Who will replace Mark Hurd as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the oldest and one of the largest companies in Silicon Valley?

I’d love to hear your suggestions.

Here are some of mine:

– Sean Maloney is Intel’s number 2 executive and one of its best. He is back at work after being sidelined by a small stroke and would make an excellent CEO. There isn’t much room at the top at Intel, since Paul Otellini is 59 and likely to stay in the CEO job until 65. Mr. Maloney is just 53.

– Scott McNealy is currently unemployed, following Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Sun and HP are very similar businesses.

– Steve Mills is an IBM veteran and the second most powerful executive in the global enterprise software business. He has run the IBM software group very successfully. HP’s software business, especially its middleware business has been a disaster. Mr. Mills could help with that. He is 58.

Any other suggestions?

[Editor’s Note: Tom cross-posted this at Silicon Valley Watcher. –mrh]