HP, Dell, EMC and Intel are far from what they were ten years ago. The market is changing very quickly, and even a few months for such a business is a serious time.

Corporations also see and understand everything. For example, that phones and tablets occupy an increasingly significant place on the market, and personal computers (PCs) are fading into the background. With the advent of cloud services from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other corporations, business has stopped purchasing hardware for data centers when it needs to launch another website or application. If they need a real server, they are already completely different, for which they again “thank you” to Internet companies like Facebook and cloud providers. HP, Dell and EMC see all these changes, but they don’t always understand what to do with all this and where to run.

In an attempt to preserve the influence of well-known players in the past trying to adapt to the market. Sometimes they get startups because of this that have nothing to do with the main activity. When nothing good comes out of such a purchase, they simply get rid of it and switch to something even newer and “promising”. Meanwhile, the hardware market continues to change, and it does it very rapidly.

For a while, iron producers even tried to switch to software development:

• For example, in 2010, Intel invested $ 7.68 billion in the purchase of McAfee, which made the eponymous antivirus and other firewall systems.

  
  

• A year later, HP for 11.1 billion buys Autonomy, a company specializing in BIG DATA.

  
  
• Behind them, Dell has been spending billions on various software companies for several years.

But nothing sensible came of these throwings. In the summer of 2016, Dell sold all of its software purchases, and a week ago HP Enterprise agreed with Micro Focus to sell Autonomy. That same week, Intel joined the “banquet” and singled out McAfee as a separate company.

Then Dell and HP were carried away by the clouds and thought that they could provide services in this new area. It also somehow did not go, and the companies continued to "search for themselves":

• HP divided into two companies: HP Enterprise and HP Inc - the latter is just buying Samsung’s printer manufacturing division.

  
  

• Dell is teaming up with EMC.

  
  
• Intel buys different chip makers, returning to the beaten track after a series of setbacks as a software maker.

Is there a warm place for all these giants in the future of IT? Intel definitely has, and what will happen to the rest is not yet clear.

New Market - New Discoveries

But some still managed to adapt. Fifteen years ago, IBM undertook grand reforms:

• In 2002, bought the consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers.

  
  

• Three years later, she sold her PC business at all.

  
  
• IBM then focused on software, hardware and consulting services for large companies.

And it worked - while the market for "ordinary" computers was gradually overgrown with dust, the corporate IT sector grew at an unprecedented pace and yielded significant profits.

Meanwhile, the world continues to lean towards phones and tablets, which, along with IBM’s success, has caused other players to repeat the success of the blue giant:

• Dell bought Quest, then SonicWall, the data protection systems developer, and then Enstratius, a manufacturer of cloud management tools.

  
  

• Intel grabbed McAfee again.

  
  
• But HP went to radical measures. In 2011, they announced the purchase of Autonomy, after which rumors about HP’s intention to sell the PC manufacturing division were sent. But instead, the company announced the allocation of PC-directions in a separate company. Investors were in a panic: is it a joke, to create a company from scratch literally overnight? So HP needed change.

At the beginning of the decade, cloud technologies fundamentally changed the perception of corporate IT, and all of these companies had to change again. Intel perfectly adapted to the market and started selling processors to the strongest players of the new market - Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. Thus, it provided the demand for its chips and processors for the years ahead, but HP, Dell, and even EMC with the development of the cloud may be out of business.

Amazon has long dominated the cloud services market, Google and Microsoft also do not lose ground and remain far ahead of most competitors. Microsoft generally well adapted to modern conditions. Even with some problems, Gates is doing better than Dell and HP. Trying to keep afloat with all his strength, HP infuses some unimaginable amount into Autonomy. Apparently, they want to swim at least somewhere.

Self-knowledge continues

Over the past few years, our heroes have firmly understood the fact that it is not so easy to become a software developer if you have previously worked exclusively on hardware. But not the point, because everyone can be wrong. The opposite was true for Google and Microsoft: a software company is hard to start producing computers. Recall how Google bought Motorola’s mobile unit, and then Lenovo sold it 4 times cheaper. Or how much Microsoft got burned when buying Nokia.

Dell, HP and EMC just missed the moment of the future. Instead of buying McAfee, Intel should have focused on mobile devices; and HP would get more from investing in cloud services, and not in Autonomy.

But here we have to make a remark: Intel clearly sees that artificial intelligence is what will be tomorrow's trend. Therefore, immediately after the separation of McAfee, Intel buys Movidius - a company specializing in the manufacture of mobile processors for artificial intelligence systems. It looks like a good deal - probably, it will help Intel to stand firmly on its feet tomorrow.

By the way, a month earlier, the chip maker swallowed Nervena, another manufacturer of chips for artificial intelligence in server hardware. Altera is working in the same direction, costing Intel 16.7 billion dollars . All for the leading position in the fashionable direction.

The funny thing is that the processor manufacturer buys other processor manufacturers. Although, by itself, this strategy is unlikely to provide Intel a bright future. HP has high hopes for printers. It's funny to associate paper media with the future, right?