Advising on the commercial impact of technology and
    market changes in telecoms, software and IT services

The IT industry is on the cusp of a massive structural transformation. Dynamic computing is creating more and more robust and flexible IT environments, cost models and business strategies. Clearly these changes will fundamentally alter how IT customers make purchase decisions and work with vendors. But, they will be even more profound for vendors themselves. Already a growing number of vendors are complementing their traditional IT-focused value propositions with new business-based value propositions targeted at C-level and line-of-business executives. Many are developing new, more flexible capacity-on-demand and usage-based payment models and exploring new service-based delivery strategies.

Vendors large and small must deal with changing industry structures. But, the largest vendors-such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Dell, Microsoft and Accenture-have unique opportunities to reshape these industry structures and, as a result, the basis of competition and partnering throughout the IT industry. This module examines the business models, marketing mandates and competitive requirements of the dynamic computing era and the actions that leading vendors are taking to redefine the dynamics of the industry and the market.

Key Research Topics

• How IBM and Oracle are crafting business-based value propositions around infrastructure software-and how Microsoft and BEA can respond
• How vendors including IBM and Accenture are using business consulting as a wrapper for their IT product and services offerings
• What is the role of "vertical veneers" as an alternative to deep vertical market focuses
• How a growing number of ISVs, SIs and ASPs will move up the value chain to leverage their applications into business process solutions and new-generation application platforms
• How vendors can craft ISV ecosystems in the SOA era.

Ovum Summit's Unique Perspective

Building upon our exclusive three-year focus on dynamic computing and our long-term, in-depth access to and interaction with top tier vendor executive teams, this topic focuses on how vendors must complement their traditional IT-focused value propositions with new offerings, benefits and go-to-market strategies tailored to appeal to those business executives that control ever larger portions of IT budgets. This module is led by noted industry veteran Tom Kucharvy, with his characteristically holistic, marketing-focused and, often, heretical view of the IT industry.

Vendor Leadership Strategies is for hardware, software and services vendors who need to know what types of value propositions and go-to-market models will and will not work in the dynamic computing era, and how they can best transform their current models.