Mr. Chowdhry: I think the post-recession world is emerging to be very different than what the pre-recession time was because as you move forward in 2010 and beyond, the blurring between what is a hardware, what is a software, what is a service - it's all getting blurred; the boundaries are getting blurred. And not only that - what is a software company? What is an IT services company? What is an Internet company? Their boundaries are also getting blurred. So we're entering a very interesting space. There are certain companies that will do very well and certain companies will go by the wayside.
TWST: What's causing the boundaries to blur?
Mr. Chowdhry: I think there are three things which are causing the blurring of the boundaries. Number one is that the customer wants a solution to their problem. They don't see the problem as a hardware problem; they don't see a problem as a software problem; they are not seeing a problem as a business model problem. They say, "We want our business to be X% efficient. We should be able to communicate with our partners who are spread across the world, and we want to do it in real time." And because those are the needs - number one, business at the global scale; number two, collaboration in the real time; and number three, all being done in a most cost-effective manner - then these are the needs of a business. You can't separate your solution as a hardware solution, or software solution or a service solution. Apple is an integrated company - software, services and hardware. Oracle, the same thing. Google, the same thing.
Let me talk about software blurring. Software is a piece of a puzzle, but what the customer wants is accountability. They are sick and tired of the pre-recession era, where they were bounced around like a shuttle cork between "It's not my problem, it's the hardware guy's problem." The hardware guy will say, "It's a software problem." The software guy will say, "It's an IT services guy's problem." The customer would always be screaming and yelling. So those days are over, gone for good. In this new world, new companies will emerge as key winners. Some companies will be transforming and a few companies will be totally irrelevant in the post-recession era.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AAPL, BMC, CA, CRM, CTSH, EMC, GE, GOOG, INTC, MOT, MSFT, ORCL, PALM, QSFT, SAP, VMW, WIT
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