The Challenge of Profiting in the Cloud Economy: HP vs Amazon and Google

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HP’s big bet on cloud
Posted on Wednesday, May 7 at 7:54am | By Kristen V. Brown

Hewlett-Packard is making a major bet on cloud computing, announcing Wednesday that it will invest $1 billion in a suite of open-source cloud products that position the Palo Alto company as a competitor to cloud services like Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine.

HP’s cloud products and services, dubbed HP Helion, mark a shift away from what has been the company’s primary business, namely selling products like management software and technology hardware to corporate data centers. Instead, HP will encourage companies to build their own cloud systems, using HP’s version of the open-source cloud software OpenStack.

The company’s existing cloud computing offerings will also move under the HP Helion name.

HP joins Microsoft, where new CEO Satya Nadella is racing to help Microsoft embrace the “mobile-first cloud-first” world.

http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/05/07/hps-big-bet-on-cloud/?cmpid=hp-hc-bustech

Is this an error of the third kind?  

So, do you think that this is a "too little, too late"  type of decision to pursue the "mobile cloud" marketplace?
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The two strategic scenarios of Assessing, Positioning and Influencing:

• Incorrectly assessing and positioning, then influencing too early. the innovative companies get copycatted by the larger and more resourceful companies  (Google, Microsoft, etc.)
• Incorrectly assessing and positioning, then influencing too late,  the copycat companies get crushed by the faster and more perceptive companies (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Samsung, Salesforce, etc.)

Question 
So what is the best strategic time to assess, position and influence?
(Future topic)

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The Dao of the Competitive Economy
Following are some of the strategic factors that could be used to strategically defines the complexity of a competitive situation:

• the quantity of quality competitors; 
• the market size; 
• the flow and flux of the marketplace

The Focal Point
Focusing on the competitors or innovation could only go so far.  The successful strategists always focus on both attributes. We will touch on this topic later.

The Operating Norm of the Amateurs
"Scrumation" (The Chief Decision Makes automatically operating one step at a time regardless of the circumstance. It is also known as the "Checker" Approach)  and the obvious act of improvisation could only progress so far for the non-innovation companies who are operating in their ivory tower. .  ...  

Playing the "Checker Approach" is the operating norm for the strategically- challenged decision makers.  Their inability to see the configuration of the Big Tangible Picture in terms of strategic concurrency and having the inability to accelerate will catch up with these moronic chief decision makers.  ... 

The larger companies have been living off the approach of adjusting to the situation because of their resources.  This could only progress so far because of the constant change of operational implementers and the constant change of the marketplace. 

If a few bad monumental errs in a row occurs, the larger company could be pushed over the edge, and into the abyss of history. (Atari, Commodore, Lotus,  Compaq, many software companies, etc.)

("The Powers to Be" could change the rules of the game and alter the momentum of the up and coming challengers. However, that is a different topic.)

Understand the concurrency of strategic actions within the complexity is the new algorithm/skill of the 21th century.  If done correctly, one could get lucky and identify that singularity/exception point for that one quarter or two quarter ahead. It is "the new black"  in the global information economy.  ... 

In terms of "Competitive Darwinism",  the pursuit of the one to three strike knockout maneuver is what some companies are quietly focusing on.  ..   The other companies are implementing "the demise of the competitor through a thousand cuts" tactic.  ... Some have referred to that tactic as the "Water Torture."

Side Note: The Approach
Understanding the complexity of a situation means having a master strategy that is consisted of these three phases- initial scheme, adjustment tactics and situation tactics.  

Do you deploy this type of "strategic process model?"

Remember the following point - Strategy + Process Model =  Solution 

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