You know the drill: Sometimes if you say something often enough people start to believe you. But when it comes to big hardware companies making big promises about big digital business transformations, I'm frequently skeptical.It happened again this week. A smart, well-meaning hardware executive told his partner ecosystem this week:Frankly, those are the five words absolutely destroy the "digital business transformation" magic for me. The hardware company he represents was...Somewhat late to the shift from hardware sales to subscription services. Somewhat late to the shift from physical devices to software-defined demands. Distracted for several years with consumer devices that didn't sell. Unable to establish a beachhead for success during the early days of mobile, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. IBM focused on a long-term earnings-per-share goals that nobody believed, before changing course and finally addressing modern IT trends. Dell acquired and sold companies (SonicWall, Quest, Perot Systems, etc.) the way the rest of us traded baseball cards as kids. HP Enterprise acquired and sold companies or pieces of companies (Compaq, EDS) multiple times. First, HPE said bigger was better. Now, the company says breakups make for nimble businesses. Which is it? And the list goes on. Yes, each hardware giant is now working hard on R&D to address all the obvious trends (cloud, mobile etc.). But if you represent one of those companies please don't tell me that "we see the digital future." Recent IT history (circa 2005-2015) suggests otherwise.
"We see the digital future."