HP is not done doing deals?

MH: “No.”

NE: What kind of deals might we see?

MH: “I’ll give you a hint. Look at who our new CEO and Chairman [former SAP CEO Léo Apotheker] is. You can probably draw a conclusion that maybe we’ll continue to expand in the software arena, and then move up the stack. That’s a logical path he could be taking.

NE: Let’s talk about the competition, specifically Cisco–a networking company that’s going after the data center and IT. You run the networking division of an IT company. Talk to me about that dynamic.

MH: “We like the position we’re in. We have all the things you need in order to bring together and deliver a sort of holistic kind of cloud strategy for customers. It takes a lot of IP and we’re the only company on the planet that has it all. Servers, storage, networking, management software, services. And all the devices as well. No one else has that. And Cisco doesn’t have it. They will come from their position of strength which is networking, but they are going to have to partner to deliver the broader ecosystem. It’s easy to put on paper, but harder to deliver.

“They’re used to their network model with proprietary products. Customers are saying they don’t want proprietary stuff. They want something that’s standards-based, interoperable and at a much lower cost. Our offering is resonating. We don’t see the kind of slowness they are seeing. And the enterprise customers are telling us they no longer want a single-vendor-dominated networking market. They want competition for their business.”

NE: So where are you seeing demand?

MH: “Historically HP before we acquired 3Com was strong in the mid-market and in the edge of the enterprise. We were strong in the K-12, local government, hospitality and health care segments. Now we’re seeing broader momentum in the enterprise, especially from companies who are modernizing their environment and getting ready for the cloud. People are getting tired of paying a premium for Cisco. And you’ve got about $9 billion worth of gear from Cisco that is going end of life soon. Out of our top 1,000 enterprise accounts, 458 are doing proof of concept trials with us. People are now convinced we are that second horse in the race.”

But it’s hard not to make news when you turn down a $6 billion buyout offer from Google.

Meanwhile, Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial.com, has remained relatively quiet. As the head of the second-largest company in the local, group-buying space, it wasn’t because he didn’t have anything to talk about.

Just about 24 hours before Groupon’s rejection leaked out, LivingSocial announced it had secured $175 million from Amazon, and $183 million in total new investments. In that same release, the Washington, D.C.-based company confirmed that it was booking revenues of more than $1 million a day on average and is projected to book well over $500 million in revenue in 2011.

To be sure, Groupon and LivingSocial are pulling away from the pack when it comes to defining the nascent daily-deals market. O’Shaughnessy, who claims that the two have 90 percent market share combined, said: “I think the idea conceptually that you can buy things online and go interact with merchants in offline is starting to take hold and be widespread. But it’s really been less than two years…It’s definitely the first couple of innings right now.”

Here’s our interview with O’Shaughnessy:

eMoney: Give me an update on where your business is today.

O’Shaughnessy: As of yesterday [Dec. 16], we were in 136 markets. We launched five new markets yesterday. We tend to do them in batches, and five or eight will go out at once. Overall, we’ve been averaging a market a day.

What about up-to-date figures on uniques?

We are at more than 10 million, or I think the last number we said publicly was 12 million. That’s primarily Canada and the U.S. that are signed up for the daily deal. We are in five countries today. [LivingSocial is in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia.]

What’s the competition like internationally?

Groupon has been acquisitive, and they’ve become established in lots of places. The U.S. is the most mature by a large margin, and there’s some countries with a few players that have established themselves, and finally, there’s some countries out there that’s a fairly green-field environment.

It’s fairly established that Groupon is No. 1, and LivingSocial is No. 2. But there’s a huge debate about who is No. 3?

There’s a pretty big gap. One of the things I’ve said is that it’s a pretty easy business to get into. All you have to do is know how to process a payment, and have a brother-in-law that has a restaurant that is willing to participate. But it’s a hard business to scale.

We have a competitive spreadsheet with 200 names on it, and if you do a couple of filters on how many deals someone has run, starting with 100, the vast majority drop off. And then if you up it to 500, you are up to the top two. It’s a pretty big drop-off.

Six months ago, we [Groupon and LivingSocial] collectively had 90 percent market share, and last month that was still true.

In that time, the market got bigger, and some others have grown for sure, but our market share has grown quite a bit. The signal-to-noise ratio is off, relative to who is doing what.

Is that what gives you confidence?

That’s one data point to look at, but what gives me confidence is what I see and I know we do every day. The degree of effort that goes into it and how many things can go wrong when you are managing merchant relationships, that’s what gives me the confidence.

What about the critics who say there’s no loyalty in this business–a consumer will always go with the provider who has the best deal for the business they want to visit.

There’s some loyalty that’s there, and I think people buy through us pretty regularly. They know that it’s going to be a merchant that’s vetted, and we work really hard at that. We are a good solid legit company that’s able to deliver. People place value on that. The brand matters, and enhancing user trust is an important thing.

What about the critics who say the margin will erode over time?

I think that the erosion of margins is just like any single other business if you stop innovating and do the same thing over and over. If we continue to innovate and provide additional value to merchants, the value per dollar increases. I don’t tend to be hugely concerned about the margin front.

The conduit has been 50 percent off a service, but there’s additional value we can provide to merchant communities and consumer communities. Overall, we aren’t not going to do the same thing over and over.

Can you give me an example?

We’ve started working with merchants in completely different ways, and sometimes we are going and operating events. We just did something called “tubbing and tasting,” where we worked with three merchants.

You could pick 10 to 12 Saturdays, and you’d meet in Midtown Manhattan, where a coach bus would take you to a snow hill, where you’d go snow tubbing. At the lodge, there was a bonfire and s’mores, and a beer tasting with a bunch of microbrews.

In that circumstance, we worked with three merchants–a coach company, a ski mountain and a brewery–in an entirely different way than how they associate with folks. I think it cost $60 and it sold out virtually every Saturday in January and February. I don’t see anyone else doing that, by finding unique hand-picked, curated ways to work with local businesses.

So, how will you be working with Amazon?

Right now, our first step is focusing on getting the relationship from a financial perspective locked down, and we’ll figure it out at a later point.

I assume the funding will go toward expansion?

We will be very aggressive on additional market launches as we build up our brand and user base. It’s very much a global game, and this is a global opportunity. We’ve gone from one country to five, and we’ll likely continue to expand globally.

A lot of this year was laying a foundation and the building blocks, and adding more value for the merchants, like LivingSocial Escapes. It’s on fire right now. It’s a weekend getaway, or a “staycation.” They are curated packages that are within a short driving distance from where you live. We also have LivingSocial Family Edition, which has things parents can do with their kids.

Your plans include tripling your employee count next year to 1,800 and more than doubling the number of cities you are in to 300?

We will continue to be pretty aggressive. Earlier this year, we were in six markets and we added 130 markets this year. We are a little more mature and one would hope that means we could move faster next year. We were around 30 employees, and over 600 now. It’s been a pretty crazy ramp-up.

The timing of your investment was so closely timed to Groupon-Google’s negotiations.

I’m a firm believer that we can’t control what other people do. Obviously, the deal we did with Amazon takes time to put together. We had decided awhile ago, if we want to become the biggest player in local commerce, we should be aligned with the biggest e-commerce company. That’s a lot of [what was] driving it. The timing was very coincidental.

So, no regrets?

No, not at all. We are thrilled and excited and expect to gain more market share over the coming year.

“Our assumption is that Apple’s dominance will remain firmly intact in the near to mid-term, but gradually, technology improvements and component cost declines will enable the laggards to offer ‘good enough’ solutions to loosen some of Apple’s grip,” Moskowitz says. “Of note, we expect a host of competitive tablets in 2H 2011, following the release of Android 3.0 this coming spring. The upgraded Android operating system should gradually improve the competitiveness relative to Apple’s iOS. Our conversations with industry contacts indicate that the current version of Android does not provide a computing rich experience, which is a requisite of tablets.”

But a gradual improvement in the competitiveness of Android tablets isn’t nearly enough to slow the iPad juggernaut. Presumably, a lot of those first-generation Android 3.0 tablets will arrive at market about the same time as the second generation of the iPad. That alone should allow Apple to maintain a comfortable lead, but the company has iOS and the iTunes content ecosystem working in its favor as well.

“With tablets, we view form factor, operating system robustness, and content ubiquity as critical demand enablers, and here, we expect Apple to dominate,” Moskowitz concludes. “Similar to the iPhone, the iPad reflects Apple’s ability to introduce unrivaled technology experiences for the customer. The key factor driving the separation from other tablet vendors stands to be Apple’s content ecosystem. With tablets, we think that offering a trove of applications, as is industry practice in smartphones, will not be enough. The ability of the user to access content, such as movies and TV shows, is increasingly important for tablet users. This dynamic is where Apple has fought hard to secure access to content, and we think it will take time for other vendors to establish a similar content ecosystem.”

“We are modeling for Apple to sell an incremental 2.5 million iPhones with the addition of Verizon, which may be conservative,” Munster explains. “We are modeling for iPhone units at AT&T to be down 30 percent year-over-year in 2011 as the US mix shifts towards Verizon, and as AT&T subs wait to upgrade their iPhones until they are off-contract and can purchase an iPhone on Verizon.”

Interesting, yeah? There is a caveat, though. If iPhone sales at AT&T remain flat year-over-year in 2011, Verizon may see as many iPhones next year as its rival did in calendar 2010. And that would add another 10 million units to Munster’s 2011 iPhone estimate. So: Nine million or 19 million.

Nokia says the cuts have been on the table since October, when it announced a personnel restructuring during its Q3 results. And indeed it has. From a press release issued that month:

“Altogether, the planned changes are expected to result in a reduction of up to 1,800 employees globally, as activities are planned to be discontinued and integrated. Nokia will begin applicable consultations with employee representatives about these plans.”

News of the layoffs comes on the same day that Nokia said it will miss another shipping deadline for its new E7 smartphone. That device, which will run the next iteration of the company’s Symbian OS, was expected to launch this year. Now its debut has been postponed until early 2011.

The latest domestic sales data from NPD shows Apple on pace to sell between 4.1 million and 4.3 million Macs in the December quarter. Which would make for another record breaker in an ever-lengthening string of them. After all, Apple’s U.S. Mac sales are up 20 percent year-over-year for the first two months of the current quarter. And with international sales growing faster than domestic, the company will likely see between 22 percent and 28 percent year-over-year growth.

If that trend continues–and with the recent refresh of the iMac and MacBook Air lines, there’s no reason to think it won’t–2011 could end up being the “Year of the Mac” as well.

However, the other U.S. carriers want people to know that they are planning faster-network tablets for 2011 as well.

Verizon, which launched its 4G network this month, said it will have both phones and tablets for the network by the middle of next year. T-Mobile said it too will have a 4G tablet, though T-Mobile uses that term to refer to HSDPA+, what most everyone else would call a faster version of its existing 3G network.

Only AT&T said it did not want to speculate on its product plans for next year. But then, it does sell an Apple product and certainly wouldn’t want to be seen as pre-announcing anything.

So, to summarize, if you want a tablet and are willing to wait until next year, you will probably be able to buy one on the faster network of your carrier of choice. If you buy an iPad or Galaxy Tab this year, it will run on the existing 3G network only.

This year I’m not attending because I had other things to do, but I managed to catch up with Anderson by phone this morning to get a quick rundown of his predictions. Here they are, as summarized by me with a few quotes from my chat with Mark:

1. The smartphone market breaks in two. Secure for the enterprise vs. consumer-oriented. As companies become increasingly concerned about protecting their intellectual property from being exposed or stolen in network-based attacks, corporations will become a lot more careful about allowing employees to use smartphones on their networks. “Research In Motion will get a ‘yes’ nod right away, Apple’s iPhone will get a tentative ‘yes’ and Microsoft will be next in line after that if they’re willing to see the opportunity that’s in front of them, with a special secure version of Windows Mobile 7. Everything else, Android in particular, will be in the other seat.”

2. Wireless carriers make a grab for power. Increasingly marginalized as the owners of so-called dumb pipes, carriers will use Google’s Android to make a grab for power they’ve been generally losing lately on the handset. “Android gives carriers power while Apple’s iOS takes it away. The long-term trend toward the carriers ultimately losing their power will not change, but in 2011 they’ll see Android as a ticket to regaining some of the power they’ve lost on the handset.”

3. ITunes seeds its own competition. As much as it appears to be the monolithic player in digital media, iTunes will seem less so this year. “I think Netflix is going to be an amazing story in 2011. It may have out Hulu-ed Hulu in terms of video.” However, iTunes’ control of the music market will remain unchanged.

4. The free-app ecosphere hits a money wall. All those inexpensive and free applications on the iPhone and Android phones will start to cost a lot more than they did before. “If it’s an app that helps you rent a car from Hertz or fly Southwest Air it will still be free. Real smartphone applications will start to cost money and the prices will escalate. They’ll go from costing zero to $3 to between $10 and $30.”

5. Google loses its way. Google will fail to answer the fundamental question, “What business am I in?” and will be perceived as confused and lacking a cohesive strategy. “Google is all over the place with its driverless cars and Google phones. There’s lots of great ideas bubbling up through the employee ranks getting nods from top management, but I don’t see any strategy there. It’s a fun place to work, sort of like a Xerox PARC for grown-ups. And there’s nothing wrong with that unless you’re a shareholder. There’s never been a company with so much money and so random a strategy as Google.”

6. The year of the electric car, part 2. Electric cars start showing up in real production numbers, and charging stations for cars start popping up like weeds. “The numbers begin to shoot up in 2011 and they never stop.”

7. Carry-alongs–netbooks, tablets and the like–remain the fastest-growing segment of computers. Expect to see a lot more 9-inch and 7-inch devices this year.

8. Data Matters. Oracle takes off and becomes a global platform for databases. “Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd working together remind me of Bill Gates and John Shirley. One is the brilliant visionary and strategist, and the other is the genius operations guy. SAP will suffer as a result, and in fact already is. It will get worse.”

9. Net TV is in, cable is out. Internet-based TV options will penetrate about 40 percent of U.S. households, which will trigger a revolution in mass media. Cable and satellite providers will suffer. Cable-cutting is real and will be seen not as the result of consumers cutting back in lean economic distress, but as making a permanent choice. “They won’t be back.” Netflix (see prediction No. 3) will make a breakout play to reach them.

10. E-Books go mainstream Though their share of the book-publishing market will remain fractional, the growth of that fraction that is e-book sales will go ballistic. Expect revenues in the ballpark of $160 million per quarter and a compound annual growth rate of about 140 percent. “E-reading will become as common as eating with a spoon.”

So how accurate is Anderson? Very, he argues, though what forecaster wouldn’t? You can judge for yourself. Here’s a story I did last year for Bloomberg Businessweek on his predictions for 2010, and another on his predictions for 2009.