Vendors Innovate To Maintain Relevance In New Cloud World

As the IT supply chain transitions to a cloud and hybrid cloud model, vendors can find it challenging to maintain relevance in a hardware-based business while innovating and working to embrace new business models. At a recent panel, representatives from HP Inc., Sungard Availability Services and Fortinet spoke about how they’re finding success in the journey of cloud transformation.

"The key is really trying to sell the business outcome that the customer wants," said Carmen Sorice, senior vice president at Sungard.

Joe Sykora, vice president at Fortinet, said the finance side of the equation had been a challenge.

"We had to change our channel model to give [partners] a model that made more sense," he said.

HP Senior Director Tami Beach said the company’s split one year ago was a major step to remaining relevant.

"We do have to respond to the market changes and it’s not just about engineering great products anymore, but also about engineering great experiences for customers and enabling our channel partners to deliver those as well," Beach said.