HP Overtakes IBM As The Top Tech Player & Accenture Is No.1 In Services

The puzzle for tech sector business leadership is indeed getting more and more curious to watch. The MISO players are busy firing all the cylinders. But from the sidelines two others are declaring victory over the largest of the MISO group -IBM. Mark Hurd declares that as of this date, HP holds the title of the biggest tech company in the world. He means that - owing to an impressive acceleration of efforts, Hewlett-Packard's business divisions pulled together to deliver solid revenue and profit growth. While IBM has exited the PC business and Dell is focused mostly on a slow-growing corporate market and moribund demand for desktop models, HP is taking advantage of brisk demand from consumers, particularly for laptop computers. The company's laptop sales grew 24%, and the company is exploiting its vast retail presence in the U.S. and in emerging markets such as India, Russia, and Brazil. Indeed, HP surged against struggling Dell to become the PC market leader in the third quarter. Trends now show that Dell might have caught up with HP here. Courtesy of Manish saw this : Accenture beats IBM to be anointed as the No.1 service provider. For a change, IDC comes with a refreshing perspective - high growth areas include investments in SOA, infrastructure improvements, and application services and SIs that have invested in emerging areas, stayed close to customers, and focused on efficient execution are well positioned to capitalize on the market as it improves. Companies that will succeed in the SI market going forward will be those that embrace the evolution of the software environment, collaborate closely with partners and customers, possess a strong understanding of industry-specific business processes, and have a mature and seamless global delivery capability.
This is am impressive feat pulled off by Accenture. Accenture is investing heavily in high growth areas while most of the leading enterprises appear to remain comfortable spending on strategic growth and global initiatives. Some of the growth areas identified by Accenture include offshore services, vertical BPO,
remote ITO, bundling opportunities, SOA, ERP integration, and CRM activity. It is time to call MISO as MISOHA or MISHO. This was expected – as I was pointing out repeatedly in the past : IBM’s downward slip was evident and it lost its status as the proxy name for services. Clearly, the competitive landscape for the SI services market will continue to evolve as vendors balance their SI investments and priorities with their overall portfolio of offerings and strategic direction of the company If we do a little analysis of HP’s triumphs, clearly Dell is fighting back and with HP expecting to cut another 2 billions of it costs in the next few quarters, its an interesting situation to watch. All indications are that HP is not focusing too much on services. So the IBM-HP could be a little lopsided given that IBM shed of its PC division and HP gains hugely through its printing business, while IBM is particularly strong in corporate IT. I think in a eyeball-to-eyeball race, IBM would win over HP in the enterprise segment, but that is not to take the credit from HP in reaching this exalted status.I would like to see HP pushing lot more innovative things on the back of its success and not merely focus on squeezing costs further and showing better bottomline – the underperforming divisions within HP ought to take the cue and run faster. Accenture overtaking IBM in services is a real thing to be acknowledged by IBM – Which I think, they will by pulling lot more punches in their services strategy – watch out. The enterprise tech game is getting more curious.